Supreme Court rules against Trump admin in mail-in ballot case
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a challenge by the Republican National Committee, ruling that election officials can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day if they were postmarked beforehand.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the Mississippi law at issue in the RNC case doesn’t violate the federal mandate establishing Election Day in early November. Nearly 20 states, including Mississippi, have laws with similar ballot grace periods, according to NPR.
The ruling is a setback for the Trump administration, which has claimed without evidence that the use of mail-in ballots can lead to widespread voter fraud. NBC News reported that hundreds of thousands of voters had used late-arriving mail-in ballots in the 2024 election. They described the number as “a small but notable proportion of the total vote count.”
How the case made it to the Supreme Court
Republicans have fought mail-in ballot grace periods since before the 2024 presidential election. Back then, the RNC and the Trump campaign filed legal challenges claiming these grace periods were unconstitutional. They said it was Congress, not the states, that set when an election ends.
In October 2024, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the RNC, holding that Mississippi’s law was unconstitutional. The court sent the issue back to a lower court for further consideration, and the case later reached the Supreme Court.
Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring all votes be received by Election Day in federal elections. Federal courts later blocked that order.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
