https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-disqualifies-ballots-tilting-election-to-trump-n1262055The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling on Thursday, ordered 570,000 votes cast across six states in last November's election to be invalidated. The ruling was across ideological lines, with the exception of Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the four liberal justices in dissenting.
The court's opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, stated that the ballots cast were illegal as they had violated various state election laws. While state and local officials made emergency changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent massive growth in mail-in voting, the opinion stated that because these changes were made without the approval of the state legislature, they are not valid.
According to the New York Times' Nate Cohn, once the ballots in question are removed from the vote tally, six states that narrowly voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 - Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - will show former President Donald Trump in the lead.
Cohn also expects these ballot purges to reverberate to other races. "Once the results are finalized in Michigan, John James will likely be ahead of Gary Peters by about a point." He also says former Republican Senator Martha McSally of Arizona could finish about 5,000 votes ahead of incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly.
David Wildstein of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, meanwhile predicts that Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia will lose enough votes for David Perdue to have around 51% of the vote in the first-round of the Georgia Senate race, which would have been enough for him to bypass a runoff. If that were the case, Ossoff will be unseated and Perdue will return to the Senate.
Meanwhile, up to ten Democratic-won House of Representatives races in the six disputed could have their vote totals altered enough to pull Republicans into the lead. If Republicans are leading in at least five of those ten seats afterwards, then they will take control of the House.
