Supreme Court rules states can count late-arriving mailed ballots, rejecting Trump-led challenge

Supreme Court rules states can count late-arriving mailed ballots, rejecting Trump-led challenge

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.

The 5-4 decision rejected a Republican-led attack on laws in more than half the states and the District of Columbia that permit mailed ballots to arrive and be counted some number of days after the election, provided they are postmarked by Election Day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the court's majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices. Federal laws setting a single Election Day "leave open when those votes must be received," Barrett wrote.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent for four justices. "The majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity," Alito wrote.

The legal challenge was part of Trump's broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.

Trump called the court ruling a "tremendous loss" and renewed his call for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act. "There is only one reason to oppose - CHEATING!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.

"If we want fair and secure elections, Election Day should mean exactly what it says, which is why this decision makes it even more imperative that Congress pass the SAVE America Act," RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement.

The outcome is a "sigh of relief" for a lot of election administrators, said Stephen Richer, a Republican and the former top election administrator in Arizona's Maricopa County. A ruling in favor of the Republican National Committee "would have created a whole host of administrative challenges for the affected states," said Richer.