The RNC is challenging a Mississippi law that allows mail ballots received after Election Day to be counted.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters believes the GOP is on the precipice of securing the “biggest election integrity win” the party has ever seen. Based on recent oral arguments, Gruters and fellow Republican insiders are optimistic the Court will rule that ballots received after Election Day are invalid. If the Court does find in the RNC’s favor, it will mark a major advance in the election-integrity mission President Trump assigned Gruters when he took over at the RNC.
The crux of the case centers around a Mississippi law passed during the Covid-19 pandemic that allows election officials to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days later. Although Mississippi Solicitor General Stewart defended his state law during last month’s oral arguments, nationally speaking, post-Election Day grace periods are more traditionally favored by Democrats, who support more lenient receipt rules for mail ballots. More than a dozen other states have similar laws on the books.
RNC officials view the pending Mississippi decision as a potential bulwark against deliberate attempts to influence an election after Election Day. “The only reason” to allow post-Election Day receipt verification for mail-in ballots is to “game the system and try to cheat at the end, and so this is just closing that door,” Gruters told National Review of the party’s lawsuit. If the court rules in the RNC’s favor and overturns post-Election Day grace periods, “everybody would have to abide by the same rules, and Election Day would mean exactly what it says.”
Last month’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court revealed that several other key issues are at stake in the case. These issues include: how long grace periods should last so long as ballots are postmarked by Election Day, whether this matter is best left for Congress, and whether laws such as Mississippi’s undermine public trust in elections.
“Is that something we should be thinking about, confidence in the election process?” Justice Brett Kavanaugh interjected at one point during the oral arguments.
Justices also pressed Mississippi’s Republican-appointed solicitor general, Scott G. Stewart, on the historical context of grace periods.
“This law is very consistent with what happened in the Civil War. It’s very consistent with what has happened for over a hundred years,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said of Mississippi’s five-day grace period law during Stewart’s argument. “There’s nothing in federal law that has prohibited it explicitly, correct?
Justice Samuel Alito followed up, asking for clarification concerning who should even qualify as an authorized ballot carrier.
“Well, Justice Sotomayor is asking you what I think she intends to be a friendly question, but maybe you want to think about whether you want to go that far,” Justice Samuel Alito cut in. “What if the state designates in — an official of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party who receives these ballots, collects ballots, and fills out an affidavit saying, I received all these and — and I — I will faithfully deliver them? Would that be okay?”
The RNC’s involvement in this lawsuit — bolstered by an amicus brief from the Justice Department – is part of the national party’s prioritizing election integrity during a midterm year that’s expected to be a tricky political environment for Republicans.
“When the president asked me months ago to take on this position, he said, ‘You know, one of my primary focuses has to be election integrity, and we have to keep the bar high that [former RNC chairs] Michael Whatley and Lara Trump set in the last cycle” Gruters said.
Trump has long been animated by claims that Democrats routinely engage in election fraud, but the issue took on new relevance for Trump and the party after the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claimed was stolen by Joe Biden through fraud. Since then, elected Republicans have consistently messaged on the issue, and Trump has wielded the RNC as his primary weapon in the fight against permissive blue-state voting laws.
Oral arguments on this case came amid an intense debate among Republicans on Capitol Hill about how to push through the Trump-backed Save America Act, a voter eligibility bill that would require voters to show proof of citizenship to cast a ballot. Frustrated that the Senate filibuster is an obstacle to Republican success in advancing the bill to Trump’s desk, the president signed an executive order on March 31 creating a federal system for mail ballots and voters’ citizenship verification.
A group of Democratic-run states sued Trump in reaction to what they called his “unconstitutional” order, writing in a joint lawsuit filed last week that “Neither the Constitution nor any act of Congress confers upon the President the authority to mandate sweeping changes to States’ electoral systems or procedures.”
The national party currently has “128 lawsuits across 32 states,” Gruters tells NR, clocking two major victories this month: one to stop ranked-choice voting expansion in Maine, and another in North Carolina that rests on the question of whether jury questionnaire data can be used to scrub noncitizens from voter rolls. “Although people may say, ‘Oh, these are small wins here and there,’ collectively, we are making a difference, and we’re making these elections more safe and secure.”
A midsummer Supreme Court decision on the case is expected to affect the general election, but not the 2026 primaries. It’s also possible that a ruling could defer enactment until after the 2026 midterm cycle entirely.
Some Democratic elections officials in states with grace periods have spent recent weeks expressing their concerns to news outlets that they won’t have enough time before November to effectively warn voters about the change, should the court overturn the Mississippi law and require states to change their practices ahead of Election Day.
The RNC finds this argument nonsensical. To Gruters, ultra-lenient grace periods are an unnecessary, contemporary phenomenon that sows voter distrust in elections by undermining the finality of Election Day results. As he told National Review, “If people can’t return a ballot on time within 30 days, then that’s on them.”
“The RNC is not reinventing the wheel” or “asking states to do anything beyond just comply with the Election Day statute,” an RNC official told National Review, while calling Democratic pushback to the Mississippi case a “fear-mongering” campaign. “The Democrats have such a dim view of their own voters that they are not able to comply with states that give 30, 45 days to complete absentee ballots.”