Jay Willis is an attorney and a writer.

He covers the Supreme Court for his website, Balls and Strikes.

I tell you all that so you can understand that Jay is used to long, maybe even tiresome debates

about the precise definitions of words.

But even given all that, Jay says, this case going in front of the Supreme Court today, Watson v. RNC, it stands out.

One way to think about this case is it is a lot of fancy lawyers having a debate about what the phrase election day means.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, we're getting textual here, folks.

Watson v. RNC is concerned with the precise definition of election day because the plaintiffs here, including the Republican

National Committee, believe that mail-in voting is a kind of election day workaround,

a way for voters to get an extension on a deadline that is written into federal law.

This case is about a Mississippi law that a three-judge fifth circuit panel struck down.

The Mississippi law allows the state to count mail-in ballots if they are postmarked on election day

and arrive up to five business days later for counting.

A lot of states have laws like this, right?

That's right.

And the pro-state law side here makes this point repeatedly that I think it's about 30 states that have some version of a law like this.

And they are not all Democratic-controlled states.

There is sort of a bipartisan, somewhat of a bipartisan consensus here that giving both the

Postal Service and state election officials some time to count ballots that get stuffed

in the mailbox at the last minute is good for everybody.

Well, there has been bipartisan agreement.

...