The Midterms: Time, Place, and Trump

President Trump, with the midterms rapidly approaching, is asking the Supreme Court to back his efforts to ensure the integrity of the voting. Federal judges have obstructed Mr. Trump’s policy moves designed to confirm that only citizens can cast ballots. His solicitor general, John Sauer, warns the Nine that if the interference by lower court judges is not reversed, there is a risk that “the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud.”The legal dispute centers on an executive order signed in March by Mr. Trump. The president’s order directed the creation of lists of citizens in each state, aiming to make sure that mailed ballots were sent to only those eligible to vote. Judges balked, in part because states typically have broad jurisdiction over election procedures, including what the Constitution calls “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives.”Yet the same national parchment assigns federal legislators a role in this process. Of election policy, the Constitution ordains that “the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” Mr. Trump points to his own authority under federal law to ensure sound elections, and the federal government’s obligation to “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”That guarantee is found in Article IV, Section 4 of the United States Constitution. Twenty-three states and the Columbia District took to the federal court at Boston to stop Mr. Trump’s executive order. These Democratic-run states reckon that election rules are the province of the states and Congress. What the Constitution gives to the president is the obligation to make sure the laws are faithfully executed.Despite that, the district and circuit judges in effect froze Mr. Trump’s order. He appealed to the Supreme Court to lift the pause. On August 24, the high court agreed, noting that the president’s order was “designed to maintain public confidence in federal elections.” The high court’s majority explained that the order is “an internal directive from the President to his subordinates” requiring that “certain agencies pursue certain policies.” The Trump order, per the high court majority, “neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the Executive Branch.” The majority reckoned, too, that Mr. Trump was “likely to prevail on the merits of its argument” that the federal district judge at Boston, Indira Talwani, nominated to the bench by President Obama, “lacked jurisdiction to enter the judgment” against the president.The high court reasoned that federal agencies hadn’t even had a chance to impose Mr. Trump’s directive. The postal service took advantage of the high court’s reprieve to begin issuing rules in line with Mr. Trump’s order. Yet within days, Judge Talwani ruled that the postal regulations were, in effect, a dead letter. Messrs. Trump and Sauer had to return to the high court to lift Judge Talwani’s ruling, even as an appeal is pending at the First Circuit. Mr. Sauer argues that Judge Talwani’s latest order is “materially identical” to the ruling lifted by the Nine. That suggests the high court could again move to overrule her. It’s hard, after all, to disagree with Mr. Sauer’s appraisal that chicanery in the handling of mailed ballots amounts to “a particularly pernicious species of fraud that dilutes the votes of lawful voters” and “prevents election results from reflecting the will of the American people.”

The Midterms: Time, Place, and Trump

The Midterms: Time, Place, and Trump

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