The Republican National Committee and others challenged Mississippi’s rule counting absentee ballots that are cast by Election Day but received within a short statutory period afterward. The Fifth Circuit held that federal election-day statutes preempted the state rule. The Supreme Court reversed. It held that the federal statutes establish the day on which voters must make their electoral choices, but do not require election officials to possess and count every timely cast ballot by the close of that day. A ballot completed and transmitted in accordance with state law by Election Day is not transformed into a later vote merely because it arrives afterward. The case was remanded for proceedings consistent with that interpretation.