US Supreme Court Upholds Counting of Mail Ballots Arriving After Election Day in Blow to Trump

The US Supreme Court ruled that laws in some states allowing mail ballots to be counted after Election Day are legal. The decision could affect the November midterm elections, as President Donald Trump has long challenged the practice.

In a lawsuit filed in 2024 by the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party over Mississippi’s mail voting law, five of the court’s nine justices ruled on June 29 that the system does not violate federal law, rejecting the plaintiffs’ claims.

Under Mississippi law, mail ballots postmarked by Election Day are counted if they arrive within five business days after the election.

Mississippi is one of 14 states, along with Washington, DC, that allow a grace period for ballots postmarked by Election Day. More than 10 other states allow it on a limited basis for military and overseas voters.

The plaintiffs argued that the system conflicts with federal law, which sets federal Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The Supreme Court rejected that argument.

CNN and The New York Times said the ruling was a political setback for Trump and further clouded the Republican Party’s midterm election prospects.

Trump has argued that mail voting is vulnerable to fraud and has urged Congress to pass stricter voter-identification legislation, which he says would curb the practice. He also cited delays in counting votes in the Los Angeles mayoral primary as officials waited for mail ballots to be tabulated.

The ruling also drew notice because Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, both considered conservatives, sided against Trump. Their votes are likely to intensify scrutiny of the court’s decisions in other major cases, including one involving birthright citizenship.

Some US media outlets had predicted the plaintiffs would prevail given the court’s conservative majority, but the decision upended those expectations.

The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 750,000 mail ballots in the 2024 general election were postmarked before Election Day and arrived during the post-election grace period.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that there had been “a tremendous loss today at the United States Supreme Court” on voter rights and argued that the ruling made passage of the voter ID measure he backs, known as the SAVE Act, even more important.

He added: “Every voter should have to show photo identification, every voter should have to show proof of citizenship, and there is no reason for any politician or anyone else to oppose three requirements: no mail voting except in exceptional cases.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said on June 28 that he would convene the House this week and push to move the SAVE Act through the budget reconciliation process so it could pass the Senate by a simple majority.

Republicans hold 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats. With no clear way to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster, the party plans to classify the SAVE Act as a budget reconciliation measure so it can pass with a simple majority.

Ko Jeong-sam, Hankyung.com reporter jsk@hankyung.com