Justices uphold state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots

Justices uphold state law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots

Just over four months before the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by, and received within five days of, Election Day. By a vote of 5-4, the justices in Watson v. Republican National Committee rejected an argument, made by the political parties and others challenging the law, that federal law requires mail-in ballots to be received by Election Day.

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett concluded that the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that from this Nation's founding until the last few decades of the 20th century, having an "election" on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day.

Mississippi passed the law at the center of the dispute in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party, along with a Mississippi voter and a county election official, challenged the post-election ballot deadline, arguing that Mississippi's law clashes with a federal law, first passed by Congress in 1845, that designates the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the "election day."