The U.S. Supreme Court announced on the afternoon of Friday, January 5, that it had agreed to hear 7 particular cases. None of these 7 cases is an election law case. The U.S. Supreme Court won’t say until the morning of January 8 what it has done about the other cases that were on conference on January 5. But from experience, we know that they will either deny them, or delay them, or else tell the opposition to file a response brief.

Two election law cases were on conference on January 5: Wexler v Anderson, and Nader v Seroty. In both those cases, the opposition hadn’t even bothered to file a response brief. Therefore, the news on January 8 for these two cases will be one of these three choices: (1) denied; (2) delayed for the Court to think about it some more; or (3) an order telling the opposition side to file a response.

Wexler v Anderson is on whether there is any constitutional protection against vote-counting machines that don’t leave a paper trail. Nader v Seroty is on whether a state can charge a candidate a very large amount of money to cover costs of removing him or her from the ballot, a practice that seems to conflict with older US Supreme Court opinions outlawing poll taxes and mandatory filing fees.

In the case of the 7 (non-election) cases that the Supreme Court did accept on January 5, in all 7 instances, both sides had filed briefs. It is rare for the Court to take a case when it hasn’t yet heard from both sides.