A federal appeals court blocked Minnesota Democrats from extending the state’s mail-in ballot deadline past Election Day, handing state Republicans a major legal victory.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mail-in ballots in Minnesota must be received by Nov. 3 in order to be counted. The court ruled that Minnesota secretary of state Steve Simon violated the Constitution when he attempted to extend “the deadline for receipt of ballots without legislative authorization.”

The county elections director says an unknown number of mail-in ballots were lost by the U.S. Postal Service.

This has been a source of confusion, not just for voters, but for county commissioners overseeing the election.

“I kept checking and as of this morning, it still hasn’t been received,” said Butler County voter Carol May, who says she gave her ballot to the post office two weeks ago.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that an unidentified person based in Columbia, South Carolina, submitted at least 54 new voter applications in July, many for voters from the Northeast that were elderly or recently deceased. The voter applications were written with the same neat handwriting and arrived at the Broward elections office several in each of 19 envelopes.

The Supreme Court has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to prevent absentee ballots in North Carolina from being counted up to nine days after the election.

The Trump campaign, RNC and local Republicans had been fighting a lower court-approved extension of the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots to November 12 – provided they were postmarked by election day.