Supreme court upholds counting of late ballots in Mississippi case

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that federal election law did not overrule state laws permitting election authorities to count ballots postmarked by Election Day, but received days later.

"Three federal statutes set the day for the election of Representatives, Senators, and the President. A Mississippi law permits the counting of absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days later," wrote Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. "We must decide whether the federal election-day statutes preempt Mississippi’s law. They do not."

The 5-4 decision saw Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson join with Barrett.

"So even if plaintiffs are right about Mississippi law, they would still lose the challenge they have pressed in this litigation: that post-election-day ballot receipt is itself unlawful," she wrote. "The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose."

The implications of the case are fairly narrow, as the case only determined that federal law did not bar states from tabulating ballots received after election day but postmarked by it. 

Mississippi passed a law in 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic that allows mail-in ballots to be counted so long as they are postmarked by Election Day and received within five days of it. Multiple national and state conservative groups sued, arguing the law clashed with federal law, which establishes Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day in 1845.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with the challengers of the law, and the full court of appeals rejected the state's petition to rehear the case. The state took it to the Supreme Court, which agreed in November to review the lower court's decision, SCOTUS blog reported.