Supreme Court preserves Mississippi’s late mail-ballot rule in Watson

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2026 in Watson v. Republican National Committee that federal Election Day statutes do not require absentee/mail ballots to be received by Election Day.

Instead, the decision preserves state rules that count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received within a state-set grace window—which, in this case, was Mississippi’s approach.

What Mississippi’s rule required

The dispute centered on Mississippi’s absentee voting law. Mississippi required that a voter’s ballot be postmarked on or before Election Day and then received within five (5) business days after the election. If the ballot met that postmark/receipt combination, Mississippi counted it.

What challengers argued

The RNC and other challengers argued that federal statutes establishing a federal “Election Day” effectively create a receipt-by-Election-Day requirement—meaning states could not count ballots received after Election Day even if they were postmarked on time.

What the Court held

The Court rejected that reading. It held that nothing in the federal Election Day statutes requires states to treat Election Day as a ballot-receipt deadline. As a result, federal law does not preempt Mississippi from counting post–Election Day receipt ballots when they are received within the state’s permitted window.

Why this matters nationally

Many places use some form of postmark-by-Election-Day and receive-within-a-set-number-of-days rules for mail ballots. The practical effect of Watson is that future lawsuits will have a harder time relying on a simple claim: “federal ‘Election Day’ automatically means the ballot must arrive that day.”

At the same time, states still control their own receipt deadlines. Voters should keep following their state’s posted rules, because this decision does not eliminate state enforcement.

What to watch next

Expect follow-on disputes to pivot away from broad “federal receipt-by-Election-Day” theories and toward other federal statutory limits and state-law or administrative requirements that govern how elections must be run and how deadlines are applied.

Sources

• U.S. Supreme Court opinion: Watson v. Republican National Committee (No. 24-1260, decided June 29, 2026)
• Associated Press explainer: Supreme Court upholds late-arriving mail ballot rule in Watson
• SCOTUSblog case page: Watson v. Republican National Committee