14 WATSON v. REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE Opinion of the Court sophisticated methods of adjudicating voter qualifications. See ibid. Early voting would also be at risk, because in the 19th century, the polls were open only on election day itself. See, e.g., Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 37, §14 (1845); 1852 Ind. Acts p. 262; see also R. Bensel, The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 35–37 (2004). If these results were dictated by ordinary meaning, we would of course be bound to see them through. But historical practice, detached from statutory text, is not controlling. Statutes do not “tra[p] in amber” every contemporary practice on the same subject matter. United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680, 691 (2024). Moreover, even accepting plaintiffs’ interpretive approach, it is not clear why 19th-century election practices are dispositive. Plaintiffs focus on them because the first two election-day statutes were enacted in that period. But shortly after the third statute was enacted in 1914, absentee voting became popular again as a result of World War I—and this time, some States began counting absentee ballots received after election day.7 See 1918 Md. Laws, at 130; 1919 Kan. Sess. Laws, at 252–253; see also Cal. Political Code ch. 14, §§1359(b)–(c), 1360, at 363–364. If we interpret the election-day statutes by drawing inferences from state behavior, it is unclear why we cannot account for the time of the third statute too. And once we move beyond the 19th century, historical practice undercuts plaintiffs’ position. In any event, plaintiffs have another problem: Their interpretation of the election-day statutes is at odds with UOCAVA, which (as discussed) presupposes that States —————— 7 The dissent brushes off these World War I statutes as “short-lived outlier[s],” post, at 8, but relies heavily on Civil War mail-in voting statutes that were themselves “short-lived outlier[s],” see supra, at 10–12, and n. 3; Benton 314–315; see also post, at 12–13 (relying on a lone Montana state-court decision).