Bost v. Illinois Bd. of Elections
607 U. S. 71 (2026) · 1/14/26
As a candidate for office, Congressman Bost has standing to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election.
Edition: preliminary print (page proof)
Voices: Syllabus — prepared by the Reporter of Decisions · Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Court. · Justice Jackson, with whom Justice Sotomayor joins, dissenting.
Illinois law requires election officials to count mail-in ballots postmarked or certified no later than election day and received within two weeks of election day. Congressman Michael Bost and two other political candidates fled a lawsuit claiming that counting ballots received after election day violates federal law. They principally contended that doing so conficts with 2 U. S. C. § 7 and 3 U. S. C. § 1, which set election day as the Tuesday following the first Monday in November. The district court dismissed the case, and the Seventh Circuit affirmed on the ground that petitioners lacked…
Held: As a candidate for office, Congressman Bost has standing to challenge the rules that govern the counting of votes in his election. Pp. 76–83. (a) Under Article III of the Constitution, plaintiffs must have a “personal stake” in a case to have standing to sue. FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, 602 U. S. 367, 379. An unlawful election rule can injure a candidate in several ways: It might cause him to lose the election, require him to expend additional resources, or decrease his vote share and damage his reputation. But winning, and doing so as inexpensively and decisively as…Read it in the reading room ›