Opinion | Rocci J. Stucci
Polls close tonight, and somewhere on a ship or a forward base there is a sailor or a Marine whose ballot is still in the mail. I think that ballot should count if it was cast and mailed by Election Day. Military ballots after Election Day are not a loophole. In Florida, they have been the law for years, and almost nobody noticed.
Here is what our own state does. Florida requires ordinary mail ballots to reach the county supervisor of elections by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Overseas voters get a narrow exception in general elections: if the ballot is postmarked or dated by Election Day and arrives within 10 days, it counts, under section 100.191 of the Florida Statutes, as the Clay County Supervisor of Elections lays it out. A red state with a tight election calendar already decided that the troops get a few extra days.
What the Supreme Court actually decided
In June, the Supreme Court settled the national fight. In Watson v. Republican National Committee, decided June 29, the Court ruled 5 to 4 that federal law does not stop states from counting mail ballots that are cast by Election Day and arrive afterward. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, with Justice Kavanaugh joining most of the dissent.
The detail that matters most to military families sits in the majority opinion itself. It notes that “roughly 30 States count military and overseas voters’ absentee ballots that arrive after election day.” If the case had gone the other way, a lot of those state rules for troops would have been in doubt.
Barrett put the principle in one line: “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received.” For a guy who spent 20 years in aerospace manufacturing, that is just how a process works. You judge the part by when it was finished, not by how long the truck took to deliver it.
The mail is the weak link, and the numbers show it
This is not a made-up problem. The Pentagon’s own Federal Voting Assistance Program, in its 2024 post-election report to Congress, found that 42 percent of active-duty members voted in 2024, down from 47 percent in 2020. Of active-duty members surveyed, 12.4 percent said they expected to get a ballot and never did.
Most military and overseas ballots that make it back do get counted. Federal election data cited by the Overseas Vote Foundation puts it above 96 percent in 2024. But when one is thrown out, the most common reason is that it arrived late. Military mail to Europe is targeted at 7 to 9 days and to the Pacific at 7 to 13, and those are targets, not promises.
The best case for a hard deadline
The other side deserves a fair hearing, and its argument is not silly. Election Day is in federal law for a reason. A hard deadline gives everyone one clear finish line. Results come in faster, and nobody gets to claim something fishy happened in the gap. Justice Alito warned that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections.” When a lead shifts a week after the polls close, trust takes a hit, whether or not anything went wrong.
I take that seriously. Confidence matters. But here is my answer. A postmark rule for the troops is not an open door. The vote still has to be cast by Election Day. Florida’s 10-day window applies only to overseas voters, only in certain elections, and only to ballots dated on time. These voters registered and requested ballots in advance, so clerks know they are coming. And the alternative is telling a 19-year-old on a carrier that her ballot was valid when she sealed it and worthless because the Navy’s mail was slow. I don’t see how that builds anyone’s confidence.
Where both parties get it wrong
Both teams have played games with this. Some on the right treat every ballot that shows up after Election Day as suspect, and the troops get lumped in. Some on the left hold up military voters as the face of every grace period, then move on once the court fight is over. You can argue about rules for domestic mail ballots all day. I’m not settling that one here. The military question is narrower and easier, and it should not be a team sport.
Other election fights this fall, like the court ruling on the DOJ voter rolls policy, are real debates. This one shouldn’t be.
What I’d fix before 2028
A grace period is a patch, not a fix. The real fix is getting ballots out and back faster. Federal law already requires states to send ballots to military and overseas voters 45 days before a federal election. Every state should let troops get their blank ballot electronically and track the return. Commanders should treat voting assistance like any other readiness item, with time on the schedule and a named officer who owns it. And Congress should hold the Pentagon to its own numbers when FVAP reports back after this election.
Veterans Day is a week from tomorrow, and we will hear a lot of speeches about the people who served. If a service member did their part on time, count the vote. We covered how Veterans Day itself was written into law, and this belongs in the same spirit. For more columns like this one, see our Opinion section.
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Rocci J. Stucci is the founder and CEO of Stucci Media and host of The Rocci Stucci Show.
