Supreme Court Permits Sloppy Elections in Affirming States Rights

By Z. E. Kendall

In a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court released its election decision in the recent ruling, Watson v. Republican National Committee. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the deciding justice and wrote the opinion for the court. Justice Sam Alito wrote the dissent.

The Supreme Court summarized the events that led up to this case. They stated:

In 2024, the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, and various individuals sued the Mississippi secretary of state and several election officials, contending that federal law prevents Mississippi from counting absentee ballots received after election day. According to plaintiffs, the election-day statutes use the word “election” to refer to two acts—ballot casting and ballot receipt—so by setting the day for the “election,” these statutes set the deadline for both.1

The Supreme Court ruled that, “nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day… federal law dictates when ballots must be cast; state law governs when they must be received.” Amy Coney Barrett affirmed that an election is fundamentally an act of choosing candidates, not of receiving or counting ballots.² Nevertheless, Justice Barrett admitted that “an election-day deadline avoids the appearance of fraud from late-arriving ballots.³”

In making this decision, the Supreme Court upholds the acceptance of state ballot-receipt deadlines by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, affirms states rights for when to count the votes, enables elections to look sloppy, and could open the door for insertion of ballots fraudulently post-marked by election day but delivered afterward.

Justice Alito in his dissent made an appeal to historical norms for elections. “Back when all voting occurred in person,” he wrote, “the voters went to the polls on election day. They then completed ballots and turned them over to election officials. When the polls closed, those officials had in their possession a fixed collection of ballots, and taken together, those ballots embodied the electorate’s collective choice.⁴”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recognized that past instances of receiving all the ballots by election day could have been a coincidence tied to in-person voting, without absentee voting happening.⁵ Barrett noted that, for consistency’s sake, if we stuck to 19^th century standards or earlier for how to run elections, then we’d also have to invalidate early in-person voting days for elections. She did not want to make such a sweeping change to the legitimacy of election law.⁶

She also did not want to override any Congressional law in this court case either. “Election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt,” she wrote, “and we cannot add to the words Congress chose.⁷”

In this decision, the Supreme Court implied that if you want the deadline to receive the ballots to be election-day, then state legislatures have to make that into the law in your state. They wrote, “Policy arguments about election integrity and voter confidence are properly directed to legislatures, not courts.⁸” In saying this, they are striving to avoid the appearance that they are “legislating from the bench” (inventing new laws). They are also reminding us that the path forward for tidying up our elections is to pass some good election security state laws.

Justice Samuel Alito in his dissent distinguished between an individual voter making his decision and the electorate as a whole making their decision. He then wrote, “If ballots received after election day are added to the set of ballots that dictate the election’s outcome, the electorate’s choice does not occur on election day, and the federal election-day statutes are violated.⁹”

Alito in his dissent seems to be keeping in mind the possibility of someone waiting until after election day to choose who to vote for, fraudulently post-marking the ballot as though it were on or before election day, mailing in the ballot, and getting his or her votes counted. If there are people like that who vote in the election, then the electorate as a whole does not decide who to vote for until after election day when that final ballot is mailed.

This is an election integrity issue. Alito wants to prevent fraudulent ballots.

Here in Kentucky, some people believe that absentee ballots must arrive by 6 p.m. on election day. But it is hard to find a law in our state code that actually states that ballots must be received by election day in order to be counted. However, it does state, “ Beginning at 8 a.m. on any primary, regular election, or special election day, the county board of elections or central ballot counting board shall meet at the county clerk's office or other place designated by the county board of elections to process and review the mail-in absentee ballots returned.¹⁰” So, we in Kentucky may have an implied expectation that our county clerks’ offices will receive all ballots by election day. We might wish to make the wording of our state law a bit clearer.

So, in summary, this Supreme Court case Watson v. RNC was about when the deadline would be to receive and count mail-in and absentee ballots. The Supreme Court ruled that election day was the final day to cast ballots but not to receive and count them. The court says state law determines when the deadline is for receiving and counting those ballots.

Now, the further after election day that we make the deadline to receive ballots, the higher the likelihood that the ballots to be counted will be fraudulent. So, we need to make it clear which specific date that deadline will be, and we should make that deadline as close to election day as we can.

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Notes:

1Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, summary syllabus page 1. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1260_g3cn.pdf. Accessed 29 Jun. 2026. Web.

2Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, summary syllabus page 2.

3Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, summary syllabus page 3.

4Alito, Samuel. Watson v. Republican National Committee, page 3 of dissent.

5Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, page 11.

6Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, pages 13-14.

7Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, page 22.

8Barrett, Amy Coney. Watson v. Republican National Committee, summary syllabus page 4.

9Alito, Samuel. Watson v. Republican National Committee, page 2 of dissent.

10Kentucky Revised Statutes Title X. Elections § 117.087