The Supreme Court on Monday upheld state laws that allow for counting mail ballots that are postmarked by election day but arrive later.<\/p>\n
The 5-4 decision<\/a> rejects a Republican challenge to laws in California and 13 other mostly Democratic states which permit the counting of these late-arriving ballots.<\/p>\n Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined with the three liberals to form the majority.<\/p>\n The decision is a mild surprise and should bolster Democrats in the fall election.<\/p>\n Read more: Californians may need to mail ballots early as Supreme Court signals support for new election day deadline<\/a><\/p>\n While California\u2019s seven-day grace period for mail ballots has contributed to slow tabulations<\/a>, it has not been shown to trigger fraud or unreliable vote counts.<\/p>\n Election law experts blame slow tallies on the surge in voting by mail combined with the need to carefully match signatures on these ballots.<\/p>\n The court said federal law since 1845 has set election day nationwide as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November and voters were required to cast their ballots that day.<\/p>\n Citing that fact, the Republican National Committee and the Trump administration joined a challenge to a Mississippi law<\/a> adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic that allowed counting ballots that were up to five days late.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s lawyers said federal law preempted or overrode the state law.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the dawn of America, election day has meant the day the ballot box closes \u2014 and when election officials must be in receipt of all ballots,\u201d wrote Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer.<\/a><\/p>\n Democrats said the Constitution says the \u201ctime, place and manner of holding elections\u201d for Congress \u201cshall be prescribed in each state\u201d by its legislature. However, Congress was given the power to override those state rules and set its own regulations for federal elections.<\/p>\n Barrett said the federal election day requires only that the voter must decide by then.<\/p>\n \u201cThe election-day statutes require the electorate\u2019s choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote \u2014 as it is in Mississippi,\u201d she wrote. \u201cBut the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.\u201d<\/p>\n While Congress could have prohibited the counting of late-arriving ballots, it had not done so. That may be because states wanted to count ballots from members of the military stationed overseas even if they arrived late.<\/p>\n Read more: California’s slow vote count faces changes as Supreme Court decision on late ballots looms<\/a><\/p>\n Last year, however, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down Mississippi\u2019s law that allowed for counting ballots that were cast by election day but arrived up to five days later.<\/p>\n The opinion by three judges, all Trump appointees, concluded that the election day set by Congress \u201cis the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.\u201d<\/p>\n In its appeal, Mississippi stuck with a states\u2019 rights view and argued that the federal election-day statutes mean that ballots must be cast \u2014 not received \u2014 by election day.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a victory for voters and for an election system that meets the needs of the people it serves,\u201d said Common Cause President Virginia Kase Solom\u00f3n. \u201cEligible Americans shouldn\u2019t lose their voice because of mail delays outside their control.\u201d<\/p>\n