The Supreme Court should affirm the lower court’s decision to dismiss Rep. Mike Bost’s lawsuit challenging mail-in voting in Illinois, according to an amicus brief filed by CREW behalf of a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state.

In May 2022, Rep. Bost filed a lawsuit against the Illinois State Board of Elections, arguing that the state’s two-week grace period for receiving and counting mail ballots postmarked by Election Day violates the federal law establishing “Election Day.” Bost’s lawsuit also contended that the two-week grace period causes harm to his candidacy because mail-in voting generally benefits his opponents, the deadline forces him to expend additional campaign resources, and because the alleged unreliability of mail ballots received after Election Day causes harm to the electorate as a whole. Since then, two lower courts have ruled that Bost does not have legal standing to sue.

The amicus brief shows that “mail-in voting is a safe and effective tool that makes it easier for qualified electors across the political spectrum to vote.” Based on their expertise and experience as election administrators, the former secretaries of state can corroborate that Illinois rigorously enforces measures to ensure only qualified registered voters are voting by mail and works with USPS to employ numerous measures to track mail-in ballots. The brief also emphasizes that “all available empirical evidence confirms that instances of fraudulent mail-in voting are exceedingly rare,” and that mail-in voting does not harm political candidates’ pocketbooks nor does it benefit or disadvantage any particular political party or candidate, countering Bost’s claims of unreliability and harm done to him and voters. The Supreme Court should affirm the lower court’s decision and allow Illinois’ mail-in voting law to remain in effect.

Read the amicus brief here.

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