Facts of the Case

Provided by Oyez

Federal statutes designate the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the uniform day for electing members of Congress and appointing presidential electors. While Mississippi requires voters to cast absentee ballots by this federal deadline, the state legislature amended its election code in 2020 to permit the counting of mail-in ballots received up to five business days after Election Day, provided they are postmarked by that Tuesday. This “postmark rule” allows validly cast votes delayed by mail service to be included in the final tally, a practice currently utilized by approximately thirty states.

In 2024, the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi, and individual voters filed suit against Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and county election officials. The plaintiffs argued that the federal statutes establishing a singular “election” day preempt Mississippi’s five-day receipt window, contending that an election is not legally concluded until officials actually receive the ballots. They sought to invalidate the state statute and enjoin officials from counting any absentee ballots received after federal Election Day.

The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the state officials, ruling that the state law did not conflict with federal statutes. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that federal law preempts the Mississippi statute because ballots must be both cast and received by Election Day.

 

Questions

  1. Do the federal election-day statutes preempt a state law that allows ballots that are cast by federal election day to be received by election officials after that day?

     

Conclusions

  1. Federal election-day statutes, which designate a specific Tuesday in November as the day for congressional and presidential elections, govern only when voters must cast their ballots — not when those ballots must physically arrive at election offices — and therefore do not preempt state laws allowing absentee ballots postmarked by election day to be counted if received within days afterward. Justice Amy Coney Barrett authored the 5-4 majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    The word “election” in the federal election-day statutes means the act of choosing a candidate — the electorate’s expression of its preference — not the physical delivery of ballots to officials. Courts interpret statutory words according to their ordinary meaning at the time of enactment, and across nearly two centuries of relevant dictionary definitions and Supreme Court precedent, “election” has consistently meant the act of choosing a person to fill an office. The electorate’s choice is complete when voters cast their ballots, not when officials receive them. Congress reinforced this in its most recent amendment to the Presidential election-day statute, defining “election day” by reference to the “period of voting” — not the period of ballot receipt — confirming that voting, not receipt, is the act the statute governs. The Constitution’s design for the Electoral College points the same direction: it mandates a uniform national day for electors to give their votes but says nothing about when those votes must arrive in Washington, structurally separating the act of voting from the act of receipt.

    A separate federal law — the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which requires states to permit absentee voting by military and overseas citizens — independently confirms that ballot-receipt deadlines are a matter of state law. UOCAVA repeatedly cross-references state law to determine when ballots must be received, a framework that would be incoherent if the federal election-day statutes already imposed a nationwide receipt deadline. Historical practice from the 19th century does not override the statute’s text; statutes do not freeze in place every contemporary practice on the same subject. And policy concerns about election integrity and voter confidence, while legitimate, belong to legislatures to resolve — Congress itself set a uniform voting deadline when multi-day elections sparked fraud allegations, and it can do the same for receipt deadlines if it chooses.

    Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, and joined in part by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, arguing that an “election” as understood at enactment required both the casting and official collection of ballots by election day, that two centuries of near-uniform historical practice — including every Civil War-era absentee voting scheme — demonstrated states understood federal law to demand election-day ballot receipt, and that today’s decision opens Pandora’s box of unanswered questions while further eroding public confidence in election integrity.