SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The conservative Supreme Court took sides against the Republican Party in a ruling today. The case was about mail-in voting. The court upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received after Election Day. Here to explain the court's ruling is NPR political correspondent Ashley Lopez. Hey, Ashley.
ASHLEY LOPEZ, BYLINE: Hey there.
DETROW: Tell us more about the case.
LOPEZ: Yeah. So this case was centered on a Mississippi law that allows election administrators to count postmarked ballots that arrive up to five days after Election Day. The Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign filed a challenge to that law before the 2024 election, arguing that these sorts of grace periods for voters amount to an unlawful extension of elections. They argued that Congress sets an election day, and counting votes after that jeopardizes the integrity of American elections.
DETROW: And it seems like the court's majority did not buy that argument.
LOPEZ: They did not. In a 5-4 ruling where two conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts, sided with the liberal wing of the court, they said that Mississippi's law isn't violating federal statute. Justice Barrett authored this opinion. She wrote that states have the right to maintain some latitude in how they run their elections, which includes how they run their mail-in ballot programs. And while this might be out of step with President Trump and some GOP officials, this is actually, historically, a pretty conservative principle. The majority also said in clear language that voting is happening when voters fill out a ballot, not when ballots are making their way through the mail.
DETROW: I mean, the split from the conservatives to the court is pretty interesting, but I'm curious what the reaction has been from conservatives not sitting in the Supreme Court.
LOPEZ: Yeah. Well, I mean, President Trump was obviously upset, right? He renewed his call to severely restrict mail-in ballots nationwide, even though he often votes by mail himself. He also urged Congress to pass an elections overhaul bill that, so far, has gone nowhere in the Senate and notably doesn't include anything about ballot receipt deadlines.
There is Mississippi's Republican governor, too, Tate Reeves. Even though the court upheld his state's own law, he said he disagreed with the ruling and plans to get rid of the state's grace period. He said this is a COVID-era law that doesn't need to stay in place. I think it's worth noting the Republican-led state legislature could have changed the law years ago, but this case was part of a larger GOP effort to undermine access to mail-in voting that just didn't pan out in this case.
DETROW: Because of the way that President Trump attacks this, this gets a lot of attention, but how many voters are we really talking about - big picture - who have their mail ballots arrive after Election Day?
LOPEZ: You know, so right now, 18 states and territories have a grace period for most voters casting ballots by mail. And it's even more voters when you factor in people overseas, including members of the military. A good example of this is Washington state. In 2024, a quarter million mail-in ballots were counted that were received after Election Day. So I mean, it's a pretty significant number of people who could have been affected.
DETROW: Interesting. Tell me more about how this would affect people beyond voters - right? - like election officials.
LOPEZ: Yeah. I mean, this would have been a big change for them. This could have been a lot of chaos - right? - especially in states that have universal mail-in ballot programs. I've seen statements from various secretaries of state that say that educating voters about changes to deadlines would have been, like, this huge undertaking ahead of the midterms. And look, there's data that suggests that voters, in general, adapt to tighter deadlines over time, but changing the rules so close to an election could create a lot of upheaval in some states. So voting rights advocates say they're relieved the court did not side with Republicans on this.
DETROW: NPR's Ashley Lopez, thank you so much.
LOPEZ: Yeah. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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