Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the Supreme Court opinion on Monday that kept Mississippi’s five-day grace period for absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day. Five justices blocked the Republican National Committee’s bid to narrow that window in federal elections.
The ruling leaves states free to count ballots that arrive after Election Day if the postmark is timely. It also overturned the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which had seen merit in the GOP’s argument that federal law setting Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November should control.
Mississippi’s five-day window
Mississippi had allowed absentee ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted for five additional days. The Republican National Committee joined the Mississippi State GOP in challenging that rule in 2024, arguing that late-arriving mail-in ballots should not be included in federal elections.
Barrett wrote for the majority and said federal law as written does not override states’ constitutional role in running elections. Four other justices joined her, creating the five-vote majority that preserved the Mississippi rule and rejected the narrower reading accepted by the 5th Circuit.
Trump and mail voting
The dispute landed in a fight Donald Trump has kept revisiting since the 2020 presidential election. Earlier this month, he revived complaints about California’s mail voting after its most recent elections, and California has voted almost entirely by mail in recent years, with over 80% of ballots coming in via post.
The RNC also argued that the late-arriving ballots counted under Mississippi’s rule disproportionately break for Democrats. In its lawsuit, the plaintiffs cited the MIT Election Lab and said, “For example, according to the MIT Election Lab, 46% of Democratic voters in the 2022 General Election mailed in their ballots, compared to only 27% of Republicans… That means the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats.”
Past Supreme Court fights
The same issue reached the Supreme Court in 2020, when Pennsylvania Republicans sought to challenge ballots that arrived after Election Day. A deadlocked court allowed those votes to be counted, leaving Mississippi as the latest state to defend a similar grace period in front of the justices.
The ruling gives states that use mail voting a clear path to keep counting timely postmarked ballots that arrive late. How many other states besides Mississippi are directly affected by the ruling is not specified in the source.
