The United States Supreme Court heard arguments this Monday in Washington in a case that studies the constitutionality of Mississippi’s vote-by-mail law. This southern state allows ballots that arrive in the five days following voting day to be counted, as long as those votes come in an envelope with a postmark prior to the date of the appointment with the polls. The conservative majority
If they did so, the ruling – scheduled for before the end of the judicial course, in June or, at the latest, early July – would apply throughout the United States. At least 18 other states and territories allow ballots to be counted after voting day.
Changing the electoral rules is one of the obsessions of Donald Trump, who appointed three of the six conservative justices of the Supreme Court during his first term. The president of the United States has been attacking the institution for weeks; especially, against the three conservative judges who voted to overthrow his tariff policy.
From the right of the bench, there were many questions this Monday to the lawyer representing Mississippi about when an election could be over. The three liberal judges rejected, for their part, the contrary arguments presented by the Republican National Committee and the Trump Administration. They recalled that the power to establish their electoral rules belongs to the States, despite the fact that the president will “nationalize the elections” in time for the appointment next November, in which control of one or both chambers is at stake.
Trump considers voting by mail, except in a few cases, as one of the worst failures of current American democracy. This increased considerably with the pandemic. In the 2020 elections, the Republican spent months warning about alleged electoral fraud, and when he clearly lost to Democrat Joe Biden, he refused to accept the result. He still does it.
The president has been pushing for months for the Capitol to pass an electoral law that would change the voting rules to, according to his arguments, prevent fraud and prevent undocumented immigrants from participating, despite the fact that the data indicates that the number of those who do so is extremely residual. This rule also proposes toughening the requirements to register to vote, by requiring proof of identity to be provided.
Birth certificates
Critics of this law warn that something like this would violate the rights of millions of people: around half of Americans do not have a passport and women who change their last name when they get married would have a problem with their birth certificates. The law has been approved by the House of Representatives and is being considered by the Senate, where it needs to win 60 seats, which is highly unlikely. Another option is for Republicans to deactivate the filibuster, under which a decision of this magnitude requires a qualified majority to move forward.
The case now being studied in the Supreme Court has its origins in a 2024 lawsuit by the Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party and several individual voters, who consider that the rules in that Southern State are contrary to the federal ones. A judge ruled in favor of Mississippi in the first instance, so the law also passed the examination of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
This is not the only electoral issue being examined in the US Supreme Court: there is also a Republican challenge that seeks to remove the spending limit of political parties in coordination with the candidates and a lawsuit filed by a group of white voters from Louisiana who allege that the creation of a second electoral district violated the Constitution. To know the three decisions of the high court, which could change the electoral rules that have been in force in this country for
