Supreme Court to decide whether mail ballots must arrive by Election Day

Watson v. Republican National Committee asks the Supreme Court to decide whether federal law requires all mail ballots to be received by election officials by Election Day, or whether states can count ballots postmarked by Election Day but received a few days later. 🎸Mississippi passed a law in 2020 allowing absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received within five business days. The RNC and the Mississippi Republican Party sued in January 2024 to overturn that law.

A federal appeals court struck down 🎸Mississippi's law in October 2024, ruling that two federal statutes requiring elections to be held on a single uniform day mean all ballots must also be received that same day. Mississippi and the challengers to the appeals court ruling asked the Supreme Court to take the case. The court agreed, and oral arguments are scheduled for March 23, 2026.

The federal statutes at the center of the dispute were enacted in the 1870s and 1840s and require that presidential electors and members of Congress be chosen on a single uniform Election Day. The statutes say nothing explicitly about ballot receipt deadlines. The legal question is whether these statutes, which were written before mail voting existed as a widespread practice, implicitly require same-day receipt of all ballots.

If the Supreme Court rules that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day, states with postmark-based receipt deadlines would need to change their laws before the 2026 midterms. Fourteen states currently allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive and be counted after that date, including 🌴California, 🗽New York, 🌽Illinois, and 🌲North Carolina.

Military and overseas voters rely heavily on postmark-based deadlines. U.S. service members stationed abroad often cannot get a ballot, complete it, and mail it back before Election Day, especially in remote locations. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, known as UOCAVA, already gives military and overseas voters special accommodations, but a ruling requiring Election Day receipt could still complicate voting for active-duty personnel.

The Voting Rights Lab, which tracks voting laws, has noted that postmark-based deadlines are used disproportionately by elderly voters, voters in rural areas with slower postal service, and voters who receive ballots late due to administrative delays. A ruling eliminating postmark-based deadlines would effectively shorten the effective voting window for those populations.

The Republican National Committee and 🎸Mississippi Republican Party filed this lawsuit on January 26, 2024, before the 2024 election. Individual voters Matthew Lamb and James Perry joined as plaintiffs. A companion suit from the Libertarian Party of Mississippi followed in February 2024. The district court upheld Mississippi's law in July 2024. The Fifth Circuit reversed in October 2024, ruling that Mississippi's postmark-based deadline conflicts with federal law. ()

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case on November 10, 2025, and scheduled oral arguments for March 23, 2026. The case is one of the most consequential election law disputes the court has taken up since Bush v. Gore in 2000. A ruling is expected by June 2026, giving states four to five months to change laws before the November 2026 midterms. ()

The RNC argues that two 19th-century federal statutes lock in Election Day as a hard deadline for everything, including mail ballot receipt. The RNC cites 2 U.S.C. Section 1 and 3 U.S.C. Section 1, enacted in the 1840s and 1870s, which set a uniform Election Day for choosing members of Congress and presidential electors. The Fifth Circuit majority agreed, reasoning that if the election happens on one day, all votes must be in by that day. ()

🎸Mississippi and voting rights groups counter that those statutes regulate when an election is held, not when the postal service delivers completed ballots. The statutes were written before mass mail voting existed, and Congress has never amended them to address mail ballot receipt. MEMarc Elias, whose Elias Law Group filed a brief defending mail ballot protections, argues that Congress chose not to preempt state receipt deadlines when it had the chance to do so. ()

Beyond 🎸Mississippi, the ruling would directly affect 14 states and 🏛️Washington, D.C., that allow postmark-based ballot receipt after Election Day. 🌴California allows ballots received up to seven days after Election Day; 🌽Illinois allows up to two weeks; 🐻Alaska allows 10 days. () Together, these states include tens of millions of registered voters. California alone counted hundreds of thousands of late-arriving mail ballots in the 2022 midterms, some of which affected close House races.

The reach extends further: 29 states accept some ballots after Election Day, including from military and overseas voters under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA). A ruling requiring Election Day receipt could create a two-tier system where military voters get an exception but domestic rural voters do not. Native American voters on remote reservations, where postal service can lag several days, face similar barriers. The Native American Rights Fund filed an amicus brief warning that a ruling against 🎸Mississippi would disproportionately harm tribal communities. ()

The nine Supreme Court justices who will decide this case include six appointed by Republican presidents and three by Democrats. Chief Justice JRJohn Roberts, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett form the conservative bloc. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson are the three Democratic appointees. All nine will vote, and a majority of five controls the outcome. ()

Samuel Alito authored the 2021 Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee opinion that narrowed the Voting Rights Act's protections against voting rules that disparately affect minority voters. Roberts joined Alito's majority in that case. Kavanaugh wrote separately in an earlier mail ballot case to flag the Election Day receipt question as unresolved. Voting rights advocates say those records suggest a majority may be willing to side with the RNC, which would make Watson v. RNC one of the most consequential voting rights rulings in a generation. ()