Supreme Court upholds state laws allowing postmarked mail ballots to be counted after Election Day
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court rejected a Republican National Committee challenge and ruled that states may count mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day if they were postmarked by the deadline.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined a challenge from the Republican National Committee and upheld Mississippi’s law permitting the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day, provided they were postmarked by the election deadline. The 5-4 ruling, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, held that the state statute does not conflict with federal law that sets the date of Election Day.
The decision preserves similar provisions in 13 other states, including California, New York and Texas, that allow late-arriving ballots to be counted if mailed on time. The Court’s majority included two conservative justices and the three liberal justices.
"The Mississippi law allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day as long as they were sent beforehand," the court’s opinion noted.
The ruling avoids altering state election rules during a midterm election year, leaving the existing deadlines in place for voters, including those living overseas or serving in the military. The RNC, Mississippi’s Republican Party and the state Libertarian Party had argued that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day.
The decision follows reports that hundreds of thousands of voters in the 2024 elections used late-arriving mail ballots, a modest but measurable share of the total vote.
