Supreme Court Rejects Trump Mail Ballot Restrictions

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to revive new mail ballot restrictions before the midterm elections, allowing states to continue sending ballots under the procedures they have used for years as voting is already underway.

The unsigned majority decision left in place lower court rulings that blocked the administration’s plan. Justice Brett Kavanaugh concurred with the ruling, while Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay,” the majority wrote.

The case carried major stakes because nearly one-third of the country votes by mail, The Guardian reported. Election officials said there was no practical way to carry out a sweeping overhaul in the final weeks before the midterms. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.

The Trump administration’s plan would require states to use a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that did not comply.

A whistleblower report said the Postal Service requirements could result in millions of mail ballots never being sent because the portal had not been properly built and a single bar code error could cause an entire batch of ballots to be rejected, according to The Guardian.

Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions, arguing that the president lacks constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election.” Lower courts agreed and blocked the plan, including in a preliminary injunction issued by a judge nominated by Trump.

The administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that federal control of the Postal Service allows it to set rules for mail ballot handling and that states could comply in time. The federal government had won an earlier procedural decision at the Supreme Court, but the justices did not decide the legality of the plan at that stage.

Kavanaugh wrote in concurrence that he would have supported the legality of the executive order if not for the compressed timeline. He said the timing violated the Administrative Procedure Act “because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

Alito, joined by Thomas, wrote in dissent that the Postal Service has broad authority over the mail and that Congress gave it power to impose restrictions. He said the government has a strong interest in enforcing the executive order “to better detect election fraud.”

Alito also addressed concerns about disruption so close to the midterms, writing that while he “takes that problem very seriously,” it was not enough to justify blocking the rules. He added that much of the delay was the fault of the plaintiffs, who subjected the government “to months of premature litigation and a series of injunctions that this Court later determined were likely issued without jurisdiction.”

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, though he has used mail voting himself, including this year, The Guardian reported.