Mark Levin: Pennsylvania, Michigan Legislatures Must Undo Courts’ Election Decisions

Conservative radio host Mark Levin said Friday that the Republican-controlled legislatures of Pennsylvania and Michigan should meet in emergency session to undo recent court rulings that could compromise the election in both of those states.

“As in Pennsylvania, the Michigan legislature is controlled by the Republicans. They must meet in emergency session and exercise their Article II power under the federal constitution and seize back control over the election system,” he posted on Facebook.

Levin was reacting to rulings Thursday by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that allowed mail-in ballots received up to three days after Election Day to be counted — even if they had no evidence of being postmarked by Election Day. Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar (D) also issued a directive preventing county election officials from comparing signatures on mail-in ballots to signatures on the voter rolls.

On Friday, a court in Michigan directed election officials to accept mail-in ballots up to two weeks after Election Day. In addition, the court allowed limited “ballot harvesting” — a controversial practice, illegal in most of the country, in which ballots can be returned by third parties rather than by voters themselves.

In his radio show on Thursday, Levin called on Republicans to convene the state legislatures to exercise their powers, expressly described by Article II of the Constitution, to set the rules for the appointment of Electors in presidential elections.

The legislatures could, he said, explicitly state that the courts’ interpretations of state election laws were invalid, and could bolster existing state laws on procedures and deadlines for mailed ballots.

“They need to act, and they need to act now,” he said.

“Under our federal Constitution … they left it to the elected legislatures, not to unelected — or elected — Supreme Court justices in the states. They don’t have the final say [on election law] under our Constitution. The legislature does.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.