US Supreme Court allows late-arriving mail-in ballots in defeat for Trump

President Trump has repeatedly criticised mail-in ballots and said – with no evidence – that the practice prevented him from winning the 2020 election against Joe Biden.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump called on lawmakers to pass the Save America Act, which would mandate photo ID and proof of citizenship for voters.

It would also ban mail-in ballots, with exceptions made only in cases of illness, disability, travel or military deployments.

“There is no excuses for a politician, or otherwise, to be against the above three requirements,” Trump said of the Save America Act. “There is only one reason to oppose – cheating.”

Just last week, Trump cancelled the signing of a bipartisan housing bill, saying that he would only make it law if the Save America Act is passed.

In March, Trump’s lawyer argued before the Supreme Court in support of the Republican National Committee-led lawsuit against Mississippi’s mail ballot deadline.

The challenge focused on an 1845 congressional statute that defines election day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

Republicans argued that the law requires ballots to be not just postmarked but received by that date.

“Election-day receipt promotes election integrity and voter confidence as much today as it did when Congress passed that law,” the Trump administration told the Supreme Court in a legal brief.

More than a dozen states allow mail-in ballots to be received after election day, including Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Virginia and Nevada.

Despite President Trump’s claims of rampant fraud in mail-in ballots, studies have shown that confirmed cases of fraud are exceedingly rare.

One study, released by the Brookings Institution in November last year, found that the last five US elections had an average of four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10m votes.

Trump himself used a mail-in ballot to vote in a Florida special election earlier this year.

The White House dismissed the vote as a “non-story” and noted that the president has long voted in Florida, but lives in Washington.