The Justice Department earlier this week defended Mississippi's state law allowing officials to count mailed ballots that stretch past Election Day, reports the Washington Times.

"Counting ballots after Election Day that were mailed by Election Day fully complies with the Federal Election Day Statutes," Kristen Clarke, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, told a federal appeals court Tuesday.

"States already must perform many tasks after Election Day to complete the legal process of holding an election, and state officials have accepted timely-cast ballots that arrive after Election Day at least since the Civil War. Congress's longtime tolerance for post-Election-Day ballot receipt deadlines, and its purposes in enacting the Federal Election Day Statutes, confirm that such deadlines do not violate federal law."

Several Republican-controlled states have moved to tighten rules around mail voting following former President Donald Trump's loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

The Republican National Committee, the Mississippi Republican Party, a member of the state Republican Executive Committee and an election commissioner in one county filed a federal lawsuit in January against Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson and six local election officials challenging the state's law, arguing that the state improperly extends the federal election beyond the election date set by Congress and that, as a result, "timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots."

Mississippi and North Dakota are among several states that accept late-arriving mailed ballots as long as the ballots are postmarked on or before Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. That includes political swing states such as Nevada. Some states, including Colorado, Oregon, and Utah, rely heavily on mail voting.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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