{"id":382677,"date":"2026-07-01T22:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382677\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T22:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T22:02:13","slug":"issa-silent-after-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-mail-in-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382677\/","title":{"rendered":"Issa silent after Supreme Court rules in favor of mail-in voting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rep.<\/a>Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 20, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (File photo by Jacquelyn Martin\/Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In the days since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled\u00a0states may count mail-in ballots<\/a> postmarked by Election Day, Rep. Darrell Issa<\/a> has not commented on a similar lawsuit he brought against the state of California.<\/p>\n

Staff for the Republican congressman from Vista told Times of San Diego he was not available for comment and did not provide a statement in response to the ruling or the March 2025 lawsuit he\u00a0filed to stop mail-in ballots being counted<\/a> after Election Day, claiming it gave an unfair advantage to Democrats.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s ruling upheld a Mississippi law that counts ballots up to five days after Election Day, if they are postmarked in time. In California, county registrars count ballots postmarked by Election Day if they are received up to seven days later.<\/p>\n

The 5-4 ruling on Monday in Watson v. Republican National Committee, rejected the argument that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices<\/a> \u2014 Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson \u2014 in the majority. Coney Barrett\u00a0wrote the opinion<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward,\u201d she wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his complaint,\u00a0Issa argued\u00a0<\/a>California\u2019s\u00a0decision to allow ballots received after\u00a0Election Day\u00a0\u00a0violates federal law and his rights under the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n

He cited two congressional races in 2024 in which Republican candidates led immediately after Election Day but lost after all ballots vote-by-mail ballots were counted.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on these results, late-arriving VBM ballots tend to favor Democratic candidates and provide an unfair electoral advantage for opponents of Republican congressional incumbents,\u201d the complaint reads. \u201cRepublicans receive a lower proportion of votes cast in late-arriving VBM ballots compared to timely-cast ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Issa represents California\u2019s 50th Congressional District, which covers parts of northern, inland San Diego County, along with Riverside County, including Temecula and Palm Springs. He decided not to seek reelection after voters last year approved a redistricting plan that made his seat into a pivotal pick-up opportunity for national Democrats.<\/p>\n

James Ingram, a political science professor at San Diego State University, said he anticipated the court\u2019s decision because \u201cthe framers pretty much left elections up to the states.\u201d\u00a0
\u00a0\u201cI find that across the party lines, (there are) Democrats and Republicans who know so little about elections processes,\u201d he said. \u201cI wonder how much of this (is) people just don\u2019t understand how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Issa\u2019s case hasn\u2019t progressed since last year. But Issa himself has primarily voted by mail in elections since 2000, according to Registrar of Voters records.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last year, a judge granted the parties\u2019 almost fully joint motion for a stay, until the Supreme Court decided a similar\u00a0Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections<\/a>\u00a0case.<\/p>\n

In January, the\u00a0court ruled\u00a0in favor of Rep.\u00a0Mike\u00a0Bost<\/a>, finding that political candidates have a special legal right to sue over the rules used to count votes in their own elections.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s ruling clarified that while federal law mandates a\u00a0uniform day for voting, it does not establish a\u00a0nationwide deadline for ballot receipt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The fight for more mail-in ballot regulations has been a focus of Republicans ahead of the midterms. Trump and his allies pushed for stricter voting regulations, telling\u00a0NBC\u00a0News<\/a> in early June the pace of California\u2019s ballot counting shows\u00a0\u201cthey\u2019re cheating on the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nicole Robinson,\u00a0a political law associate and commentator in Washington, said the president has shown he is \u201cwilling to create chaos in our democracy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis claim about voter fraud is not substantiated at all,\u201d she said. \u201cI want people to remember that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Trump canceled the signing of a bipartisan housing affordability act\u00a0\u00a0\u201cuntil such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT,\u201d the president wrote on\u00a0Truth Social.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which has been supported by Issa and his fellow Republicans in Congress, would limit mail-in voting and require proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.<\/p>\n

Trump called the Supreme Court\u2019s decision a \u201ctremendous loss\u201d and said it\u2019s now \u201cmore important than ever\u201d to pass the SAVE Act. The act has cleared the House, but continues to stall at the Senate, with Democrats, joined by five Republican holdouts, opposing the act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSAVE OUR COUNTRY,\u201d Trump wrote in a\u00a0Truth Social post<\/a>\u00a0on Monday. \u201cThere can be no more excuses!\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson said Trump has \u201cessentially been deemed the king of the Republican party,\u201d and used his power to challenge federal votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican party is trying to disenfranchise so many voters because they don\u2019t want to be voted out in November and they don\u2019t want to limit Trump\u2019s power,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ll probably continue to see state level attacks on voters and their ability to cast votes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., speaks during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Sept. 20, 2023, on Capitol Hill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[204,18564,154604,74,76,75,12552],"class_list":["post-382677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-election","tag-mail-in-ballots","tag-rep-darrell-issa","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}