After SCOTUS Ruling on Mail-In Voting, Gov. Gavin Newsom Says CA Will Sue Again

Gavin Newsom does not like losing, and he especially does not like losing at the Supreme Court on a rule that lets California count ballots for days after Election Day. So the plan, apparently, is to sue again and hope a different result falls out of the same set of facts. That is not a legal strategy. That is a tantrum with a docket number.

The underlying question here is not complicated. States get to set reasonable deadlines for when ballots must arrive to be counted, and the Court said as much. California's system, which allows ballots postmarked on Election Day to trickle in for a week or more afterward, is the outlier, not the norm. Most states manage to count their votes without turning election night into election fortnight. If Newsom wants a different rule, the fix is in Sacramento, through the legislature, not in a courtroom rerun where he hopes for a friendlier panel.

What's telling is the instinct. Every time a court rules against a preferred process, the response from California's leadership is to escalate rather than adjust. There's no reflection on whether a week-long count invites confusion or erodes confidence in the result. There's just the next lawsuit, the next press conference, the next round of "we'll see about that."

Elections need finality and they need rules that hold up regardless of who's ahead when the polls close. Suing again because the first answer wasn't the one you wanted is not defending democracy. It's testing how many bites at the apple a governor thinks he's entitled to.