For almost two decades, the Supreme Court has applied that same basic logic to elections, telling lower courts to leave voting rules alone once a race is close enough that altering them would confuse voters and overwhelm election administrators. On Monday, the administration requested that the justices let it fully implement an executive order that would remake how mail ballots work nationwide, about 100 days before the midterms. The administration is now pushing the Supreme Court to overrule that judgment on an emergency basis, with the states due to respond by Monday. AdvertisementAdvertisementWhatever the Supreme Court decides after the states’ deadline next week, the underlying tension is worth sitting with. Whatever the outcome, the court will be deciding not only the fate of one executive order but whether its own doctrine of self-restraint in election cases still has any meaning.