Supreme Court gives Wisconsin ballot-counting cutoff

Democrats in the Midwestern swing state wanted officials to accept mail-in ballots for six days after the Nov. 3 election. The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled 5-3 that Wisconsin must keep its original rule requiring mail-in ballots to arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day. A lower court judge had ordered the state to extend its deadline, but a federal appeals court overruled that decision. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer dissented.

How many votes are in already? Wisconsin has received almost 1.5 million absentee ballots, nearly half of the total votes it collected in 2016. President Donald Trump carried the state by a mere 23,000 votes four years ago as part of his upset victory in the previously Democratic Rust Belt.

Dig deeper: Read my report in The Stew on the problems with early voting in many states.