Sotomayor Grills RNC Lawyer On Mail-In Ballots: 'Maybe We Should Have Another President Now?'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

Mar 23rd, 2026, 3:11 pm


Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged Paul Clement, a lawyer for the Republican National Committee, on whether or not President George W. Bush’s 2000 election victory would have been legal should the RNC win its current case before the Supreme Court, which is looking to restrict mail-in voting. The RNC is arguing before the Supreme Court to defend a conservative federal court that ruled in a case from Mississippi that the state cannot accept mail-in ballots after election day, under federal law.

The case is part of President Donald Trump’s push to change election laws to try to combat what he sees as rampant election fraud, although no evidence has ever been made public of election fraud impacting the outcome of U.S. elections. “You believe that absentee voting by the military and overseas voters, the various federal laws under which states have proceeded with respect to those votes are illegal? Or they’re not saying what everybody has understood them to say—that states can accept absentee ballots after the election? Military and overseas voters,” Sotomayor challenged during oral arguments.

“I don’t think any vote is unlawful. Let me try to address how I think you would reconcile UOCAVA (The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act) with the Election Day statutes,” replied Clement, adding:

And to start, I think it’s important to recognize that UOCAVA is not limited to the federal general election. So UOCAVA applies to primary elections, to runoff elections, and special elections, and federal general elections. The Election Day statutes only apply to the general federal election. So the way I would reconcile the two is to say that all the references in UOCAVA to state deadlines are perfectly fine, not preempted at all, not displaced at all, not even anomalous with respect to the primaries, the runoffs and the special elections.

Then the court has a job to do in the federal general election—to say, like, which is the specific and which is general. I think the more logical way to do it would be to say that with the understanding in this court, if you decide in our favor, that for the federal general election, the ballots have to be in by Election Day.

“Maybe we should have another president now, because wasn’t it in Florida that they were counting military votes after receipt?” Sotomayor hit back.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/sotomayor-grills-rnc-lawyer-on-mail-in-ballots-maybe-we-should-have-another-president-now/

[LisaM]

1. They counted votes in 2000 that were CAST after the election.

I remember it distinctly. They got military people to vote after the fact and made a big whiny deal about counting the votes.

[Deminpenn]

2. SCOTUS just stopped the recount, after which Gore would have narrowly won FL

The presidency was literally stolen from Al Gore.. And 3 lawyers who helped deny Gore his rightfull win are now SCOTUS justices (Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh).

[LisaM]

4. Clarence Thomas should have recused himself.

His wife was on the Bush inauguration committee.

[travelingthrulife]

3. I hope she sneered bigly at Roberts.