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Updated on: June 29, 2026 / 10:13 AM EDT
/ CBS News
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Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can count mail ballots that are cast by Election Day but arrive later, rejecting a GOP challenge to Mississippi law's for late-arriving ballots.In the closely watched election dispute known as Watson v. Republican National Committee, the high court split 5 to 4 in finding that Mississippi's measure does not conflict with federal statutes that set Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November in certain years.Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices to uphold Mississippi's law. "The Framers recognized the difficulty of crafting election laws 'applicable to every probable change in the situation of the country.' So instead of constitutionalizing election law, they decided that 'a discretionary power over elections' needed to be lodged 'somewhere,'" Barrett wrote. "Suffice it to say, that power was not lodged in this Court. The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose." With the November midterm elections just months away, the case threatened to upend similar laws in more than a dozen states that allow ballots that arrive after the day of the election to be tallied. Barrett wrote for the majority that federal election laws require voters to make their choice on Election Day, which happens as long as Election Day is the deadline for voting, like it is in Mississippi."But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward," she said.
