From Fort Sumter to the Supreme Court: The 160-Year Fight to Count Military Ballots
Today's ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee settled a question that has shadowed American democracy since the Civil War: when a soldier mails a ballot from a battlefield, does it count if it arrives late?
In 1864, Union soldiers lined up at makeshift polling stations in Georgia and cast their ballots for president. Commanding officers sealed those ballots in envelopes, forwarded them north by whatever transport was available, and states counted them when they arrived — sometimes days or weeks after Election Day. Abraham Lincoln won re-election in part because of those votes. Seventy-eight percent of soldier ballots went to him.
One hundred and sixty-two years later, the United States Supreme Court was asked to decide whether that tradition was ever legal in the first place.
Today, in a 5–4 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court said it was — and still is.
What Was at Stake
Mississippi law allows absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to be received and counted up to five business days later. The Republican National Committee sued in 2024, arguing that federal statutes establishing a single, uniform Election Day require ballots to be in election officials' hands by that date — not just in a mailbox.
On its face, it sounded like a narrow procedural dispute about one state's deadline. It was not. Roughly 30 states count at least some absentee ballots received after Election Day. And one group of voters depended on those grace periods more than any other: active-duty military personnel and Americans living overseas.
A Problem Born in the Civil War
To understand why today's ruling matters, you have to go back to 1864 — because that is where this story begins.
Before the Civil War, voting was simple in one sense: you showed up. Nearly all voting occurred in person at polling places, so Election Day was by definition the day every ballot was collected. There was no concept of a ballot arriving "late" because there was no mechanism for a ballot to travel.
The war changed everything. With over a million men under arms — hundreds of miles from their home counties — nineteen Union states scrambled to create systems for soldiers to vote in the field. Some dispatched election officials to military camps with portable ballot boxes. Some allowed unit commanders to supervise voting and forward tallies to county officials. Some allowed soldiers to mail ballots home.
All of these systems shared one feature: the ballots arrived after Election Day. States knew this and built grace periods into their laws from the very beginning.
"They marked their ballot, stuck it in an envelope, mailed it back to whatever county they were from. Then county officials dropped it into the ballot box with all the rest and counted them like all the rest."
— Historian Donald S. Inbody, describing Minnesota's 1864 soldier ballot systemThe RNC's argument before the Court rested heavily on historical practice — claiming that the original meaning of "election day" required ballots to be received by that date. The military amicus brief demolished that argument with the historical record the RNC was trying to invoke. The very first absentee voting systems, created contemporaneously with the federal election-day statutes, assumed and required that ballots would arrive after Election Day.
The Long Arc Toward Federal Protection
Why the 45-Day Rule Wasn't Enough
The MOVE Act's 45-day requirement was Congress's attempt to solve the transit problem. If states send blank ballots six weeks before the election, surely voters have enough time to mark and return them, right?
In theory, yes. In practice, the transit problem is not solved by fixing the outbound leg. A ballot dispatched from a forward operating base in eastern Europe, routed through an Army Post Office, a foreign postal system, and a domestic mail hub before reaching a county election office in, say, rural Mississippi, does not travel on a schedule anyone can guarantee.
"For many of them, voting is not a walk to the corner precinct. It is a ballot moving through a ship, a base mailroom, an Army Post Office, a foreign postal system, and an election office back home."
— Chamberlain Network amicus brief, Watson v. RNCResearchers studying more than a decade of Election Assistance Commission data reached a clear conclusion: late arrival has been the dominant cause of UOCAVA ballot rejection, year after year. The 45-day window helps. It is not sufficient. Grace periods convert a nominal statutory guarantee into an operational one.
Alaska: The Extreme Case
If you want to understand what this case was actually about on the ground, look at Alaska.
Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas. Hundreds of its communities have no road access at all. Mail travels by bush plane, boat, or snowmachine — and weather can halt all three for days at a time. The village of Platinum on the Bering Sea, population under 50, has no post office. Residents travel in pairs by snowmachine to the neighboring community of Goodnews Bay to retrieve their mail.
In the 2022 general election, between 55% and 78% of absentee ballots from certain Alaska state House districts arrived at election offices after Election Day. Statewide, about 20% of all absentee ballots were received late — even with Alaska's existing 10-day grace period, some never arrived in time to be counted.
Alaska filed an amicus brief in this case taking neither side, but clearly explaining the stakes. Senator Lisa Murkowski put it plainly: "I think there's probably no other state where this ruling could have a more detrimental impact than ours."
Today's ruling preserves Alaska's 10-day grace period — the longest in the nation — and protects a voting system built entirely around the physical reality of moving paper ballots across some of the most remote terrain on earth by bush plane.
Who Filed Amicus Briefs — and the Unusual Alliances
The amicus brief landscape in this case was revealing. On the pro-Mississippi side, an ideologically improbable coalition formed: Senate Democrats stood alongside retired generals, military family organizations, Native American tribes, civil rights groups, and veterans' advocates.
✓ Supporting Mississippi (Grace Periods)
- 14 U.S. Senators led by Ron Wyden & Alex Padilla
- Blue Star Families
- Veterans for All Voters
- Chamberlain Network
- Secure Families Initiative
- U.S. Vote Foundation
- National Defense Committee
- Alaska Federation of Natives
- National Congress of American Indians
- NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- League of Women Voters
- 50+ retired military leaders & diplomats
- Brennan Center for Justice
- District of Columbia & allied states
✗ Supporting the RNC
- Trump Administration (Solicitor General)
- ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)
- Citizens United
- National Republican Congressional Committee
- Montana & Republican-led states
- Claremont Institute
- Wisconsin Voter Alliance
- Honest Elections Project
- Center for Election Confidence
The National Defense Committee — a conservative, military-focused organization — filed on Mississippi's side. So did the Chamberlain Network, which represents veterans and military families. This was not a left-right divide. It was a military-realism divide: those who understood the logistical realities of overseas deployment on one side, and those prioritizing an abstract rule about calendar dates on the other.
The Deeper Irony
Justice Sotomayor captured the central absurdity during oral argument. When the RNC's lawyer argued that ballots must be received by Election Day, she pressed him on what that meant for military and overseas voters — and then added: "Maybe we should have another president now, because wasn't it in Florida that they were counting military votes after receipt?"
She was referring to the 2000 election, when overseas military ballots arriving after Election Day in Florida were counted — by both parties, without controversy. The same RNC that now argued those ballots were always illegal had never objected when the counting went in their favor.
The deeper irony is historical. The entire institution of absentee voting in America was created for soldiers. The Civil War forced the invention of a system for people serving their country to have their votes counted even when they couldn't come home. Every subsequent expansion — to civilians traveling for work, to the disabled, to overseas citizens, to the modern all-mail systems in Oregon and Washington — grew from that original act of democratic commitment to the men in uniform.
The RNC's argument, taken to its logical conclusion, would have made the original Civil War soldier ballot system unconstitutional. The six Union states that built grace periods into their 1862 and 1864 soldier voting laws — contemporaneously with the very federal statutes the RNC was citing — would have been in violation of federal law from the moment those laws were passed.
Justice Barrett, writing for the majority, was unpersuaded by the historical argument. She noted that statutes do not "trap in amber" every contemporary practice, and that the federal election-day laws say nothing about ballot receipt. Congress set the day by which votes must be cast. States retain authority over when they must be received.
What Happens Next
Today's ruling protects existing grace periods in 14 states and D.C. for all voters, and in 30 states for military and overseas voters. It does not require any state to have a grace period — it simply holds that the federal election-day statutes don't prohibit them.
That means individual state legislatures can still eliminate their own grace periods if they choose. Mississippi's Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch has already urged the state legislature to do exactly that. The political fight moves from the courts to the statehouses.
President Trump, meanwhile, called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would impose strict new federal voting requirements including the elimination of mail ballots (with limited exceptions). Today's ruling makes those provisions harder to justify constitutionally — but it doesn't stop Congress from trying.
For the hundreds of thousands of Americans in uniform serving abroad, and for the voters in Alaska's bush communities who rely on bush planes and snowmachines to move their ballots, today is a good day. The Court declined to make them choose between serving their country and having their vote counted.
That is not a small thing. It is, in fact, the same thing the six Union states of 1862 were trying to protect when they built the first grace periods into American law — for soldiers fighting in a very different war, on a very different frontier.
"Sailors are not less American because they're harder to reach. They have not surrendered their voice at the ballot box because their country sent them somewhere where voting is inconvenient."
— Alberto Ramos, CEO, Veterans for All VotersWatson v. Republican National Committee, No. 24-1260 (U.S. June 29, 2026) · Smithsonian Magazine, "The Debate Over Mail-In Voting Dates Back to the Civil War" · MIT Election Lab, "Voting by Mail and Absentee Voting" (updated June 2026) · Bipartisan Policy Center, "What Could the Supreme Court's Decision in Watson v. RNC Mean for Mail Voting?" · U.S. Vote Foundation, "Extended Absentee Ballot Receipt Deadlines: Watson v. RNC" · Alaska Public Radio / KYUK, "How a Change to Mail-In Voting Could Impact Alaska's Most Rural Voters" (June 2026) · PBS NewsHour, "The Ability to Vote Isn't Always Guaranteed in Alaska's Far-Flung Native Villages" · Overseas Vote Foundation, "Marked and Missed: Military Vote" · Voting Rights Lab, "150 Years of Military and Overseas Voting Now Under Threat" · Brennan Center for Justice, Watson v. RNC amicus brief (Jan. 2026) · Chamberlain Network, Watson v. RNC amicus brief (Jan. 2026)
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