Trump brings mail-in ballot fight back to Supreme Court

The president’s push to restrict mail-in ballots teed up a showdown over voting just months before the midterm election.WASHINGTON (CN) — The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court on Thursday with a renewed request to restrict mail-in ballots ahead of the November election.A judge put President Donald Trump’s executive order on ice again after a brief procedural win from the high court last week. Solicitor General John Sauer called for the justices to intervene, claiming the lower court’s continued prejudgment of the rule was baseless and dealt a serious setback to the president’s goals.“If the Postal Service cannot implement its rule in a mandatory manner, the harms to voter integrity with respect to ballots mailed while the court’s order is in place cannot be undone even if the government later prevails on the merits of its appeal,” the government wrote.Trump signed an executive order in April that would create lists of eligible voters in each state and instruct the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to verified voters. Under the “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” order, states would be required to update mail ballots with secure envelopes featuring unique tracking barcodes. Federal funding could be withheld from states and localities that do not comply.A Massachusetts court blocked key sections of the order at the behest of Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia, who claimed the proposed changes were unlawful and could lead to chaos ahead of November’s midterm elections.But the Supreme Court found the states’ challenge came too early, determining the government hadn’t taken action to enforce the order.Since then, the USPS published a rule requiring states to use new, scannable ballot envelopes. The government said it would not deliver mail ballots to states that do not share voter data with the agency, and it would deliver only ballots that met certain criteria.Democratic officials argue the proposed changes posed a high risk of errors and a limited window to correct them. They claim the voter-verification and ballot-interception program was “disastrous from a practical perspective” and would likely disenfranchise voters.Even if it was possible to revise their voting systems before November, Democratic states said Trump does not have authority to grant USPS such far-reaching new powers and responsibilities. They warned against turning the agency into a partisan instrument.U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked USPS from implementing the plan for 14 days, a period that expires Sept. 10. During a hearing Thursday, Talwani questioned the rush to enforce the changes ahead of this year’s midterm elections.But the Trump administration claimed the stay had the practical effect of an injunction and called on the Supreme Court to intervene before Talwani issued a final determination on whether the order should remain blocked.“Without relief, the court’s order will irreparably harm the federal government and the public by barring implementation of an important federal policy to protect the mails from being used to commit voter fraud, with respect to countless ballots that will be mailed during further proceedings and cannot be retrieved,” the Trump administration wrote.The government defended the lawfulness of the rule, arguing it regulated U.S. mail, not federal elections.“While the states have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information,” the Trump administration wrote.Neither the statutes nor the Constitution contains or compels any such carveout from this type of core regulation of the use of federal mails.”Earlier this week, a whistleblower report claimed the USPS undertook a “risky and haphazard” approach to implementing Trump’s crackdown on mail-in voting. According to the report, the administration demanded an impossible timeframe for developing a ballot screening tool, forcing the agency to drop standard testing, troubleshooting and debugging processes.USPS plans to use the so-called “Federal Ballot Mail Portal” to decide whether certain ballots from state officials can be mailed to voters, according to the report. The whistleblower also claimed the agency continued work on the screening tool even after a federal judge blocked the executive order.The Supreme Court asked Democratic states and voting rights groups challenging the rule to submit a response to Trump’s application by the morning of Sept. 8.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads