A Supreme Court case could upend state election laws in more than a dozen states with grace periods that allow mail-in ballots to be counted if they’re postmarked by Election Day but arrive days later.
The high court heard arguments Monday about a Mississippi law that allows ballots to be accepted as many as five business days after Election Day. A ruling against the law could force states to revise their voting procedures before the November election.
Thirteen other states accept mail ballots received after Election Day but postmarked on or before that date, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures: Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.
The grace periods for accepting ballots postmarked by Election Day range from one day in Texas to 21 days in Washington state. Some other states count only military or overseas ballots that arrive after Election Day.
Mississippi Republican attorney general Lynn Fitch defended the state law before the Supreme Court in legal filings, though arguments over the validity of mail-in ballots received after Election Day have otherwise settled along party lines. In the 2024 presidential election, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris carried nine of the 14 states against Donald Trump.
Of those states, only Alaska and Texas are expected to have competitive general election contests for the Senate. Other states, including California, New York, and Virginia, have multiple competitive House races that could determine control of that chamber.
Supreme Court Signals Divide on Election-Day Ballot Deadline
The case was brought by the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party, which argued that federal law mandates that ballots must be received by Election Day to be counted. They said states can’t circumvent federal deadlines set by Congress when it established a uniform Election Day for presidential elections in 1845 and extended it to House elections in 1872 and to Senate elections in 1914.
“Text, precedent, and history show” that Election Day refers to “the final day that ballots may be received by election officials,” the RNC and Mississippi GOP said in a legal filing.
Paul Clement, the lawyer who argued on behalf of the political party organizations, told the justices,"elections for federal office have to end on the day of the election specified by Congress.”
President Donald Trump has denounced mail-in balloting and sought to ban the practice in almost all cases. He’s often made false claims that the process is rife with fraud and led to his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, when Democrats voted by mail more frequently than Republicans amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Election Day vote has trended more Republican.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is defending the party’s thin House majority, filed a legal brief opposing late-arriving mail-in ballots. The NRCC is defending competitive districts in some of the 14 states including California, which sends vote-by-mail ballots to all registered voters and has a laborious vote-counting process that includes ballots received up to one week after Election Day.
In a statement Monday, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee executive director Julie Merz accused Republicans of “a desperate scheme to prevent legally eligible Americans from exercising their constitutional right by attacking a proven, and secure, method of voting.”
The Democratic National Committee said in a legal filing that the term “election” has long been understood to refer to voters’ act of choosing an officeholder, and not to any administrative acts taken after Election Day to determine what choice the voters made.
Fourteen Democratic senators filed a legal brief defending the grace periods. They said Congress has never imposed a uniform federal deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots and has presupposed existing state ballot receipt deadlines, including in 2002 when it revamped election administration laws under the Help America Vote Act.
The case is Watson v. Republican National Committee, U.S., No. 24-1260, Oral argument 3/23/26
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