The legal battles over how America runs its elections have reached a fever pitch this summer, with high-stakes court showdowns and partisan fights playing out from Georgia to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the heart of the controversy: who gets to oversee elections, who gets to vote, and, perhaps most crucially, when and how ballots are counted.
In Fulton County, Georgia—long a flashpoint for election disputes—the latest chapter unfolded after county commissioners rejected two Republican nominees for the county election board in May 2025. The party-line vote, according to reporting from the Associated Press, was driven by concerns over the nominees’ qualifications and their past actions challenging election results and voter registrations. The nominees, Jason Frazier and Julie Adams, are no strangers to controversy. Frazier has filed thousands of voter registration challenges in the Democratic stronghold, while Adams, an incumbent board member, voted against certifying last year’s primary election.
The rejection set off a legal firestorm. The Fulton County GOP sued, demanding that the commission be forced to accept their nominees. On August 15, 2025, Judge Emerson ruled that the commission must appoint the two GOP nominees at its next meeting, scheduled for August 20. In a sharply worded order, Emerson warned he would consider holding the commission in contempt if it failed to comply. The commission, however, had already appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia the previous day, signaling the fight was far from over.
Attorney Thomas “Trey” Oliver, representing the Fulton County GOP, argued in court that the commission’s refusal caused “substantial and significant harm” to the party, insisting, “There is no way to remedy that harm through money.” On the other side, Amanda Clark-Palmer, counsel for the commission, countered that appointment votes are discretionary: “That vote has to mean something,” she told the court.
The stakes are high for both sides. Fulton’s five-member election board wields significant power, from running and certifying elections to setting polling locations and deciding voter eligibility challenges. The board’s composition is meant to reflect political balance: a chair chosen by the commission, two Republicans, and two Democrats—each nominated by their respective parties and appointed by the commissioners. But the process has become a battleground, with lawsuits flying in recent years. In 2023, the GOP sued after Frazier was previously rejected, only to withdraw the suit and nominate Michael Heekin instead.
Outside the courtroom, the nominees themselves have been involved in other election-related legal disputes. In August 2024, Frazier sued the county election board, alleging it failed to remove ineligible voters from the rolls in violation of state and federal law. He dropped the suit a month later. Meanwhile, Adams and at least 18 other board members refused to certify election results from 2020 to 2024, according to an analysis by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. But after a court ruled that certification was mandatory, all board members—including Adams—signed off on President Donald Trump’s victory last fall. Adams had been the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to block the certification requirement.
Georgia’s drama is hardly unique. Across the country, the rules governing elections are under intense scrutiny and legal challenge, with some of the biggest fights now before the nation’s highest court. On October 8, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in a pivotal case challenging Illinois’ law allowing ballots to be counted up to 14 days after Election Day. The lawsuit, filed on May 25, 2022, by Congressman Mike Bost and two presidential electors, contends that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day—the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.
Judicial Watch, the conservative legal group representing the plaintiffs, has made election integrity a central mission. In July 2025, it filed its opening brief with the Supreme Court, arguing that extending ballot receipt deadlines “violates federal law and undermines confidence in the electoral process.” The Supreme Court agreed in June 2025 to hear the appeal after lower courts denied standing to challenge Illinois’ extended ballot counting.
“Candidates have an obvious interest in the lawfulness and fairness of the rules that govern the elections into which they pour their time and resources,” Judicial Watch’s brief asserts. “They also have an obvious interest ‘in ensuring that the final vote tally accurately reflects the legally valid votes cast.’”
The Illinois case is just one front in a broader national campaign. In March 2025, Judicial Watch filed a federal lawsuit against California, seeking to block the counting of ballots received up to seven days after Election Day. The group has also opposed Mississippi’s efforts to overturn a May 2024 Fifth Circuit ruling that struck down a law allowing ballots received five days after Election Day to be counted. The Fifth Circuit, in an October 2024 opinion, found that federal law preempts state laws allowing post-Election Day ballot receipt, arguing that such practices open the door to “fraud, uncertainty, and delay.”
Judicial Watch’s legal team is stacked with high-profile attorneys, including senior attorneys Robert Popper and Russell Nobile, and former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court. The group touts its successes, noting that as of May 2025, its efforts have led to the removal of over five million ineligible names from voter rolls nationwide. Federal courts in Oregon, California, and Illinois have allowed Judicial Watch’s lawsuits to proceed, aiming to force those states to clean up their voter rolls.
The legal arguments hinge on a fundamental question: Should states have the flexibility to extend ballot receipt deadlines to accommodate mail delays and ensure every vote is counted, or does federal law require a strict, uniform deadline to prevent potential abuse and confusion? Advocates for tighter deadlines argue that extending the count undermines the integrity and finality of elections. Opponents counter that rigid cutoffs risk disenfranchising voters, especially those relying on mail-in ballots.
Meanwhile, the political stakes couldn’t be higher. In battleground states like Georgia, the composition of local election boards can influence everything from how aggressively voter rolls are purged to whether contentious results are certified. In the courts, the rules around ballot counting could shape the outcome of close races and, by extension, control of Congress and the White House.
With the Supreme Court poised to weigh in and state-level disputes escalating, the coming months promise to be a defining moment for American democracy. The outcome will not only determine how ballots are counted in 2025 and beyond, but also set precedents that could reverberate for generations.
As Americans look ahead to another high-stakes election season, the battle over the rules—and who gets to write them—shows no sign of letting up.
