a rather significant point from yesterday’s electoral-vote.com regarding scotus’s handling of all these election cases so close to an election

…by virtue of a 4-4 split, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn the ruling of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that said that late mail-in ballots would be allowed for three days after the election, even without postmarks. In the moment, everyone’s focus was on the obvious move by Chief Justice John Roberts (who joined with the three liberals) to shore up his “just calling balls and strikes” reputation, and on the fact that this result will help the Democrats in a key(stone) state.

With 24 hours to reflect, however, some folks have noticed an extremely troubling undercurrent to this whole affair. CNN’s Joshua Douglas and Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, among others, point out that the vote should have been 8-0, and not 4-4, since the Constitution is clear that elections are the province of the states, to manage (largely) as they see fit. The four non-Roberts conservatives have, in effect, announced that they are more than happy to ignore that principle, and to muck around in states’ handling of elections, even when it’s less than two weeks to Election Day. Once Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito get a fifth colleague who feels that way, they could wreak all sorts of havoc