Trump’s attempts to regulate voting by mail for the midterm elections were just blocked by the Supreme Court. – Just weeks before the midterms, the Trump administration’s attempt to severely restrict mail-in voting was denied by the Supreme Court.
With conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting, the court affirmed a lower court’s injunction preventing the USPS from enacting new regulations regarding who is eligible to receive a mail-in ballot prior to the November election. The court was split 7-2.
States would have been required by this new regulation to provide lists of eligible voters to the Postal Service, which would subsequently verify that only those on the list received ballots. Such a job is not usually held by the USPS.
In a concurring opinion with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated, “The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction.”
However, Kavanaugh did state that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority.” However, because state and local election officials do not have enough time to fairly execute the regulation prior to the elections, enforcing it in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious.
Prior to the elections in November, voting by mail has already started in a few states, making it even more challenging for Americans to cast ballots nationwide.
This is a significant setback for President Donald Trump, who has long denounced mail-in voting, claiming without proof that it caused election fraud. It is also the most recent legal setback the president and his administration have encountered in their multifaceted strategy to erode confidence in US elections.
A request for comment regarding the decision was not answered by the USPS or the White House.
In an email statement, Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar said, “Today, Donald Trump lost another battle in his unconstitutional war to choose his own voters, and the American people are winners.” Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate guy in Washington, and this decision upholds what our Constitution has always said. The court’s decision to protect this fundamental principle is praised by Democratic secretaries of state, and we are prepared to combat any attempt to incite chaos, fear, or intimidation during our elections.
Since the president signed an executive order titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” in March, there has been a dispute over mail-in voting. All states were required by the order to provide a list of voters who will receive mail-in ballots to the Postal Service. In response, the USPS may decline to deliver ballots to voters who were not on the lists or who did not adhere to the new regulations regarding barcodes and envelopes.
Before the Trump administration appealed the decisions to the Supreme Court in July, federal courts swiftly invalidated most of the executive order’s provisions. The conservative court made an ideological decision last month to approve the new regulations, ruling that the states that attempted to halt them lacked standing because the regulations had not yet been put into effect.
Following the decision, a USPS whistleblower asserted that the online gateway for the new regulations had been hurriedly assembled without the care and attention required for such a crucial piece of software.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, who revealed the whistleblower’s warning, wrote to the postmaster general, “The whistleblower’s allegations make clear that USPS lacks the technical or operational capability needed to effectively implement the [executive order’s] provisions in a way that safeguards every citizen’s right to vote in the upcoming midterm elections.” “In spite of this, the Trump administration seems determined to proceed with USPS’s faulty plans, regardless of the mayhem they may cause.”
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