The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the right of states to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive in the days afterward, ruling 5-4 in Watson v. Republican National Committee and rejecting a GOP-backed effort to require that all ballots be in election officials' hands by Election Day itself. The decision preserves so-called grace-period laws that govern how millions of mail ballots are counted.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court's three liberals — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — an unusual lineup that crossed the Court's usual ideological divide. 'Election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked by election day yet received afterward,' Barrett wrote.
The case centered on a 2020 Mississippi law that allows mail ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and received within five days. The Republican National Committee argued that federal statutes establishing a single national Election Day preempt such laws, contending that a ballot must be received, not merely mailed, by that date to be valid.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented, writing that counting ballots received after Election Day 'creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections.' He argued that if ballots arriving afterward are added to the pool that determines an outcome, 'the electorate's choice does not occur on election day.'
The ruling has immediate, practical stakes. Grace-period laws are on the books in 14 states and the District of Columbia, and an additional 17 states allow late-arriving ballots specifically from military members and citizens overseas. A decision the other way would have forced many of those jurisdictions to discard ballots that are currently valid, with the heaviest effect on absentee and overseas voters whose mail can take days to arrive.
Coming months before the 2026 midterm elections, the outcome removes a significant source of uncertainty for election administrators who had been bracing for a wave of post-election challenges over late-arriving mail. Voting-rights groups hailed the decision as a defeat for an effort they characterized as an attempt to disenfranchise voters who follow the rules but rely on the postal service.
The case is one of several this term in which the Court has weighed the balance between federal election rules and state administration. While Monday's decision settles the specific question of receipt deadlines, the closeness of the vote and Alito's dissent underscored that the justices remain divided over how much latitude states retain to set their own voting procedures — a tension likely to resurface in future election cycles.