A US federal court dismissed a Republican National Committee (RNC) challenge on Sunday to a Mississippi law that allows validly cast mail-in votes to be counted for up to five business days after election day.
Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi decided that since there is no federal law regulating absentee vote-counting procedures, the US states retain the authority to regulate them. The judge ruled that Mississippi state statute is “consistent with federal law and does not conflict with the Elections Clause, the Elector’s Clause or the election day statutes.”
The Elections Clause, located in Section 4 of the US Constitution, gives Congress the power to regulate national elections. If there is an absence of federal law regulating a particular aspect of an election, the Elections Clause imposes a duty on states to organize the remaining details of federal elections, including the “time, place and manner of electing Representatives and Senators.” The Constitution’s Electors Clause states that “[election] day shall be the same throughout the United States.”
The Mississippi law requires that mail-in ballots be sealed and postmarked on or before election day.
The court cited a US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruling that “held that allowing some voters to cast votes before election day does not contravene the federal election statutes because the final selection is not made before the federal election day.” Since voting before election day is lawful, the court determined that it is also lawful to count ballots submitted on time that arrive late. The appeals court noted that states are given “wide discretion” for the formulation of their electoral system, and concluded that it was not the intention of Congress to “have the effect of impeding citizens in exercising their right to vote.”
The Fifth Circuit has never considered whether votes received after election day can be counted. Should the present ruling be appealed, the Fifth Circuit will consider this question.
