Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Challenge To Counting Late Mail-in Ballots

States are free to count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, so long as they are postmarked by then or election officials deem the ballots to have been cast on time, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The 5-4 decision is a significant loss for President Donald Trump, who has sought to crack down on mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterms. Trump has repeatedly argued without evidence that delays in tabulating votes fuel election fraud by Democrats.

Trump’s Justice Department and the Republican National Committee had urged the justices to strike down a Mississippi law that allows officials to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive up to five days later.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in concluding that federal laws governing House, Senate and presidential contests are too vague to mandate that all votes be in the possession of election officials by that day.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.

The high court’s ruling allows about 30 states to continue their practice of providing a grace period in which some or all late-arriving ballots are tallied if they are postmarked by Election Day or officials determine they were cast by then.

Earlier this month, Trump decried California’s practice of counting ballots that come in up to a week after elections there.

“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, accusing Democrats of “trying to steal” primary elections for governor and for mayor of Los Angeles. “Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of mail in ballots.”

“Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks,” the president complained in another post. “Why the vote counting delay???”

In March, Trump signed an executive order seeking to limit who has access to mail-in voting, directing the U.S. Postal Service to only send mail-in ballots to people on an approved list of absentee voters. Last week, a federal judge blocked the USPS from implementing the order.

In another executive order signed last year, Trump told the Justice Department to take “all necessary action” to enforce federal Election Day statutes by ending the tallying of late-arriving mail-in ballots. A judge blocked that provision.