Supreme Court endorses post-Election Day mail-in ballot counting ahead of midterms

[LetMyPeopleVote]

7. Deadline Legal Blog-Supreme Court sides 5-4 against Republicans to uphold mail-in ballot grace periods

It’s the high court’s latest election-related ruling ahead of the November midterms.

In a win for voting rights, the Supreme Court says mail-in ballots received after election day WILL count.

www.ms.now/deadline-whi...

— MS NOW (@ms.now) 2026-06-29T14:24:19.385Z

https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-mississippi-mail-ballots-watson

The Supreme Court sided against Republicans on Monday in the court’s latest election-related ruling ahead of the November midterm elections, in a decision that will allow late-arriving mail ballots to be counted.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion for a 5-4 court, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democratic appointees, over dissent from Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Rejecting a GOP challenge, Barrett said federal election laws don’t pre-empt Mississippi’s law that has a five-day grace period for counting ballots that are postmarked by Election Day.

According to the Voting Rights Lab, 30 states have mail ballot grace periods for at least some voters: 14 states and Washington, D.C., have them for all mail ballots, while 16 more states have them specifically for military and overseas voters.....

The Trump administration supported the GOP’s challenge, as President Donald Trump has railed against mail ballots while making unproven voter fraud claims. At the March hearing, Mississippi’s lawyer said the federal government has “sounded the anti-fraud theme” but couldn’t show “a single example of fraud from post-Election Day ballot receipt in this century.”