Posted on 06/29/2026 7:26:59 AM PDT by DFG
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that federal law allows states to count non-military mail-in ballots received after Election Day.
In a 5-4 ruling written by Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court held that “federal election-day statutes” do not “preempt” Mississippi’s law allowing mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to count if received up to five days later. Barrett was joined by the Court’s three liberals as well as Chief Justice John Roberts.
“As we have said before, the federal election-day statutes ‘simply regulate the time of the election,'” Barrett wrote in the Court’s opinion. “By setting the day for the ‘election,’ these statutes set the day when the electorate must make its choice. It is a ‘fundamental canon of statutory construction that words generally should be interpreted as taking their ordinary meaning at the time Congress enacted the statute.'”
“The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose,” Barrett’s opinion concluded.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court’s decision “is inconsistent with the terms of the election-day statutes, contemporary election-law principles, two centuries of historical practice, and the case law on the question presented.”
“It opens up and fails to resolve a host of questions for state election officials and courts,” he added. “And it creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”
Mississippi and 13 other states currently allow non-military mail-in ballots received after polls close to be tabulated as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. These states have ballot receipt deadlines ranging from the day after Election Day in Texas to three weeks after Election Day in Washington state.
Election Day has been recognized across the United States as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November since Congress passed a law establishing that date in 1845.
A March poll conducted by CRC Research for the Honest Elections Project (HEP) found that 83% of U.S. likely voters agree that mail-in ballots should not be received after Election Day. Moreover, 78% of all voters including 68% of Democrats polled indicated that setting Election Day as the deadline for mail-in ballots “makes elections more secure.”
During March oral arguments, some justices voiced skepticism about states allowing mail-in ballots to be accepted days or weeks after polls close.
“If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.
“If I have nothing more to look at than the phrase ‘Election Day,’ I think, this is the day in which everything is going to take place,” Justice Samuel Alito said during oral arguments, noting that Election Day, Labor Day and Memorial Day are “all particular days.”
Kavanaugh joined Alito’s dissent in part.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Horrible.
And there goes the Republic. Had a good run for 250 years.
“postmarked by Election Day”
Pretty easy to add a postmark. Even badly faked ones will be accepted in the marxist run cities.
Brain dead. . . . SCOTUS making it easier for scumbags to cheat in elections
Pass the Save Act!
Is this something the state can fix?
Just criminal. We desperately need the SAVE Act.
Why is day 5 the cut off point?
Most women are either very weak wastes of black robes, like Barrett, or Communists, like the Lenin sisters.
Election integrity just went down the toilet.
This ruling jeopardizes our constitutional democracy, and I suspect that the justices who voted in favor of this ruling understand and support that.
So, Barrett and Roberts were joined by all of the OTHER liberals.
Amy was a waste of a pick, a traitor to America.
We’re TOAST!!!!
Barret and Roberts, TWO HORRIBLE PICKS!!!!!!!!!!
Common sense dictates Election DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It looks like the rules of the game are the best cheater wins.
Amy Conehead strikes again. She’s always been a goodie-two-shoes girl who completely missed the fraud problem that results from the failure to define the limit of the “universe” of ballots cast before starting to count those ballots. The cheaters can now continue to “find” more ballots after election day. It’s a farce.
Do you think California, New York and the Northeast are going to fix this.
Pathetic. But in the case of Amy Coney Barrett…typical. Female Supreme Court justices are six-for-six in utter failure rate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.