Supreme Court upholds late-arriving mail ballot laws

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states may count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day if they were postmarked by the deadline, rejecting a Republican challenge that could have disrupted voting rules in more than a dozen states ahead of November’s midterm elections.

In a 5-4 decision, the court upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on or before that day. The ruling reverses a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had found that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined in full by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas and in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Talking Points Memo reported.

“The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day,” Barrett wrote, according to Talking Points Memo.

In the opinion, Barrett said federal election laws require voters to make their choices by Election Day but do not set a deadline for when election officials must receive ballots. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” she wrote, according to CBS News.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, centered on federal statutes that set Election Day as “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November.” The Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi argued that those laws mean all ballots must be in the hands of election officials by Election Day. Mississippi’s Republican attorney general, Lynn Fitch, defended the state law.

The decision is a setback for President Donald Trump and national Republicans, who have repeatedly criticized mail voting. NBC News and CBS News reported that Trump has claimed, without evidence, that mail voting is rife with fraud. His administration backed the challenge to Mississippi’s law, according to CBS News.

The ruling leaves in place similar laws in 13 other states, including California, New York and Texas, according to NBC News. The Guardian reported that 14 states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories have laws allowing late-arriving ballots to be counted. NPR reported that 18 states and territories, including Mississippi, have mail ballot grace periods, most of them Democratic-led, and that a dozen additional states allow grace periods for ballots sent from overseas, including by military voters.

All 50 states require ballots to be marked and submitted by Election Day, CBS News reported. But some states allow ballots to be received afterward if they were mailed on time. Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C., allow at least some military and overseas ballots to be received after Election Day, according to CBS News.

Voting rights groups, military voter advocates and overseas voter groups supported Mississippi’s position, The Guardian reported, arguing that grace periods help voters facing mail delays and other burdens. NPR reported that such grace periods have historically given voters time to get absentee ballots to officials when there are Postal Service problems, weather disruptions or other unforeseen delays.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said last year that more than 250,000 ballots postmarked on time arrived after Election Day in Washington during the 2024 election, NPR reported. “Had this rule been in effect,” he said, “those voices would have been silenced, especially in rural areas where mail delivery can take longer.”

NBC News reported that hundreds of thousands of voters nationwide used late-arriving ballots in the 2024 elections, a small but notable share of the total vote count.

The dispute began in 2024, when Republican and Libertarian challengers sued over Mississippi’s ballot-receipt deadline. A federal district court upheld the law, but the 5th Circuit sided with the challengers before the Supreme Court reversed that ruling Monday.