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Notes -
Does SCOTUS normally "save the best till last"? We have seen a flurry of opinions at the end of the term, and they appear to be in roughly increasing order of importance, with no sign of the 3-4 biggest cases, which I think are:
The first three are all "Is this even the same Constitution?" level cases, and noisy idiots on both sides think that Watson is a "Do we still have a functioning democracy?" question, although in my view it is an unimportant technicality of election law. I would say the only cases of this importance which have been decided are Learning Resources (the tariffs) and Callais (race-based redistricting), both of which had strong practical reasons for the majority pushing a decision as fast as possible. Cook and Slaughter weren't even argued late in the term.
So the question I am asking is whether the justices are holding the biggest cases to drop together on the last day of the term out of some daft sense of drama (or more nefariously, to minimise the amount of public and press attention they get compared to dropping them separately), or is there some hitch delaying getting the opinions written. I can definitely imagine the cases being delayed because the justices are writing increasingly angry concurrences and dissents at each other, but it is also within the realms of possibility that there is still substantial haggling about getting to 5 votes. Barbara and Slaughter are both cases where a plurality opinion would embarrass the Court as well as being a practical headache.
I don't see why Watson v RNC is even controversial at all to the point of being a Supreme Court case. In the UK postal votes must be recevied by the close of polling which is absolutely the correct way to do things otherwise even 2 days after polls have closed and counts and recounts have been done if the race is very close it would be possible for a new batch of votes to suddenly turn up because the mail service has been slow and flip the result. Voters and candidates need certainty quickly after polling is concluded about who has won and where we all go from here as a result, the process shouldn't be held hostage by the possibility of some votes turning up 5 days later.
It's not like this is particularly prejudicial to postal voters either, they normally get their ballots many weeks in advance and it's not hard to fill it out (takes minutes) and get it sent off many many weeks before the election. If you delay until the last few days to send off your vote and it gets delayed and doesn't arrive in time then sorry, that's on you.
It's effectively for the same reasons things like mandatory voter id are controversial in the US: claims by the Democrats that it will be used to disenfranchise minorities and similar claims, claims by the Republicans that this is all a cover for election fraud (which the Democrats insist totally never happens except for those times a few decades ago when it totally did but it totally hasn't happened since they swear).
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