WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has ruled that ballots that have been received after Election Day can be counted.
The decision said, “The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter, nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day.”
The 5-4 decision was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, while the dissent was written by Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Read the decision here or below:
The court heard arguments in March in the Mississippi case, and the challenge to the state’s voting laws by President Donald Trump’s administration, The Associated Press reported.
About 1 in 3 voters cast their ballots by mail nationwide in 2024, The Washington Post reported.
The question was whether federal law set a single Election Day, requiring ballots to be both cast by voters and received by state officials by that day, the AP explained.
The federal appeals court had struck down a Mississippi law allowing ballots to be counted up to five business days after the election as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. The Supreme Court reversed that decision in Monday’s decision.
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