A Mail-In Ballot Case in Front of the Supreme Court Is Making Democrats Nervous

The future of Mississippi’s mail-in ballots is in the Supreme Court’s hands. Democrats in the state and across the South, who have spent decades fighting the strictest voting laws in the country, are watching very closely, worried this case could trigger more limitations on voting.

The Supreme Court announced this month that it would take up a case centered around Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law. The law, established in 2020 out of concern for an influx of mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, currently requires election workers to count mail-in ballots received five days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.

In their lawsuit, the Republican National Committee, alongside the state’s Republican and Libertarian parties, are claiming that individual states don’t have the right to set vote counting deadlines — only Congress does.

The case could have national implications. In the South, advocates are particularly concerned that a ruling against Mississippi’s existing law would reel back modest gains made in recent years to create broader ballot access.

“It’s going to cost us some close elections in some places, and it’s going to make it that much harder to make sure that every vote counts,” Rickey Cole, a Mississippi Democratic political consultant, said of the national impact of the Mississippi law being overturned.

“Anytime there’s an effort to restrict the franchise or put up further impediments to the free and fair exercise of the right to vote and the right for their vote to be counted, I think those are solutions looking for a problem,” he added.

Sixteen states, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and the District of Columbia allow for states to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked on time.

Mississippi and Texas are the only two Southern states that allow ballots to be received after Election Day, while Louisiana is the only state where mail-in ballots have to be received the day before the election.

Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson told NOTUS that overturning the state’s law could affect military and overseas mail-in voting nationwide.

“That means that our men and women overseas, who are defending democracy in strange places. That means that people who are working overseas for whether they’re American companies or international companies…that means their ballot in all probability, a certain percentage of them won’t be counted,” Thompson said. “We’re a better country than that.”

That’s already the reality in Louisiana, where voting advocates say they are going to fight their state’s law that requires mail-in ballots to be received before Election Day.

“It’s all a part of the powers that be to stifle for seniors and those that don’t normally be able to get to the polls,” Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP Louisiana State Conference, told NOTUS about his state’s law. “Those that are going out of the state, out of the country, it’s pure unadulterated voter suppression. And we shouldn’t have it in Louisiana, and we’re gonna fight it.”

There have not been any legal challenges to that law yet.

But the case over Mississippi’s mail-in ballots is among several high-profile cases that could show the courts’ willingness to transform voting access in a more conservative direction.

In August, a federal appeals court upheld Texas’ voter ID requirement — a 2021 law that requires voters to provide their driver’s license number or partial Social Security number to vote by mail. In 2022, that law played a significant role in the state rejecting at least 18,000 mail-in ballots in that year’s primary.

In October, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case regarding the use of race in constructing Louisiana’s congressional map. Comments from the conservative justices on the court raised concern among Democrats about the possible gutting of the Voting Rights Act.

“I think people who are engaged in political activism have to play the ball the way it lies, and we’ll find ways to adjust,” Cole told NOTUS, suggesting that Democrats and nonprofit organizations may have to create a fund for “expedited delivery” if the law is struck down,

Should the Supreme Court overturn Mississippi’s law, Democrats in the state warn it could trigger a snowball effect for other voting access laws.

“When you get away from the constitutional ability of states to do things that the Constitution gives them, you just don’t know where that’s going to lead,” said former Mississippi state Rep. Thomas Reynolds, a Democrat. “I mean, the court can do things. But generally, legislation is left to the legislators, rather than the courts ruling for them on particular issues that the Constitution says belong to the states.”

Republicans from the state, however, appear comfortable with a change.

“What I would like to see is that the ballots will be received on Election Day by the close of business Election Day,” Mississippi Republican Rep. Michael Guest told NOTUS. “I think that that would be the best course of action. I’m not sure if that’s something that is actually being considered.”