The Supreme Court has made a significant ruling regarding mail ballots, stating that states can count those received after Election Day. This decision was made in a case involving Mississippi’s law, which allows ballots received up to five days after the election to be tallied as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Background of the Case

The case began in 2024 when the Republican National Committee and Mississippi’s Libertarian Party filed lawsuits challenging the state’s law. They argued that federal statutes enacted in the 1800s, which set a uniform day for the election for president and Congress, require ballots to be received by the day of the election.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices, to uphold Mississippi’s law. Barrett wrote that the Framers recognized the difficulty of crafting election laws applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country and decided that a discretionary power over elections needed to be lodged somewhere, but not in the Supreme Court.

The ruling has implications for the upcoming November midterm elections, as more than a dozen states have similar laws allowing ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted. President Trump has frequently criticized mail voting, claiming without evidence that it leads to election fraud, and his administration backed the challenge to Mississippi’s law.

The Supreme Court’s decision is one of four involving elections that the court heard in its current term. The court has also weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which has led to a redistricting scramble in some Southern states.

Original reporting: KTSA News/Talk (San Antonio) — read the source article.