from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday,

March 24th. Now we'll look at the implications of yesterday's Supreme Court hearing on mail-in ballots,

specifically the deadline for mailing in

those ballots or for those ballots to be received. This could change the law and what you need

to know in New York and many other states. It actually suggests the question, what is

election day, the term election day, actually mean. Is it a deadline for voters to drop their ballots off at the mailbox?

Or the deadline for officials to have the ballot in hand?

That was the central question.

And it may seem narrow, but the implications, by all accounts, are pretty large. The central question in the case, Watson versus

Republican National Committee, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday. We'll play a

couple of clips. And it stems from a COVID-era Mississippi law that allowed mail andin ballots to be counted as long as they were

postmarked by Election Day and currently 14 states, including both New York and New Jersey,

plus some U.S. territories in addition to those 14 states, D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin

Islands, they all have similar grace periods in their election

laws. And this doesn't even factor in American citizens abroad. This is a big issue for

members of the military who rely on mail-in ballots to cast their votes. So now we're going to

recap the arguments, heard at the Supreme Court yesterday yesterday and break down some of the implications of what the journalists in the courtroom are saying is a likely ruling against the grace period.

My guest is Carrie Levine, editor-in-chief of Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization that provides local reporting on

elections and voting. Hi, Carrie, thanks for doing this. Welcome to WNYC. Hi. Thanks so much for having me. Do you want to say anything more about the actual legal dispute here, did I oversimplify it by saying this is simply about the difference between a mail and

ballot having to be postmarked by Election Day or received by Election Day?

I think that's a lot what it is about, actually. I think you summarized it really well.

The federal statute said Election Day define Election Day as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November for the general election.

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