AP: SCOTUS ‘Seems Skeptical’ of Laws Counting Mail-In Ballots That Arrive After Election Day

Things aren't looking good for a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they're postmarked by Election Day and received within five days. If you can't get it together to mail your ballot before Election Day, maybe you should head to a polling place and vote in person. The Associated Press reports that the Supreme Court "seems skeptical" about the law.

BREAKING: The Supreme Court seems skeptical of laws in 14 states that allow counting of mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. https://t.co/QM4ystUp9Z
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 23, 2026

We would have written a post on Vox's take on the "frivolous lawsuit attacking vote by mail," but Vox gets virtually no engagement on its posts. Eighteen retweets in two hours.

At least four justices appear to be on board with a frivolous lawsuit attacking voting by mail. https://t.co/MhAhNUIU7O
— Vox (@voxdotcom) March 23, 2026

The Associated Press reports:

The Supreme Court‘s conservative majority on Monday sounded skeptical of state laws that allow the counting of late-arriving mail ballots, a persistent target of President Donald Trump.
A ruling, likely to come by late June, that bars counting ballots arriving after Election Day would send officials scrambling in 14 states and the District of Columbia, just a few months before the 2026 midterm congressional elections to change their ballot rules.
An additional 15 states that have more forgiving deadlines for ballots from military and overseas voters also could be affected.
The legal challenge is part of Trump’s broader attack on most mail balloting, which he has said breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and years of experience in numerous states. Trump has repeatedly claimed that his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 resulted from fraud even though more than 60 court decisions and his own attorney general said that argument had no merit.

The GOP’s primary argument is that the word “election,” when used in this context, refers to an event where all ballots are cast by voters and collected by election officials. So if Congress sets a “day for the election” both the casting and the collection must happen on that day.
Some of the Republican justices appeared to simply assume that the GOP’s definition of an “election” was correct, and pressed Mississippi on why its law does not require a state official to collect the ballot by Election Day. Justice Samuel Alito, for example, complained that the US postal service is not part of a state, and therefore Mississippi’s law allows ballots to be cast by voters without delivering them to a state official. Justice Neil Gorsuch also seemed bothered by a hypothetical law that would allow voters to cast their ballot by certifying them with a notary public (someone else who is not a state official).
Of course, as Sotomayor pointed out, Alito and Gorsuch’s objections are out of step with longstanding historical practice — in the Civil War, it was common for individual soldiers to deliver their ballot to a military officer, for example, not a state election official.

Ah, wise Latina Sonia Sotomayor. OK, let's make an exception for Civil War soldiers.

The solution is simple. Ballots must be received by the closing of polls to be counted. No exceptions, not even for the military.
— Jon_in_Florida (@Jon_in_Florida) March 23, 2026

This editor still remembers Jamie Lee Curtis swearing that, in broad daylight in 2020, she saw the driver of a mail truck wearing a red cap with white letters, which she surmised was evidence of an "outright attempt at stealing the election."

Let's make Election Day great again! Don't let Trump steal the election by stealing mail trucks full of Democratic ballots.

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