The request came after the Supreme Court lifted a block in a similar case that prevented the Postal Service policy aiming to track barcodes on mailed ballots.
Supreme Court gives Trump win in mail ballot dispute
The Supreme Court backed part of President Trump’s executive order cracking down on mail-in ballots ahead of the midterm elections.
The Justice Department urged a judge to allow the U.S. Postal Service to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting, after the Supreme Court lifted one of her two blocks against the policy.
But even if the blocks in both cases are lifted, opponents of the policy are expected to continue fighting in court, to prevent the restrictions from being placed on the Nov. 3 election.
The court battle came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March directing agencies to compile a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and to use federal data to help state election officials verify which voters are eligible.
The Postal Service proposed that states provide the individual barcodes associated with every mail-in ballot, to check them as they are districted to help prevent fraud. A group of 23 states challenged the policy in one lawsuit and the League of Women Voters filed a similar lawsuit that argued the Postal Service has no role in the administration of elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts blocked the policy in both cases. In one, the block applied to the 23 states and in the other it was nationwide.
The Supreme Court overturned the block Aug. 24 on the states’ lawsuit because it came before the Postal Service had finalized the policy days earlier. But the nationwide block remains in place.
The unsigned decision said it “does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful.”
“On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote in the unsigned opinion.
The Justice Department asked Talwani on Aug. 25 to lift the nationwide block under the same logic as the states’ case. The department quoted the Supreme Court ruling that the judge relied “on a string of speculations” and made a decision based on “future events that may not occur as anticipated, or indeed may not occur at all.”
Opponents of the policy have strived to prevent it being put in place because of concerns it would confuse voters and discourage voting.
But the department said the opponents could change their lawsuits to argue against the final version of the policy.