Klaus Marre 06/29/26 (whowhatwhy.org)
The Supreme Court on Monday upheld a Mississippi law that allows properly postmarked ballots received up to five days after Election Day to still be counted. Donald Trump didn’t take the news well.
Donald Trump reacted to a rare Supreme Court loss on Monday with a social media rant and a renewed call on the Senate to pass a voter suppression bill that would eliminate most voting by mail.
Earlier in the day, the court had ruled in a narrow 5-4 decision, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with their three liberal colleagues, that properly postmarked mail-in ballots arriving after Election Day must be counted.
Stating that the Founding Fathers had realized that writing election laws covering any possible future scenario posed a major challenge and therefore “decided that ‘a discretionary power over elections’ needed to be lodged ‘somewhere,’” Barrett wrote for the majority that “suffice it to say, that power was not lodged in this Court.”
She noted that statutes defining Election Day “say nothing about ballot receipt,” and declared that “we cannot add to the words Congress chose.”
As a result, the court upheld a Mississippi law granting a grace period of five days for ballots postmarked by Election Day.
Trump, who has been on a warpath against mail-in voting, which he blames for his 2020 election loss that he still fails to accept, took to social media shortly afterwards to call the decision a “tremendous loss.”
The president used the opportunity to demand that the Senate pass the SAVE America Act, which would impose new voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements on Americans, millions of whom would not be able to meet them even though they are eligible by law to vote.
In addition, the legislation would also ban almost all types of mail-in voting.
Making up a non-existent threat of a “powerful Communist Movement” in the US that, according to the president, is “more dangerous than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or September 11th,” he called on Republican senators opposed to passing the bill and/or eliminating the filibuster to do so to bend to his will in light of the decision.
Even though the Supreme Court ruled against him, Trump’s allegations of “election fraud” — which he has never been able to back up with any kind of evidence — and the GOP’s subsequent efforts to help him undermine democracy, bled into Barrett’s decision.
“Election fraud and its appearance are serious issues. Like other such issues, however, they must be addressed through the democratic process,” Barrett wrote. “The election-day statutes are proof of concept: When voting on different days in different States sparked allegations of fraud, Congress set a nationally uniform deadline for voting. If varied deadlines for ballot receipt similarly call for a national solution, the American people must choose it through their elected representatives.”
Unfortunately, many of those representatives, i.e., most Republicans, are now adherents of Trump’s Big Lie. This means that, whether out of ignorance or political calculation, they are willing to help the president change election laws in a way that they hope will give them an advantage.
Therefore, this narrow ruling, while important, is merely a reprieve as Trump’s assault on democracy continues.
- Klaus Marre Klaus Marre, a former congressional reporter, is a senior editor for US politics at WhoWhatWhy. He writes regularly here, and you can also follow him on Bluesky and Substack.
