The conservative Supreme Court Monday agreed to to hear a case challenging many mail-in ballots as President Trump pushes his crusade to promote in-person voting.
The justices agreed to consider conservative appeals court ruling that states may not count mail-in ballots that arrive after election day, no matter when they are cast and mailed by voters.
If the top court upholds the ruling, at least 18 states and Washington D.C. would have to change laws that permit ballots to be counted if they arrive in the days after the in-person election day, as long as they are postmarked by election day.
Even some Republicans defend that practice as legal and fair, like the law enacted by the Mississippi GOP that was successfully challenged in the appeals court.
“The stakes are high: ballots cast by — but received after — election day can swing close races and change the course of the country,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, said in a court filing.
Fitch predicted the appellate ruling “will have destabilizing nationwide ramifications” if left in place.
AP
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch. (AP)
The list of states that count late-arriving ballots includes swing states such as Nevada, GOP strongholds like Utah and blue states like Colorado and Oregon that rely heavily on mail voting.
Another 14 states allow the counting of late-arriving ballots from some eligible voters, including U.S. service members stationed overseas and their families, according to a filing from Democratic-led states that urged the justices to reverse the appellate ruling.
The case will be argued in the late winter or early spring. A final ruling will likely come by late June, early enough to govern the counting of ballots in the crucial 2026 midterm congressional elections, when Democrats hope to retake the House from Trump’s Republicans.
Trump has long claimed without evidence that late-arriving mail-in ballots are a Democratic plot to steal elections. In March, Trump signed an executive order on elections that aims to require votes to be “cast and received” by Election Day. The order has been challenged in court.
He has also called for the abolition of electronic voting and a return to voting only by paper ballots and counting by hand.
The appeals court decision is unusual because the constitution generally grants states, not the federal government, the power to regulate elections.
In the Mississippi case, the panel of the arch-conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Congress established a “singular” election day for members of Congress and presidential electors that amounts to a deadline “by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.”
The ruling reversed a decision by federal District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had held that there was no conflict between the state and federal laws.
He said voters who cast mail-in ballots actually vote on or before election day. The ballots are simply counted afterwards.
“All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day,” wrote Guirola.
