Issa silent after Supreme Court rules in favor of mail-in voting

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

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 filed to stop mail-in ballots being counted after Election Day, claiming it gave an unfair advantage to Democrats.

The Supreme Court’s 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.

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. 

Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — in the majority. Coney Barrett wrote the opinion.  

“The 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,” she wrote. 

In his complaint, California’s decision to allow ballots received after Election Day  violates federal law and his rights under the U.S. Constitution.

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.

“Based on these results, late-arriving VBM ballots tend to favor Democratic candidates and provide an unfair electoral advantage for opponents of Republican congressional incumbents,” the complaint reads. “Republicans receive a lower proportion of votes cast in late-arriving VBM ballots compared to timely-cast ballots.”

Issa represents California’s 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.

James Ingram, a political science professor at San Diego State University, said he anticipated the court’s decision because “the framers pretty much left elections up to the states.” 
 “I find that across the party lines, (there are) Democrats and Republicans who know so little about elections processes,” he said. “I wonder how much of this (is) people just don’t understand how it works.”

Issa’s case hasn’t progressed since last year. But Issa himself has primarily voted by mail in elections since 2000, according to Registrar of Voters records. 

Last year, a judge granted the parties’ almost fully joint motion for a stay, until the Supreme Court decided a similar Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections case.

In January, the court ruled in favor of Rep. Mike Bost, finding that political candidates have a special legal right to sue over the rules used to count votes in their own elections.

This week’s ruling clarified that while federal law mandates a uniform day for voting, it does not establish a nationwide deadline for ballot receipt. 

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 NBC News in early June the pace of California’s ballot counting shows “they’re cheating on the election.”

Nicole Robinson, a political law associate and commentator in Washington, said the president has shown he is “willing to create chaos in our democracy.” 

“This claim about voter fraud is not substantiated at all,” she said. “I want people to remember that.”

Last week, Trump canceled the signing of a bipartisan housing affordability act “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT,” the president wrote on Truth Social. 

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.

Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision a “tremendous loss” and said it’s now “more important than ever” 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. 

“SAVE OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday. “There can be no more excuses!”

Robinson said Trump has “essentially been deemed the king of the Republican party,” and used his power to challenge federal votes. 

“The Republican party is trying to disenfranchise so many voters because they don’t want to be voted out in November and they don’t want to limit Trump’s power,” she said. “We’ll probably continue to see state level attacks on voters and their ability to cast votes.”