The Supreme Court on Monday let states keep counting mailed ballots that arrive after Election Day, preserving rules in nearly 30 states and settling a fight that had threatened to upend how those ballots are handled before the 2026 midterm congressional elections. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the 5-4 majority opinion, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices joining her.
The decision matters now because election officials were facing the prospect of rewriting ballot-counting procedures just months before voters go to the polls. In states covered by the ruling, mailed ballots may arrive and still be counted some number of days after Election Day so long as they were postmarked by then. In just over half of those states, the more forgiving deadlines apply only to military and overseas voters, which means the practical effect will differ from state to state even though the legal rule survives.
The case came from Mississippi, where the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a state law allowing ballots to be counted if they arrived within five business days of the election and were postmarked by Election Day. Mississippi defended the rule against a challenge brought by Trump’s Republican administration and the Republican and Libertarian parties. In March, the Supreme Court heard arguments and then rejected that attack, keeping in place the laws in more than half the states and in the District of Columbia.
That outcome cuts against the argument that federal law requires ballots to be both cast and received by Election Day. The challenge was part of Donald Trump’s broader assault on mail balloting, after he repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 came from fraud. More than 60 court decisions and Trump’s own attorney general had already said that claim had no merit, but the dispute still reached the Supreme Court with a real chance of forcing states to tighten their deadlines.
Instead, Barrett’s opinion leaves the existing system intact for nearly 30 states and spares officials the need to scramble over ballot rules before November. The immediate question now is not whether those states can keep counting late-arriving mailed ballots; the court has answered that. It is whether any state will move on its own to narrow the window before the 2026 midterm congressional elections, or whether the ruling settles the matter for another cycle.
