Swing State Supreme Court Upholds Ruling To Count Mail Ballots Without Postmarks Up To Three Days Post-Election

The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed Monday a lower court’s ruling that mail ballots arriving up to three days after the Nov. 5 election can be counted, regardless of whether they bear a postmark.

The verdict upholds a previous lower court’s decision and expands the scope of the state law mandating that such ballots be counted when a postmark “cannot be determined,” according to the ruling. The ruling marks a setback for the Republican National Committee (RNC), which maintained that the law should only cover ballots with unreadable postmarks.

The court’s majority opinion argued that dismissing a vote mailed on or before election day due to missing postmarks from postal errors would contravene public policy. The justices argued that no valid reason exists to differentiate between ballots with smeared or illegible postmarks and those completely lacking one.

“If a voter properly and timely casts their vote by mailing their ballot before or on the day of the election, and through a post office omission the ballot is not postmarked, it would go against public policy to discount that properly cast vote,” Nevada’s majority opinion reads.

Justices said they acknowledged the RNC‘s standing due to competitive injury, yet they upheld the lower court’s decision, noting the RNC’s unlikely success in their case, according to the court document. The justices also said both interpretations of the law are reasonable but highlighted discussions among lawmakers during the bill’s passage about allowing the counting of ballots without postmarks.