Republican National Committee<\/a>\u00a0and several local parties\u00a0against the Magnolia State over its five-day grace period.<\/p>\nAt least 13 other states have similar\u00a0post-Election Day counting laws\u00a0on their books, while nearly 30 states give certain types of mail-in voters some extra time to turn in their ballots. California is perhaps the most infamous of those\u00a0states, with\u00a0many key elections often\u00a0left\u00a0uncalled by outlets for more than a week after polls close.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe electorate\u2019s choice is made when voting is complete,\u00a0not when ballots are received,\u201d Barrett wrote. \u201cThe most recent amendment\u00a0to the Presidential election-day statute bears this out. In\u00a02022, Congress inserted the phrase \u2018election day\u2019 into that\u00a0statute and marked\u00a0that day as a specific Tuesday.\u00a0It then created an exception: When States \u2018modif[y] the period of voting.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u00a0Congress defined \u2018election day\u2019 with reference to \u2018voting\u2019\u00a0indicates that \u2018voting\u2019 is the act governed by the statute.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republicans argued that Mississippi\u2019s law violated federal law establishing a national Election Day. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
President Trump has long been a fierce critic of states that allow the late counting of ballots\u00a0and the Justice Department backed the RNC suit.<\/p>\n
During oral arguments in March, the justices\u00a0appeared deeply divided and grappled with concerns about whether nixing Mississippi\u2019s policy could threaten the practice of early voting all together.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems inconceivable that on the basis of this kind of evidence, we would reject these practices that are so entrenched in 30 states,\u201d liberal Justice Elena Kagan said at one point.<\/p>\n
Kagan\u2019s fellow liberal, Ketanji Brown Jackson,\u00a0had\u00a0attempted to nudge her colleagues away from siding against Mississippi, telling attorneys for the RNC:\u00a0\u201cThe worry is that you want this court to decide the case rather than have Congress do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
California is notorious for being very late with its election results due to its lax policies. Weston Hancock\/SOPA Images\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Four conservative justices \u2014 Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh dissented, with Alito underscoring in his written opinion that\u00a0federal law sets Election Day as \u201cthe Tuesday next after the first\u00a0Monday in November.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf ballots received after\u00a0election day are added to the set of ballots that dictate the\u00a0election\u2019s outcome, the electorate\u2019s choice does not occur on\u00a0election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alito also criticized the majority opinion for concluding that federal law merely requires an \u201cindividual\u00a0cast a vote on or before\u00a0election day.\u201d<\/p>\n
US Supreme Court issued a number of opinions on Monday, June 29, 2026. REUTERS<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if that is all that the election-day statutes require, there is no sense in which the electorate as a whole can be seen as making its choice on election day,\u201d he contended.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s decision comes as\u00a0Trump has pressed Congress to tighten restrictions on mail-in ballots and enact a proof of citizenship requirement to vote in federal elections.<\/p>\n
Trump has specifically called for the passage of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which has been stuck in the Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 The Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in\u00a0ballots postmarked by Election Day\u00a0to be counted up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[416,46937,16880,9,11,10,87,24614,2973,58],"class_list":["post-281228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-elections","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-mississippi","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-republican-national-committee","tag-supreme-court","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}