This wasn’t just about Mississippi.
The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that states may count mail ballots received after Election Day if they’re postmarked by Election Day, rejecting an RNC challenge to Mississippi’s law.
Mississippi allows those ballots to arrive up to five days after Election Day, and the Court said that rule can stand.
The split itself is interesting.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s three liberal justices.
The dissenting justices would have sided with the RNC, which argued that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day, not simply mailed by then.
The practical impact is much bigger than one state’s election law.
Around 14 states have similar rules allowing timely postmarked ballots to arrive after Election Day. In past elections, those rules have affected hundreds of thousands of ballots, so this ruling avoids forcing those states to immediately rewrite how they handle mail voting.
The case also highlights something that often gets overlooked.
The legal fight wasn’t over whether ballots need a deadline.
Everyone agrees they do.
The dispute was whether the deadline is when a voter mails the ballot or when election officials physically receive it.
That’s a very different legal question than many people assume from reading the headlines.
With midterm elections approaching, this decision settles one major dispute over mail voting, but it almost certainly won’t end the broader debate over how states should run their elections.