The Supreme Court ruled nothing in federal law prohibits Washington, Oregon and other states from accepting ballots that arrive via mail after Election Day.
Oregon, Washington and other states can continue to count ballots that arrive by mail after Election Day, under an opinion issued by the Supreme Court on Monday.
In a ruling that surprised some court observers, justices in a 5-4 decision found that nothing in federal laws blocks states from counting ballots that are postmarked on or before an election, but received afterward.
The court had been considering a challenge by Republican groups to a Mississippi law that allows ballots to arrive up to five days past Election Day.
The GOP groups in that case argued that counting late ballots ran afoul of a federal law setting Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. The court disagreed, finding “nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day.”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elana Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
The opinion comes as a relief to Oregon election officials, who will not have to scramble to change the state’s practices four months before the November election.
In oral arguments, some justices had appeared to lean toward barring late-arriving ballots. State officials and county clerks around Oregon had been strategizing over changes if the court did so. Their planning included talk of more ballot drop boxes, additional state funding to educate voters on the change, and even the possibility of a special legislative session.
With Monday’s ruling, that isn’t necessary — at least through this year’s midterm elections. President Donald Trump has been urging congressional Republicans to alter federal voting laws on their own.
“Today’s decision is a win for Oregon voters,” Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The post-Election Day grace period protects thousands of Oregonians’ votes from being thrown out because of delays at the Post Office.”
Attorney General Dan Rayfield, another Democrat, also cheered the ruling, urging Oregonians to “continue to vote, make their voices heard, and be proud of our elections system.”
Besides Oregon and Washington, 12 other states and Washington, D.C., currently count ballots that reach election officials after an election, as long as a postmark proves they were mailed by Election Day.
But Oregon is relatively late to the party. While it led the nation on adopting early voting, Oregon only began counting late-arriving ballots in 2022.
In the two general elections where the policy has been in place, late ballots have played a minor role. They accounted for 1.8% of statewide votes in 2022, and just 0.6% of votes during the high-profile 2024 presidential election.
The role of the Postal Service in conducting elections in Oregon and other vote-by-mail states has been a moving target in recent years.
Election administrators used to routinely applaud the USPS for quickly processing election mail, but recent consolidation at the agency has led to changes nationwide.
Postmarks on mail, once viewed as a reliable indicator of when a mailpiece was received by the USPS in Oregon, are now sometimes delayed as mail is transferred from outlying areas to Portland, where the state’s sole remaining processing center sits.
As a result, elections officials already caution voters to send in their ballots well ahead of Election Day to be certain their votes are counted. Voters can also use designated drop boxes to hand in their ballots by 8 p.m. on the day of an election.
In his statement Monday, Read emphasized the recent uncertainty about how quickly ballots may reach election officials by mail.
“My advice to voters has not changed: don’t wait,” he said. “Vote early and use an official drop box. If you have to return your ballot by mail, do it at least a week before Election Day, especially if you live more than 50 miles from Portland.”
Thursday’s opinion is the second recent development that preserves the status quo for this year’s election.
Last week, a federal judge blocked an executive order by President Donald Trump, which would have allowed the postal service to only deliver ballots to designated voters.
Trump has also pressed repeatedly for Congress to pass a bill, the so-called SAVE America Act, that would enact new voter ID requirements for people voting by mail.
Last week, the president abruptly canceled a planned event to sign bipartisan housing legislation, demanding lawmakers pass his voting bill first.
Trump has attacked mail elections for years, insisting without evidence they are rife with voter fraud.
This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
