Supreme Court Conservatives Signal They'll Eliminate Mail-In Ballot Grace Periods Before November Midterms

The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled Monday that it is prepared to strip 14 states and the District of Columbia of their ability to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, a ruling that legal experts warned could disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters and inject deep uncertainty into the administration of November's midterm elections if issued close to the campaign's final weeks.

Oral arguments in Watson v. Republican National Committee centered on whether Mississippi's five-day grace period for mail ballots — allowing postmark-by-Election-Day envelopes to arrive up to five business days later — violates federal statutes that fix Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party filed suit in 2024, arguing that receiving ballots after that date amounts to counting votes past the legally established federal deadline. The Trump administration's solicitor general appeared alongside the RNC at argument, backing the challengers and calling extended deadlines a threat to voter confidence.

Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to favor the most sweeping reading of the federal Election Day statute, questioning whether states can really extend the effective voting deadline merely by accepting ballots postmarked before Election Day. 'If Election Day is the voting and the taking, then it has to be that day,' Roberts said. Justice Samuel Alito drew comparisons to fixed federal holidays, noting that Labor Day names a particular date rather than a rolling window of days. Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised concerns about delayed ballot counts enabling post-election accusations of manipulation — echoing arguments long advanced by President Trump, who has spent years attacking mail voting as a vehicle for fraud despite extensive evidence to the contrary.

The court's three liberal justices pushed back forcefully. Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the question of post-election-day deadlines belongs to Congress and the states rather than the judiciary. Justice Elena Kagan pressed challengers on whether their reading of federal law would bar even ballots delayed by a single day of slow mail transit — a hypothetical that highlighted the potential absurdity of requiring all physical ballots to physically arrive on a single day. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed to the millions of elderly, disabled, and military voters who rely on mail balloting as a practical accommodation, warning that sudden deadline changes could disenfranchise voters who followed instructions they were given weeks earlier.

The case carries implications far beyond Mississippi. The 14 states plus D.C. that currently maintain grace periods include some of the nation's most competitive electoral battlegrounds. If the court rules for the RNC, election officials in those states would face a compressed timeline — potentially just weeks or months — to revise their procedures, notify voters of changed deadlines, and retrain poll workers before November. A ruling is expected by late June, early enough to govern the counting of ballots in what is expected to be a fiercely contested congressional midterm. Democrats and civil rights organizations have warned that the ruling could effectively eliminate a route to the ballot box for voters who mail their ballots days before Election Day in full belief that postmark, not receipt, determines validity.