Nearly a week after the Los Angeles mayoral primary, residents of the nation's second-largest city still do not know which candidate will face incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in a November runoff. Ballots are still being counted. And a pending Supreme Court case, one that has drawn far less attention than it deserves, could make that kind of delay a thing of the past.

The case is Watson v. Republican National Committee, and it asks a straightforward question: Does a federal statute that defines Election Day as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November mean what it says? Or can states keep accepting mail-in ballots for days afterward, so long as the envelope carries the right postmark?

The high court heard oral arguments in March. A decision is expected this month, before the justices leave for their summer recess. The ruling could apply narrowly to the Mississippi law at the center of the dispute, or it could reshape election administration in more than a dozen states, as the New York Post reported.

Los Angeles puts the problem on display

The Los Angeles mayor's race has become an unintentional exhibit for the RNC's argument. Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman are competing for the second slot in a runoff against Bass, but the outcome remains unknown days after voters went to the polls. President Trump posted on Truth Social on Monday, noting the delay and saying results may not arrive for "possibly, TWO WEEKS, according to officials."

RNC Chairman Joe Gruters seized on the spectacle. He told the Post that the situation in California speaks for itself:

"What's happening in California is a Democrat failure on full display. Nearly a week after the primary, it is completely unacceptable ballots are still being counted. That's why the RNC is aggressively fighting in the Supreme Court to stop ballots received after Election Day from being counted. Americans deserve timely election results they can trust."

That last line lands harder than it might have a few years ago. Delayed counts have become a recurring feature of elections in states that allow mail-in ballots to arrive well after the polls close. At least 14 states, along with California, New York, Texas, and the District of Columbia, have laws permitting late-arriving ballots, provided envelopes are postmarked by Election Day. Under the Mississippi practice at issue in the Watson case, mail-in ballots may arrive up to five days after the election date.

What the justices said in March

The oral arguments offered a preview of where the court may land, and the lines were not hard to read. The court's conservative supermajority, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, appeared more sympathetic to arguments that the late-ballot grace period undermines confidence in the electoral process.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed the point directly: "Why is that permissible?" she asked. She also challenged defenders of the status quo who leaned on historical practice, asking, "If we're just going to say historically it just needs to look like it always looked, how come those features fall out?"

Chief Justice John Roberts added his own skepticism: "Maybe you're not saying anything other than, well, that's different."

U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer, arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, laid out the government's position plainly:

"There could be a process where ballots are being received earlier, but that ballot box has to close on Election Day."

The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, were more skeptical of the RNC's reasoning. Kagan pointed to the breadth of the practice, noting that around 30 states have some form of grace period for absentee ballots, including provisions for military personnel and U.S. citizens abroad. She called the idea of overturning those arrangements difficult to fathom:

"It just seems inconceivable that on the basis of this kind of evidence, we would reject these practices that are so entrenched in 30 states."

Kagan also noted that federal election law provides flexibility to modify the voting period under extraordinary circumstances, a point that could narrow any ruling's reach.

The broader stakes

If the court rules broadly, the effects would ripple far beyond Mississippi. The RNC's argument rests on the plain text of the federal statute establishing Election Day. If the justices agree that the statute requires all ballots, including mail-in ballots, to be received by that date, states with late-arrival windows would have to rewrite their election codes before the next federal cycle.

That prospect is exactly what Democrats fear. DNC Chairman Ken Martin has called the RNC case part of the GOP's "relentless assault on mail-in voting." Surveys conducted by Pew Research show that most Americans still support vote-by-mail, though GOP backing for absentee ballots has declined over the last decade.

But the Republican argument is not really about whether people should be allowed to vote by mail. It is about when the counting stops. The distinction matters. A voter can mail a ballot weeks before Election Day. The question is whether states should keep their intake windows open for days after the election, and whether voters should have to wait a week or more to learn who won.

The GOP has launched a tracking website to record how long it takes for all ballots to be counted, turning the delays themselves into a political argument. In Los Angeles, that argument practically makes itself.

Confidence and consequences

Republicans have long argued that extended counting windows erode public trust. The 2020 presidential election amplified those concerns. Trump and other Republicans highlighted uncertainties about massive mail-in ballot tallies that year. Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, said there was not evidence of fraud widespread enough to alter the 2020 outcome, and dozens of court cases did not produce rulings that shifted ballot tallies to deny Joe Biden's victory. Since Trump's return to the White House, his DOJ has been investigating some aspects of the election that took place in Georgia.

None of that history settles the legal question before the court in Watson. The case is not about fraud. It is about the meaning of a statute, and whether "Election Day" means what ordinary readers would assume it means.

That is a cleaner, narrower argument than the sprawling fraud debates of 2020. And it is one that the court's conservative majority appeared, at least during oral arguments, inclined to take seriously.

What comes next

The decision could arrive any day. If the court rules narrowly, only Mississippi's five-day window goes away, and other states adjust at the margins. If it rules broadly, at least 14 states and the District of Columbia would face immediate pressure to overhaul their mail-ballot deadlines. Either way, the case will shape how Americans experience elections for years to come.

President Trump, for his part, has already framed the Los Angeles delays as evidence of a broken system. Posting about Spencer Pratt's race, he wrote: "Not possible for Spencer Pratt to have lost the L.A. runoffs after the big lead he had. 3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections!" He added that Steve Hilton's race faces the same drawn-out timeline.

Whether or not one shares that framing, the underlying frustration is real and widespread. Voters in a modern democracy should not have to wait two weeks to learn who won a city election. The technology exists. The logistics are solvable. What's missing is the political will, or, perhaps, the legal mandate.

The Supreme Court may be about to supply one. And if it does, California's week-long ballot marathons will be the exhibit that made the case.