Supreme Court backs mail-in ballots received after Election Day, in setback for Trump
The justices let Mississippi count mailed ballots postmarked by Election Day and received five business days later, protecting similar rules in about 30 states and Washington, D.C.
Mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day can still be counted in Mississippi, and in roughly 30 other states and Washington, D.C., after the Supreme Court upheld a five-business-day grace period for mailed votes. The 5-4 ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee reversed the Fifth Circuit and shielded a voting rule used to capture ballots delayed by the postal system, including ballots from overseas voters, military voters and people in rural areas who cannot reliably hand-deliver them on Election Day.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion. Her reasoning held that “election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt,” preserving Mississippi’s practice of counting absentee ballots that arrive after polls close so long as they were mailed in time. The decision was a setback for Donald Trump and other opponents of expanded ballot-counting windows who have pushed to tighten election rules in several states.
Mississippi adopted the grace period in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under Mississippi Code § 23-15-637, absentee ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day and received by the registrar no more than five business days later. The Supreme Court’s ruling keeps that structure in place and leaves states with similar deadlines free to continue processing late-arriving ballots without rewriting their systems ahead of the next election cycle.
The challengers included the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and individual voters. They sued Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and county election officials, arguing that federal law barred the state from counting ballots that arrived after Election Day. A lower court agreed with that argument, but the Supreme Court reversed and sent the case back for further proceedings.
The ruling has consequences well beyond Mississippi because SCOTUSblog said the challenge reached similar receipt windows in about 30 states and the District of Columbia, while other reporting put the number at more than a dozen states with comparable rules. Alaska backed Mississippi with a brief, reflecting the importance of late-receipt windows in a state where voting is described as almost entirely by mail. For election administrators, the decision avoids immediate disruption and preserves the timelines states use to count ballots that were cast on time but arrive slowly.
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