Supreme Court blocks RNC bid on late ballots

The Supreme Court on Monday refused the Republican National Committee’s push to stop states from counting absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward—an outcome that leaves President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on vote-by-mail

For the first time in a while, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a narrow loss on how late-arriving absentee ballots should be treated. On Monday, five justices voted to block the Republican National Committee’s effort to limit the window for counting ballots in federal elections.

The decision is straightforward: it allows states to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received afterward. In a court where commonsense outcomes have been scarce in recent years, the ruling offered a rare moment of clarity.

Trump, though, has a habit of turning court rulings into proof of something else. He’s jumped on and off the vote-by-mail train over the years since his 2020 presidential election loss—at times saying he was fine with the method and at other times portraying it as “rampant” with (nonexistent) fraud. Now, he has revived those complaints after California’s most recent elections earlier this month.

California’s voting patterns are at the heart of the fight he’s trying to revive. The state has voted almost entirely by mail in recent years, with over 80% of ballots coming in via post. That creates an unglamorous reality for election night and beyond: the surge of ballots being processed at California post offices on Election Day means it can take days. or weeks. for all of them to arrive and be properly tallied.

When the mail keeps coming, early tabulations can produce what look like results—sometimes “phantom” ones—based on in-person ballots before late-arriving mail votes are fully counted. That is exactly what happened in the 2020 presidential race, and it became one of Trump’s major rage points.

Pennsylvania Republicans tried to challenge ballots that arrived after Election Day in 2020. The Supreme Court ended up deadlocked, and those votes were allowed to be counted. Four years later, the Republican National Committee opted to take another run.

In 2024. the Republican National Committee joined the Mississippi State GOP in challenging Mississippi’s law that provides a five-day grace period for ballots postmarked on Election Day to be considered valid. The Republican plaintiffs argued that Mississippi ignored federal laws that set Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November—not based on when ballots are received.

Their lawsuit also leaned into a political argument about who benefits. It said the method advantages Democrats because more of them vote by mail than Republicans. It cited a specific comparison from the MIT Election Lab: “For example. according to the MIT Election Lab. 46% of Democratic voters in the 2022 General Election mailed in their ballots. compared to only 27% of Republicans… That means the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats.”.

Taken together. the stakes are familiar: states want a workable system that reflects how mail ballots actually move. while Republicans want tighter rules that can change when the count effectively finishes. Monday’s ruling didn’t just block one request from the RNC—it reinforced the principle that postmark timing matters.

What it won’t change is Trump’s approach. Even after the court’s decision. the underlying argument he’s been making—powered by timing. early partial results. and the public anger that followed the 2020 “red mirage”—still finds an easy target: the visible lag between Election Day tabulations and the eventual inclusion of late-but-valid mail ballots.

Supreme Court mail-in voting absentee ballots Republican National Committee RNC Donald Trump California elections Mississippi five-day grace period Election Day postmark