Supreme Court Upholds Mail-In Ballot Grace Periods, Rejecting GOP Challenge
In a major victory for voting rights advocates and a setback for the national Republican party's efforts to restrict mail-in voting, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on June 29, 2026, in Watson v. Republican National Committee, holding that federal law does not prohibit states from counting mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as they are postmarked on time.
The case centered on a Mississippi law allowing absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they arrived up to five business days later. The national and state Republican parties challenged the grace period, arguing that federal law establishing a single "Election Day" requires all ballots to be received by that day.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, rejected the Republican challenge, emphasizing that the act of voting, not the receipt of the ballot, is what defines the election:
"The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received... The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose."
Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor to form the narrow 5-4 majority.
Impact and Political Fallout
The decision preserves grace period laws in 14 states and the District of Columbia, protecting hundreds of thousands of voters—including military personnel, overseas citizens, and rural voters—from being disenfranchised due to postal delays. A Votebeat analysis indicated that over 745,000 ballots arrived after Election Day in the 2024 elections across 11 jurisdictions with grace periods.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito warned that the ruling could damage public trust in election outcomes:
The ruling "creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government."
President Trump strongly criticized the ruling on social media, calling it a "tremendous loss" and using it to demand that Congress pass his stalled election overhaul, the SAVE America Act. Meanwhile, Mississippi's Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch urged the state legislature to bypass the court's ruling by proactively amending state law to eliminate the grace period entirely:
"I am hopeful that the Mississippi Legislature will take this opportunity to amend the law and require absentee ballots be received on the same day ballots are cast at the polling place."