The Supreme Court Is About To Decide The Fate Of Millions Of Votes

If Mississippi loses this fight at the Supreme Court, it could mean major changes to how mail-in ballots are counted everywhere.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could have a major impact for the votes of millions of Americans — at least, assuming their votes are allowed to be counted.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, challenges whether state officials can count electoral ballots postmarked by Election Day and received less than a week after an election is held.

The case seeks to overturn a 2020 Mississippi state law that allowed absentee voters to mail in their ballots with a postmark as late as Election Day and allowed them to be counted if they were received within five days after Election Day. Notably, the state law was passed with bipartisan support and was signed into law by Mississippi’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

But the Mississippi Republican and Libertarian Parties sued, claiming that counting votes that arrive after Election Day violates federal law. Congress, they contend, designated only a “singular day” for elections and the time allocated for counting, they say, is included in that day. In the petition to the Supreme Court, RNC political director James Blair further claims the extra time allotted to count ballots harms them by draining the RNC’s coffers if they are possibly forced to “spend more money on ballot-chase programs and poll-watching activities” instead of “traditional get-out-the-vote operations.”

Mississippi in turn, counters it has the constitutional right to govern its own elections and that “nothing in history shows that the federal election-day statutes block States from allowing post-election-day ballot receipt.”