JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Every presidential election, hundreds of thousands of voters mail in their ballots by Election Day, but they're not received by voting officials until after the fact. In more than two dozen states, many of those votes still count. Now the Supreme Court is looking at a Mississippi law to determine whether that's legal. Joining us now is NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks. Hi.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hey, Juana.
SUMMERS: So Miles, start by explaining this law in Mississippi. Who is challenging it, and why?
PARKS: So this is a legal fight that actually goes back to last year, when the Republican National Committee challenged a Mississippi law that was passed in 2020. Mississippi's law says that if voters have sent their ballots by Election Day and those ballots are postmarked, then those votes will count as long as they're received by voting officials up to five days after Election Day. The RNC is arguing that that law violates rules by Congress that set when Election Day is, essentially saying, if you accept those ballots, you're extending when Election Day is. The state, which is also run by Republicans, says that is incorrect because by requiring a postmark, the state is ensuring that voters have made their selections by Election Day, even if those selections haven't made it to officials yet.
SUMMERS: And it's not just Mississippi that has a rule like that. How many other states could be impacted by what the Supreme Court decides?
PARKS: So this could really reach more than half the country by population, actually. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia will accept ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but received after the fact. That's according to tracking by the National Conference of State Legislatures. And then another dozen or so states have grace periods like that just for military and overseas voters. And I was talking about that with election law expert David Becker, who founded the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and he said it's unclear whether those voters could also be impacted by whatever the Supreme Court rules.
DAVID BECKER: I don't know how you carve out that exception. The Supreme Court may try. The Supreme Court might also not address it at all and leave this ambiguous. It demonstrates why these policies should be debated in the state legislatures rather than, you know, by the Supreme Court.
PARKS: From a policy perspective, Becker also said that if states are not going to offer these sort of grace periods, then they have to make sure that they either have drop boxes or other ways for voters to turn in their ballots that aren't so reliant on the Postal Service the week of an election.
SUMMERS: Right. Miles, give us a sense of scale. Do you have any sense of just how many voters we're talking about when it comes to these policies?
PARKS: I don't have an exact estimate countrywide, but I reached out to Oregon, which is a middle-sized state, and that is a full vote-by-mail state that does accept postmark ballots up to a week after Election Day. And they said that in 2024, they received more than 13,000 ballots that were postmarked in time but received by officials after Election Day. And the secretary of state there, Democrat Tobias Read, pointed to the fact that this policy is one that President Trump has also targeted with an executive order back in March that has been blocked by the courts. And in a statement, Secretary Read told me that efforts to block these policies are an attempt by Republicans to, quote, "rig elections and silence hardworking, busy people."
SUMMERS: Looking ahead, is this legal fight going to be felt in next year's midterms?
PARKS: That is up in the air. And, you know, election officials, they hate ambiguity more than just about anything.
SUMMERS: Right.
PARKS: And right now, more than half the states are looking at this, trying to figure out if they're going to need to rewrite some of their voting policies. As part of this case, a group of roughly 20 states that do have laws like this on the books filed a brief warning that overturning these rules could risk chaos and uncertainty in future elections. That said, when I talk to officials, they note that voters do adjust to whatever the rules are, but they just hope that those rules are set in place early enough to be able to communicate to voters exactly how they need to do everything.
SUMMERS: NPR's Miles Parks, thank you.
PARKS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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