Supreme Court Upholds Mississippi Law Allowing Ballots Counted Up to Five Days After Election

Why it matters locally: The ruling directly upholds Mississippi's 2020 election law, allowing the state to continue counting mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day if postmarked by Election Day. The decision resolves a legal challenge that could have forced Mississippi to change its voting procedures ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law Monday that permits election officials to count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day, provided they carry an Election Day postmark. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the five-justice majority in *Watson v. Republican National Committee*, concluding that federal election-day statutes do not establish a deadline for when ballots must arrive at election offices, only when voters must cast them. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her opinion. Barrett stated that "the election-day statutes require the electorate's choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt." The Republican National Committee, Mississippi Republican Party, a state voter, and a county election official challenged the law in federal court in Gulfport. The Libertarian Party of Mississippi filed a related lawsuit weeks later, and the cases were combined. The challengers argued the Mississippi rule conflicted with an 1845 federal law designating the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day. A federal district judge upheld the law, finding that Congress established a national Election Day to prevent voters from casting ballots in different states on different days and to ensure earlier election results did not influence later ones. The judge concluded neither concern applied to a five-day window for ballots postmarked by Election Day. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that decision, holding that federal law required all ballots to arrive by Election Day. Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case in November. Barrett rejected the argument that 19th-century election-day laws necessarily reflected 19th-century voting practices. She noted the theory would threaten early voting itself, since polls historically opened only on Election Day. "Historical practice, detached from statutory text, is not controlling," she wrote. Barrett also pointed to a federal law requiring states to allow military and overseas voters to cast absentee ballots. That statute "presupposes that the deadline for ballot receipt is uniformly a matter of state law," she wrote, and "would make little sense" if ballots had to arrive by Election Day. She dismissed arguments that Election Day receipt requirements protect election integrity as policy matters for legislatures, not courts. "The question today is not whether requiring ballots to be received by election day is a good or bad idea; the question is whether the idea has made its way into the United States Code." Justice Samuel Alito dissented, arguing that historically, completing an election on a particular day meant collecting ballots on that day. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined his opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined most of Alito's dissent. Alito acknowledged that mail voting and early voting are now widespread and lawful. He contended, however, that federal law requires the critical act—collection of all ballots—to occur on Election Day, as it did when voting happened only in person. Mississippi adopted the law in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision comes four months before the 2026 midterm elections.