In defeat for Trump, US Supreme Court gives states flexibility to count mail-in votes in midterms

A person places a letter in a US Postal Service box in Philadelphia.
Rachel Wisniewski/Reuters
The United States Supreme Court ruled on Monday (29) to support state laws that allow ballots sent by mail and received after Election Day to be counted in the midterms, scheduled for November.
The decision represents a defeat for US President Donald Trump, who aimed to block the counting of mail votes after Election Day. reject a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi.
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The justices, in a 5-4 decision, overturned a lower court's ruling that had found the Mississippi law incompatible with US rules that define the timing of federal elections - for the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Trump had promised last year to end the use of absentee ballots by mail across the country ahead of the legislative elections, scheduled for November 3, in which their Republican colleagues seek to maintain control of Congress.
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The court has a conservative majority of 6 to 3. The president of the court, the conservative John Roberts, and the also conservative Amy Coney Barrett joined the three liberal justices to form the majority. Barrett wrote the ruling.
Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision.
Mississippi law allows mail-in votes to be counted if they were postmarked by Election Day but received within five business days after a federal election. Voting by mail in Mississippi is limited to certain categories of voters, including people 65 and older, people with disabilities and those who live away from home.
About 30 states and the District of Columbia accept at least some ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received later.
The Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party and other plaintiffs filed suit in 2024 seeking to invalidate the Mississippi law.
The Trump administration supported the challenge. Restricting voting by mail would tend to disproportionately benefit Republicans, given that Democratic voters traditionally use this type of vote more than Republican voters.
Republicans against voting by mail
Donald Trump, President of the United States
Reuters/Evan Vucci
Republicans have adopted a skeptical stance towards voting by mail. Trump has sought to raise doubts about the security of these ballots, although evidence of voter fraud is rare. Trump issued an executive order in March to restrict voting by mail nationwide, but a federal judge in Boston blocked its implementation on June 25.
Trump continues to make false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
During the first year of the COVID pandemic, the Republican-controlled Mississippi Legislature passed the 2020 mail-in voting law with bipartisan support. Appeals from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit ruled in 2024 in favor of Republicans challenging the law. It held that the measure was preempted by federal laws that establish Election Day for federal elections as the "day by which ballots must both be cast by voters and received by state authorities."
Federal law "does not permit the state of Mississippi to extend the voting period by one day, five days, or 100 days," the 5th Circuit held.
The 5th Circuit did not immediately block Mississippi's proceedings but returned the case to a first instance judge for new analysis. The case was put on hold while the Supreme Court considered the case.
During arguments at the Supreme Court in March, some conservative justices expressed concern that more permissive voting-by-mail practices could give rise to the appearance of voter fraud. Some liberal justices said the challengers' arguments would also jeopardize the widespread practice of early voting before Election Day.
Although the 5th Circuit's decision applied only to the three states under its jurisdiction - Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas - it cast doubt on election practices in other states with similar vote-by-mail policies. in person, on Election Day, in their home districts, without the secret ballot system," Mississippi argued in its appeal.
Other election-related rulings
In other election-related cases, the Supreme Court's conservative majority in April gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, blocking an electoral map that had created a second black-majority congressional district in Louisiana.
The ruling makes it harder for minorities to challenge electoral maps as discriminatory under the voting rights law. Civil Rights Act of 1965 and represented a victory for Louisiana Republicans and the Trump administration.
That decision prompted several Republican-led states to seek to redraw electoral maps ahead of the midterm elections in an attempt to put House of Representatives seats considered safe for Democrats at risk.

Source: G1