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Why Trump's Mail-In Ballot Win Is Likely Too Little, Too Late
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. President Donald Trump cleared one hurdle yesterday on his quest to impose sweeping new restrictions on mail-in voting . But with the first ballots for November’s midterm elections due to be sent in little more than a week, the administration is fighting a losing battle against undefeated opponent Father Time.
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted an injunction that had blocked parts of Trump’s March executive order that sought to tighten federal oversight of mail-in voting, granting Trump a legal victory.
Except, it wasn’t really a legal victory.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court ruled that Democratic-led states had simply challenged Trump’s executive order too early, and lifted the injunction related to their challenge. However, another injunction that concerns the legality of Trump’s mail-ballot provisions remains in place—a point the Court went out of its way to highlight in yesterday’s ruling.
"The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful," the statement read. The separate nationwide injunction blocks USPS from implementing Trump’s mail-ballot provisions for the November 3 election.
With North Carolina set to distribute ballots to absentee voters from September 4, the administration may well win the legal war on mail-in voting, but the battle for the midterms might already be over.
Trump’s March 31 executive order set out a raft of changes to federal election administration.
It directs the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, to produce state-by-state lists of U.S. citizens who will be adults as of Election Day and provide them to each state’s chief election official. Separately, election officials would have to submit voter information to USPS through a federal system before outbound mail ballots are accepted.
The order also calls for tougher investigations into allegations of illegal voting practices, and seeks to standardize USPS-approved mail-ballot envelopes with unique tracking barcodes in an attempt to eliminate voter fraud .
For Trump and his Republican lawmakers running in the midterms, this final provision is arguably the most important. While U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s injunction remains in place, USPS cannot refuse to transmit existing mail ballots that fail to meet Trump’s standardization requirements. According to USPS’s own rules, once an outbound ballot has been accepted into the mailstream, it cannot later be "intercepted, returned, or delayed."
Meanwhile, the election countdown clock keeps ticking.
Implementing the new system is not simply a matter of flicking a switch, either. Election officials would have to meet new envelope, barcode and data-submission requirements before presenting future federal ballot mailings to USPS.
Every day spent fighting over those rules is another day states spend conducting the election without them.
None of this renders a future Trump victory over the courts inconsequential.
If the remaining injunction is lifted soon, USPS could still apply the regulations to federal ballot mailings that have not yet been sent. Under its final rule, mailings that fail the new acceptance requirements can be rejected and returned to election officials to correct before they are resubmitted.
Given the scale of mail voting, even a partial change could attract enormous attention. Mail ballots accounted for almost a third of the turnout for the 2024 presidential election, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission; states reported almost 48 million mail ballots returned by voters, of which more than 47.6 million were counted.
The regulations set out in Trump’s executive order are not limited to the midterms. If they survive the legal challenges and remain in force, they would apply to all future federal general, special and runoff elections. Only primaries and ballots covered by the federal law governing military and overseas voters would remain exempt.
Beyond the midterms, no state could reasonably claim its officials do not have the time or resources necessary to implement the required standardization of barcodes, envelopes and data systems.
Even if Trump’s regulations arrive too late to reshape the midterms, the fight over them could last well beyond Election Day.
Public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections is already fragile. Just 55 percent of Americans said in July that they were confident the midterms would be conducted fairly and accurately, down from 61 percent two years ago and 64 percent in August 2022.
The administration, meanwhile, says its new postal rules are intended to reduce the risk of fraud and maintain public confidence in federal elections.
Trump has argued incessantly that mail voting is vulnerable to widespread fraud, including after his defeat to Joe Biden in 2020 presidential election. Should GOP candidates perform badly in November midterms, the injunction preventing his mail ballot regulations from taking effect would constitute a full clip of political ammunition for Trump to unleash.
His own Justice Department found no fraud on a scale capable of changing the 2020 result, but that has not stopped the president from blaming mail voting for one big defeat. If the midterms are not kind to the GOP, one could imagine the same excuse will do just fine.
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