The Justice Department says it will lend its weight to the effort by a Republican congressman to overturn Illinois’ extended vote-by-mail counting deadlines, as the Trump administration has asked for the chance to argue that lower courts wrongly denied U.S. Rep. Mike Bost the chance to present his case and forcing Illinois election officals to prove they can constitutionally keep counting votes for two weeks after Election Day.
On Oct. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case launched by Bost and other Illinois Republicans against Illinois’ Democrat-dominated state government.
The arguments will not involve the merits of Bost’s legal claims.
Rather, the high court will take on the question of whether federal judges in Chicago wrongly denied Bost the chance to challenge Illinois’ vote-by-mail regime at all.
Bost, of downstate Jackson County, had turned to the Supreme Court for relief in November 2024, about five months after a divided federal appeals court in Chicago had sided with the state in shutting down Bost’s lawsuit.
Bost and his co-plaintiffs had sued in 2022, just before that year’s November general election. The lawsuit at the time sought a court order blocking Illinois from counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day, if those ballots included votes for federal offices, including U.S. House of Representatives, Senate or President.
