US supreme court appears poised to limit mail-in ballots ahead of midterms | US supreme court
The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised Monday to restrict how mail-in ballots can be counted if they arrive after Election Day, which would affect the laws of more than a dozen states in a midterm election year.
The justices are considering Watson v. Republican National Committee, a challenge to a Mississippi state law introduced in 2024 by the Republican Party. Mississippi allows mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five business days of Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Mississippi changed its laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Fourteen states, Washington, D.C., and three U.S. territories have similar laws that allow late-arriving ballots to be counted. Based on the justices’ questions, it is clear that the case does not focus solely on Mississippi’s grace period, but on other states’ rules, which in some cases allow a longer grace period and do not require a postmark.
Mississippi, a red state, is defending its ability to set its own election procedures against a challenge from the Republican Party, which argues the grace period violates federal laws that set Election Day as the first Tuesday in November.
The court’s conservative justices grilled Mississippi Solicitor General Scott G Stewart on whether Congress intended to ban ballots arriving after Election Day, highlighting all the ways elections have changed in recent decades. They presented hypothetical situations, including long grace periods, and questioned what the limits would be on counting ballots after Election Day.
“History shows that election administration is dynamic,” Stewart told the justices. “States have a lot of room to maneuver. They just need to ensure that voters make a choice on election day.”
The liberal justices asked more friendly questions in Mississippi, pointing to other federal laws that recognize such grace periods, such as the Uniformed and Overseas Absentee Citizens Voting Act. The liberal justices also said the plaintiffs challenging Mississippi’s laws appear to involve early voting, a common practice in all states.
“You’re basically saying there are two things that must happen, and they must happen on Election Day, and that is voting and receiving the vote,” Justice Elena Kagan told Paul D Clement, who is arguing on behalf of the Mississippi Libertarian Party.
The potential for voter fraud, a common theme in the Trump administration, played a role in the conservative justices’ questioning. Justice Samuel Alito noted that “some briefs have argued that confidence in election results can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election the day after the polls close is radically reversed” by the subsequent counting of mail-in ballots. Several justices also questioned whether a voter could recall their mail-in ballot and change their vote — a hypothetical practice that Stewart said does not happen, saying “no one has cited a single example in history.”
But it’s not just late-arriving ballots that are counted after election night. In many states, mailed ballots arriving a few days before Election Day and on Election Day itself are still counted after the polls close. Signatures must be verified, which takes time, and some states allow ballots to be corrected if the signatures are flagged for further review.
The RNC lost its initial case in district court, then won in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. A host of groups representing voting rights advocates, military voters and overseas voters have filed to support the state’s position in the case, saying a grace period allows voters with special charges to have their ballots counted.
“The logic of the Fifth Circuit’s decision in this case would upend several long-standing state laws that specifically use grace periods to alleviate the unique barriers to voting faced by U.S. military and overseas voters,” says an amicus brief written by individuals and groups supporting the Mississippi law.
In its brief to the Supreme Court, Mississippi argued that the appeals court’s decision was “erroneous.”
“An ‘election’ is an officer’s final choice. Voters make that choice by casting – marking and submitting – their ballot,” the state wrote. “Thus, federal Election Day laws only require that voters vote before Election Day. The election then took place, even though election officials did not receive all the ballots that day. Under Mississippi law, voters cast ballots before Election Day. Federal law therefore does not preempt Mississippi law.”
National Republicans have struggled with mail-in voting, a common practice in many states, and the rules surrounding it. Some, including Donald Trump, have called for banning mail-in voting altogether, while other Republicans acknowledge that their voters also have high reliance on mail-in voting. Getting rid of these grace periods could inadvertently hurt Republican candidates.
The Trump administration and its allies in Congress have sought to exert more control over the election. Trump attempted to circumvent state and local election laws through an executive order, which was largely blocked by the courts. He’s also pushing for the Save America Act, a massive proof of citizenship and voter ID bill.
