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Posted on 06/29/2026 8:38:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
WASHINGTON — Rejecting a Republican National Committee challenge, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that elections officials may count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day if they were postmarked beforehand.
The court, divided 5-4, held that the Mississippi law challenged by the RNC does not unlawfully conflict with the federal law that sets Election Day in early November.
The ruling, authored by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is a setback for President Donald Trump, who has frequently criticized mail-in voting, claiming without offering evidence that it is rife with fraud. Two of the court’s conservatives were joined by the three liberals in the majority.
The decision avoids an election-year upheaval of state election laws. The Mississippi law and similar measures in 13 other states will remain in effect ahead of November’s midterm elections, when voters will decide which party controls the House and the Senate.
The laws in question allow late-arriving ballots to be counted as long as they were mailed by the Election Day deadline. California, New York and Texas are among the other states with such laws.
NBC News recently reported that hundreds of thousands of people voted via such late-arriving ballots in the 2024 elections, a small but notable proportion of the total vote count.
A win for the RNC would have raised questions about laws affecting voters who live overseas, including members of the military. In total, 29 states allow extended deadlines for such voters, according to a brief filed by former national security officials.
The Mississippi law allows mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day as long as they were sent beforehand.
The RNC, the state’s Republican Party and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi all challenged the measure. The state’s Republican attorney general, Lynn Fitch, defended the law in court.
Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court after the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2024 that under federal law, ballots must not just be cast but also received by state officials by Election Day.
Federal law dictates that Election Day is on “the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November,” but each state administers its own elections.
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The real solution here is for the Republicans to beat the Democrats at their own games.
It isn’t an issue in any swing state that decides elections.
Assuming the Postal Service is squeaky clean. Not these days.
There is absolutely no way to make a “phony postmark stamper”. This decision is foolproof…./s
The president can always have the USPS refuse to handle the things.
Let the states deliver their own damn ballots.
Republicans want to take away the right to vote. There is no difference if a person goes to a precinct to vote or cast a ballot my mail on election day.
This change could make it interesting.The Post mark no longer reflects the mailing date.
Under the official USPS rule updates, machine postmarks now reflect the date an item reaches an automated sorting facility rather than the date it was dropped in a mailbox. Because processing can take one to three days, standard mailed items may miss time-sensitive deadlines for tax returns, ballots, and bill payments
“….claiming without offering evidence…..”
I’m so sick of the lapdog media…..can’t hate them enough.
that’s always been the solution- but the GOPe is to stupid and lazy to be bothered...we saw that last week when Scott Pressly, who breaks his ass to register people for the GOP, was thrown out of a convention where thune was speaking...
Don’t like any of this. Chain of custody is suspect regardless of the postmark. Ballots should be treated like evidence and these days, even Certified Mail can’t be relied on for that.
I don’t like the decision, but all this does is highlight even the more, how USPS cannot handle the job of getting mail places in a timely manner.
Amazon agrees.
https://www.amazon.com/postmark-rubber-stamp/s?k=postmark+rubber+stamp
Every business that has a postage meter, especially the manual kind a former employer of mine had, can be set to ANY date, and stamped with that date as the official date.
SC sucks...
The media articles about this decision have stirred a lot of people up into a tizzy, because they're either being sloppy or disingenuous.
The specific challenge before the Court was about Mississippi's law regarding absentee ballots. MS state law allows absentee ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if received no more than 5 business days after the election. Tellingly, the plaintiffs did not challenge the practice of absentee voting in and of itself, nor was Congress's authority over federal elections involved with this decision.
Federal law as it stands is clear on the matter: although election day is determined by the federal government, state law governs the receipt of votes.
This particular piece of the summary, quite honestly, is a rather pithy put-down: "Finally, plaintiffs’ policy arguments about election integrity and voter confidence are properly directed to legislatures, not courts, see, e.g., SAS Institute Inc. v. Iancu, 584 U. S. 357, 368, and regardless, plaintiffs’ definition of “election” would do little to address the concerns they identify. Pp. 9–21."
But instead of amending the state legislature if receiving ballots up to 5 business days later is so onerous, it's a lot more exciting and cathartic to get people whipped up and in a frenzy (at least judging by Twitter).
While their primary duty is to be final arbitrators of laws' legitimacy, intent and meaning as outlined by the Constitution they, as a group, have been avoiding their positions as agents of order. This is evident by their now-constant overlooking how district judges have been exceeding their authority to usurp the powers of the Executive branch.
The old saying 'Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way" applies here.
There went the House
I was a poll watcher in a recent election and I witnessed outright and blatant voter fraud in action. Some of the fraud was perfectly legal under state law but some was not.
Called the Republican vote fraud reporting hot line and the Republican legal team did absolutely nothing about it. In fairness, they had other areas that were encountering much worse fraud problems around the state and were task saturated.
On a positive note, in my discussion with the head of the Republican voting integrity program, in past years he was lucky to have poll watchers and 30% of the precincts but these days it’s more like 98%
Roberts and Barrett show their true colors once again.
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