- iii. Prejudice
Finally, Defendants, Intervenors, and the public at large would be significantly injured if the Court were to excuse Wood’s delay. A bedrock principle of election law is that “lower federal courts should ordinarily not alter the election rules on the eve of an election.” Republican Nat’l Comm. v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 140 S. Ct. 1205, 1207 (2020) (citing Purcell v. Gonzalez, 549 U.S. 1, 5 (2006)). This is because a last-minute intervention by a federal court could “result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls.” Purcell, 549 U.S. at 4–5. See also Democratic Nat’l Comm. v. Wisc. State Legislature, No. 20A66, 2020 WL 6275871, at *4 (U.S. Oct. 26, 2020) (Kavanaugh, J., concurring in denial of application to vacate stay) (“The principle [of judicial restraint] also discourages last-minute litigation and instead encourages litigants to bring any substantial challenges to election rules ahead of time, in the ordinary litigation process. For those reasons, among others, this Court has regularly cautioned that a federal court’s last-minute interference with state election laws is ordinarily inappropriate.”).
Underscoring the exceptional nature of his requested relief, Wood’s claims go much further; rather than changing the rules on the eve of an election, he wants the rules for the already concluded election declared unconstitutional and over
