The Supreme Court will decide whether to toss out thousands of ballots

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case claiming that, for many decades, states have been counting ballots that should have been tossed out entirely.

The premise of the GOP’s argument in Watson is that an 1872 law providing that federal elections shall take place on “the Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year” requires late-arriving ballots to be tossed — and somehow no one noticed this restriction for more than 150 years. The GOP sued Mississippi, which is one of several states that count ballots that are mailed before Election Day, but that do not arrive until afterward.

In recent elections, Democrats have been more likely to mail their ballots than Republicans, and President Donald Trum