Trump scores major win as Supreme Court clears way for mail-in voting order ahead of midterms
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump to move ahead with his executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much his administration can implement before the fast-approaching midterm elections.
The decision appears to leave room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump’s order. The U.S. Postal Service laid out how it would implement the order last week, but time is running short to impose major changes with some states beginning to send mail ballots to voters in just a few weeks.
Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, who has claimed that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of the voting method.
The case could be one of multiple voting-related challenges before the justices. The Justice Department had filed an emergency appeal asking the high court to allow work on implementing the changes before the midterms.
Trump’s executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists.
Trump signed the order in March titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” It directs federal officials to compile and transmit to states lists of confirmed U.S. citizens, and to update postal requirements for handling mail-in ballots. It also directs the attorney general to prioritize investigations and prosecutions of officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters, as well as withholding of federal funding from noncompliant states and localities.
The Justice Department turned to the high court after a three-judge appellate panel refused to lift an injunction against the administration that was issued by an Obama-appointed judge in Massachusetts. Two Biden appointees were in the panel majority, and the third judge, a Trump appointee, only partially agreed with them because he thought the states weren’t injured by simply being sent lists.
Yet California, 22 other states and the District of Columbia argued that even the lists aspect is harmful to them because of the threat of the federal government seeking prosecutions for state officials who send ballots to anyone not on the lists. “If it is really true that States are not required to do anything with the lists,” they told the justices, “then it is difficult to understand why the federal government is fighting so hard” to immediately implement Trump’s order.
On the postal part of the order, the states said, backing the administration would let the federal government “rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities.”
