The decision to side against the president and Republican party is seen as a surprise after other supreme court decisions this term have upended election processes. The court decided earlier this term to allow Louisiana to effectively dismantle the Voting Rights Act, depriving Black voters of their ability to elect members of Congress of their choosing and setting off a frenzy of gerrymandering across the south.

The new decision will maintain state laws that allow ballots postmarked by election day to be counted later, affirming the role of states in setting election laws. Fourteen states, Washington DC and three US territories have similar laws that allow for late-arriving ballots to be counted.

Some states, including Mississippi, changed their laws in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mississippi, a red state, defended its ability to set its own procedures for elections against the challenge from the Republican party, which argued that the grace period after election day violates federal laws that set election day for the first Tuesday of November.

Trump and some Republicans continually cast doubt on mail voting, a process used by millions in both parties in most states to cast ballots more conveniently. There are checks and balances in place to ensure mailed ballots are valid, including signature verification. In March, however, records show Trump voted by mail in the special election for House district 87, which encompasses his Mar-a-Lago golf club, according to the Palm Beach county supervisor of elections website.

Nevertheless, the president has called for an end to mail voting, though he does not have the power to actually end it himself. Election processes in the US are run by local jurisdictions based on local and state laws and policies.

On Monday, voting rights advocates praised the supreme court decision, saying it protected voters from disenfranchisement and prevented chaos by upholding the rights of states.

“A ballot mailed on time is a vote cast on time, and the Court just affirmed what’s been true for over a century,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “These voters did everything right – they followed the rules and got their ballots in the mail. They shouldn’t lose their voice because a postal truck ran late, and now they won’t. This is how it’s supposed to work: states decide how to count their voters’ ballots, and that authority is intact heading into November.”

A ruling against Mississippi and late-arriving ballots could have created confusion for voters and elections officials with midterm primaries and elections underway.

But, voting rights groups warned, the rare victory doesn’t detract from the assault on voting from the Trump administration. Trump has sought to override state and local laws on elections via executive orders, which have largely been blocked by the courts, in a crusade against mail voting by making unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud.

Trump railed against the ruling in a post on Truth Social on Monday, calling it a “tremendous loss”. He used the loss to again call for Congress to pass the Save America Act, which would require proof of citizenship for voters, among a host of changes that will create hurdles for voting access and disenfranchise potentially millions of voters. He has refused to sign other legislation, most recently a bipartisan housing bill, unless Congress moves the Save Act forward.

“There is no excuse for a politician, or otherwise, to be against the above three requirements. There is only one reason to oppose – CHEATING!” he wrote, before calling out specific senate Republicans by name and claiming there was a “communist movement” taking place in the country.

The RNC also called on Congress to pass the Save America Act.

“Democrats are inviting chaos at the ballot box by allowing elections to drag on for days and weeks after voters cast their ballots,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said. “Republicans are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day as Americans want.”

The Republicans bringing the lawsuit had contended that the word “election” in federal statutes should mean both when a ballot is cast and when it is received, therefore making it so all ballots counted needed to be received on election day.

During oral arguments in Watson v Republican National Committee in March, the supreme court’s conservative justices laid out hypothetical situations to probe the limits of counting ballots after election day, and nodded to the potential for election fraud.

Several justices also questioned whether a voter could recall their ballot through the mail and change their vote – a hypothetical practice that Mississippi solicitor general Scott G Stewart said does not happen, claiming “nobody cited a single example in history”.

In the decision Monday, Barrett wrote that “plaintiffs’ policy arguments about election integrity and voter confidence are properly directed to legislatures, not courts … and regardless, plaintiffs’ definition of ‘election’ would do little to address the concerns they identify”.

The plaintiffs had also argued that historical precedent and practice underscored their argument that ballots should be received by election day in order to be counted. But, Barrett wrote, these historical examples did not tie directly into modern statutes.

During the oral arguments, liberal justices pointed to federal laws that allow for grace periods, while noting that a ruling here could also implicate early voting, another common practice.

“You’re basically saying there are two things that have to happen, and they have to happen on election day, and it’s the casting of the vote and the receipt of the vote,” Justice Elena Kagan told Paul D Clement, who is arguing on behalf of the Libertarian party of Mississippi.

In a dissenting opinion, Alito wrote that election day is set for the second Tuesday of November, and all voting must commence by that day. Allowing ballots to arrive after election day violates that, he argued.

“Election day is a specified date, not a span of multiple days,” Alito wrote. “The election-day statutes require that federal elections occur on that date. Under the challenged Mississippi law, however, the collection of ballots continues for five more days, and therefore the ‘election’ is not held until the end of that period.”

>>1521951
Republicunts are pretty far off the deep end.
The only argument that their paid for retards could come up with is basically, 'All counting should end at midnight"

>>1521951
>Republitards are against mail-in ballots
>their Dear Leader voted in a recent mayoral election - won by a Democrat - in the area which includes Mar-a-Lago, via a mail-in ballot
The duality of the hypocrites

>>1521959
>arriving after election day
Are you like an idiot?

>>1521966
>Postmarked before election day
Are you?

>>1521966
nta but we know you are if you fall for that bs

>>1521967
This is the big factor since Republicans have sabotaged the postal service to the point you could mail your ballot a week before the election and it would still arrive late.
Why should rightoids sabotage be rewarded?

>>1521969
why do fithly libs think they're entitled to vote if they miss the election
no one cares that you handed your vote over to a government official and they timestamped the receipt
voting needs to end when the republican is in the lead

>>1521972
Reminds me of when Trump had legal teams in court simultaneously arguing to stop the vote count in states where he was leading at that exact moment and to keep the count going in states where he was behind back in 2020

Reminds me of all 50 Secretary of states, half of which are trump supporting republicans, saying there was no election fraud in 2020.

Reminds me of the 110+ consecutive election lawsuits that trump and his allies lost/had dismissed over the election in 2020.

Reminds me of the multiple election lawsuits the Supreme Court dismissed. (2 justices appointment by Trump).

Reminds me of the dozens of hand recounts in 2020 (trump actually lost by larger margins after some of the recounts).

Reminds me of the teams of Republican fake electors caught in 2020.

Reminds me of organizing J6 to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election.

Reminds me of Trump calling Georgia and saying it was obvious he won the election based on rally size, and he just wanted to find 11,780 votes, which was only 1 more than he needed.

>like
1521966 is an idiot that will always be unliked.
>why do fithly
>fithly
>inb4 "grammar nazi", "context" etc
Why does the filthy 1521972 always prove itself to be a diseased little illiterate subhuman esl shill?
In Soviet Miami, the Democrat who won in the area that Mar-a-Lago is in doesn't care about an entitled little manbaby miggy piggy such as 1521972 that can't think:
>fithly
And will never be a superior educated American.

>>1521976
Republicans should refrain from voting by mail in protest. Tell that truck full of ballots from the nursing home to fuck off.

>>1521967
>t. idiot who didn't say that in the post, and is now snaking his way out of how irrelevant that information is to the post he made.
So, you are a fucking idiot, yes.

>>1521969
Where do you get this stuff from?
>>1521975
>He boisterously stated, unaware of how bad Joe Biden was, and proud of the propaganda campaign that got Brain Cancer Carter elected.

>>1521951
Man, gerrymandering all the red states didn't move the needle and now SCOTUS shoots down their plan to just throw out eligible mail in ballots
November is starting to look pretty bleak for Republicans

>>1521967
Ok but how do you know? This seems like fancy ivory tower words to confuse us regular working folk

>>1521972
>Victim blaming
No wonder conservatives always support rapists like trump

>>1521980
>He boisterously stated, unaware of how bad Joe Biden was, and proud of the propaganda campaign that got Brain Cancer Carter elected

The Heritage Foundation went back looking at votes of this millennia, totaling over a billon votes, and found a fraction of a fraction of a fraction percentage of "illegal" voting activity.

If Joe Biden was bad because of his stutter, and late term retardation, at least you know he surrounded himself with many competent people and followed their advice.


The Economist called post-covid America the envy of the world.

>>1522042
So you trust right wingers?
Interesting.
>If Joe Biden was bad because of his stutter, and late term retardation, at least you know he surrounded himself with many competent people and followed their advice.
He was terrible because he drove inflation through the fucking roof along with gas prices provably with fucking supporting data..
Are you on drugs? We've covered this a nauseam here.
Fucking left wing Nazis like you need to follow your left wing leader, Hitler.

>>1522043
you're drunk esl shill

>>1522043
All first world countries had hyper inflation due to a global pandemic. gas prices were dictated by russia's actions. That can be easily shown, it is not for debate.

>So you trust right wingers? Interesting.

Your interpretation shows your autism. I trust it to be fake, gay, incredibly incredibly incredibly false, and fascist.

>>1522045
Not even Vox can shift blame.
https://www.vox.com/policy/385932/biden-inflation-record-worse-unpopular-mistakes

>>1522047
>2024
Then trump managed to fuck it up more by allowing price gouging and losing the war against Iran.

>>1522052
>t. crack pipe enjoyer

someday we'll figure out why esl shill sucks billionaire cock for crumbs

>>1521951
>fair elections
oh yeah, that's definitely what we have here.
fucking bootlicking retard.

>>1522059
It was kinda sus he won every swing stat with a margin just under what was needed to trigger a recount, yeah.

>>1522057
>Can't refute it

>>1522061
Also Elon Musk claiming if it wasn't for him, trump and republicans would have lost while he was bragging about star link.

>>1521951
>>1522085
So much for loading the SCOTUS in your favor, Trump, when it's now working against you.
It's all your fault, orange Retard-in-Chief.