Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court To Allow New Mail Voting Regulations To Take Effect as Voters Begin Receiving Ballots

As voters begin receiving their mail-in ballots for the midterm elections, the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow new regulations to take effect that would empower the United States Postal Service to deny ballots to states that do not comply with its voter validation rules. A district court judge has blocked the regulations from taking effect, saying that the rules may violate states’ rights. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Postal Service to establish new rules governing the use of mail-in ballots. The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and the state of California promptly sued, arguing that attempts to take federal control of mail-in voting was illegal. Last month, the Postal Service finalized new regulations which would bar the delivery of mailed ballots to election offices if a state refuses to give the federal government lists of eligible voters, including identifying information like full names and home addresses. The regulations require that every envelope which is used to mail a ballot include a bar code so that the ballot can be traced back to a specific voter. On Friday, Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts paused those rules from taking effect, finding that the League of Women Voters and the State of California are likely to prevail in their arguments that the changes may violate the principles of states’ rights and certain federal laws. The administration then appealed that decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday before going directly to the Supreme Court on Sunday morning. In their brief to the nation’s highest court, lawyers for the administration argue that they are imposing “only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots.”“The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures,” the lawyers argue. “The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”Last month, Judge Talwani issued a preliminary injunction against the rule, stating that it may be logistically impossible to impose such requirements on states due to the closeness of the midterm elections. The Supreme Court then lifted that injunction in a six-to-three decision. The majority of the court said that Judge Talwani had moved too quickly to block the mail ballot rule from taking effect. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Mr. Trump was trying to “interfere” with execution of the 2026 midterm elections. “Because I believe the structure of the Executive Order, the Government’s representations, and the equities counsel against emergency relief requiring the States to wait to bring their serious challenges to the Executive Order, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a separate and scathing dissent, calling the president’s order a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”The questions surrounding the new Postal Service rules are likely to be resolved swiftly as voters are already receiving their ballots with less than 60 days to go until the elections. North Carolina began sending out ballots on Friday, and nine other politically diverse states are scheduled to begin mailing out ballots within the next two weeks. North Carolina election administrators included the barcodes on their envelopes and provided accompanying voter identification information to the federal government in compliance with the new Postal Service regulations.

Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court To Allow New Mail Voting Regulations To Take Effect as Voters Begin Receiving Ballots

Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court To Allow New Mail Voting Regulations To Take Effect as Voters Begin Receiving Ballots

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