Nearly a week after Los Angeles held its mayoral primary, residents still did not know whether Spencer Pratt or Nithya Raman would advance to a November runoff against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. The delay is not a glitch. It is the predictable result of laws that let mail-in ballots trickle in for days after polls close, and a pending Supreme Court decision could put an end to the practice nationwide.
The case is Watson v. Republican National Committee, a Mississippi challenge that drew oral arguments in March and could produce a ruling this month before the justices leave for summer recess. At its core sits a simple question: does a federal statute that fixes Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November mean the ballot box must close that day?
The Republican National Committee says yes. At least 14 states and the District of Columbia say no, their laws allow mail-in ballots to be counted as long as the envelope is postmarked by Election Day, even if the ballot arrives days later. Around 30 states maintain some form of grace period for absentee ballots. Mississippi's version permits ballots to arrive up to five days after the election. California's rules produced the Los Angeles spectacle that has turned a local primary into a national talking point.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters seized on the Los Angeles count to frame the stakes of the Watson case. He told the New York Post:
"What's happening in California is a Democrat failure on full display. Nearly a week after the primary, it is completely unacceptable ballots are still being counted. That's why the RNC is aggressively fighting in the Supreme Court to stop ballots received after Election Day from being counted. Americans deserve timely election results they can trust."
The argument is straightforward. When voters cannot learn the outcome of an election for a week, or possibly two, confidence erodes. Gruters and the RNC contend that the grace period violates the plain text of federal law, which designates a single day for the election.
Democrats see it differently. DNC chairman Ken Martin called the RNC case part of the GOP's "relentless assault on mail-in voting." Pew Research surveys cited in Post reporting indicate that most Americans support vote-by-mail, though Republican backing for absentee ballots has declined over the last decade.
The tension between those two positions is real. But the constitutional question before the justices is narrower than the political debate: what does federal law actually require?
Oral arguments offered early signals. US Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the Trump administration, laid out the government's position plainly:
"There could be a process where ballots are being received earlier, but that ballot box has to close on Election Day."
Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed on the logical boundary. If early voting is permissible, and no one disputes that it is, then what principle distinguishes a ballot cast before Election Day from one that arrives after it? "Why is that permissible?" she asked, probing the line the government was drawing. She followed up: "If we're just going to say historically it just needs to look like it always looked, how come those features fall out?"
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to note the difficulty of the distinction, remarking, "Maybe you're not saying anything other than, well, that's different."
The Supreme Court faces a crush of pending opinions as the term winds down, and Watson is among the most consequential. The court's conservative supermajority, Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, appeared more sympathetic to arguments about restoring confidence in the electoral process, the Post reported. The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, appeared more skeptical.
Kagan offered the sharpest pushback from the left:
"It just seems inconceivable that on the basis of this kind of evidence, we would reject these practices that are so entrenched in 30 states."
Entrenched or not, the question is whether those practices square with the statute. Practices can be widespread and still be wrong. The court has overturned longstanding state laws before when they conflicted with federal authority.
Whatever the justices decide, the Los Angeles primary has given the RNC's argument a vivid exhibit. Nearly a week after voters went to the polls, the city still could not say who had earned the second slot in the mayoral runoff against Karen Bass. Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman remained in limbo.
President Trump weighed in Monday on Truth Social, writing: "Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!" He added in a separate post: "Now they'll be working on great guy Steve Hilton. Won't have results for, possibly, TWO WEEKS, according to officials."
Trump's frustration with drawn-out ballot counts is not new. In 2020, he and other Republicans highlighted uncertainties about mail-in ballot tallies in the presidential election. His former attorney general, Bill Barr, said there was not evidence of fraud widespread enough to alter that year's outcome, and dozens of court cases did not produce rulings that shifted any ballot tallies to deny Joe Biden's victory. Since Trump's return to the White House, his Department of Justice has been investigating some aspects of the election that took place in Georgia.
The distinction matters. Fraud and incompetence are different problems, but they feed the same public distrust. You do not need to believe an election was stolen to believe that a system incapable of producing results within a week is broken. The court's recent willingness to intervene in electoral disputes, including congressional redistricting, suggests the justices understand that election mechanics carry constitutional weight.
The Watson decision could land in several places. The court might issue a narrow ruling that applies only to Mississippi's specific statute. Or it could establish a broader principle that Election Day means what the federal law says it means, the day by which all ballots must be received, not merely postmarked.
A broad ruling would force at least 14 states and the District of Columbia to overhaul their mail-in ballot deadlines. California, New York, and Texas are among the states with laws allowing late-arriving ballots postmarked by Election Day. The Post noted that federal election law also provides flexibility to modify the voting period under extraordinary circumstances, which could preserve some emergency exceptions even under a strict reading.
For Democrats, the stakes are obvious. Mail-in voting has become a pillar of their turnout strategy. A ruling that closes the ballot box on Election Day would require voters to plan further ahead, or vote in person. That is not disenfranchisement. It is the same expectation that applied to every American voter for most of the nation's history.
The political fallout from recent Supreme Court decisions on electoral rules has shown that both parties adjust quickly when the legal landscape shifts. States that lose their grace periods would have months to update procedures before the next federal election cycle.
Set aside the legal arguments for a moment and consider what delayed counts actually do to voters. A resident of Los Angeles who stood in line or mailed a ballot has no idea, nearly a week later, who won. That voter cannot hold anyone accountable. That voter cannot plan. That voter is left to wonder whether the process is working at all.
This is not a partisan complaint. It is a structural failure. France counts paper ballots by hand on election night. India, the world's largest democracy, produces results within days of a staggered multi-week vote. California, with all its wealth and technology, cannot tell its own residents who made a mayoral runoff.
When Democratic leaders invest in court races and lose, they blame the system. When Republican voters ask why it takes two weeks to count ballots, they are told to be patient. Patience is a virtue. But accountability is a requirement.
The RNC's legal argument in Watson is not about suppressing votes. It is about enforcing a deadline that Congress already wrote into law. Every other deadline in civic life, tax filings, court filings, registration deadlines, carries consequences for missing it. The question is why Election Day should be the one deadline that does not actually mean anything.
The justices heard the arguments in March. The country saw the consequences play out in Los Angeles this month. A ruling is expected before the court's summer recess, and it could reshape how America counts its votes.
If Election Day is supposed to mean something, it ought to mean something. The Supreme Court now has the chance to say so.
