Mail-in voting will ‘proceed as normal,’ after a Supreme Court decision criticized by President Donald Trump. Here’s what’s happening.
Trump tells Republican convention: If you don’t vote you ‘go to hell’
President Donald Trump told attendees at the Republican National Convention that they will “go to hell” if they don’t vote while leading a pledge.
The Supreme Court blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in ballots, delivering a major blow to the administration as it attempts to expand control over state-run elections ahead of the midterms.
In a 5-2 decision, the nation’s highest court declined to let the U.S. Postal Service screen mail-in ballots after they are received by state officials. In an opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with a lower court’s decision to block the order, writing that changing election procedures so close to the midterms would be “arbitrary and capricious.”
The decision marks one of Trump’s biggest losses on an issue that he has argued is vital to protecting the integrity of the U.S. electoral system, though his claims of widespread fraud have been repeatedly debunked. Some elections officials expressed relief at the decision, including in some states where ballots have already been sent to voters.
Still, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with its effort to assert more control over elections weeks before the midterms. The Department of Justice recently sent letters to dozens of elections officials demanding that they retain election records. The agency previously threatened to withhold some federal funding from states that don’t change their voting procedures.
Here’s what to know about the Supreme Court’s ruling:
Mail-in voting will ‘proceed as normal’
The Supreme Court’s decision allows states to send out mail-in ballots through the same process they’ve used for years. If the decision went the other way, officials would have had to make sweeping changes to allow the U.S. Postal Service to screen mail ballots.
Across the country, officials breathed a sigh of relief at the Supreme Court’s decision.
“Utahns can have confidence that the 2026 election will proceed as normal,” said Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre M. Henderson, a Republican who serves as the state’s top election official. Utah is among a group of states, including California, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon, where most votes are cast using mail ballots.
Tobias Read, a Democrat serving as Oregon’s elections chief, called the decision an “important victory for Oregon voters and the rule of law.”
“Our secure, fair and accurate vote-by-mail system will go forward as it always does,” he said. “Presidents don’t decide elections. The people do.”
Voting by mail has decreased since its peak during the COVID-19 pandemic. But nearly 30% of voters still cast a ballot that way in the 2024 elections. Research has shown that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail.
Trump slams Supreme Court for denying his executive order
In a lengthy statement on Truth Social, Trump described the decision as a “horrible, highly political, ruling.”
“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court, one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting ‘disaster,’ which is a laughing stock all over the World, and where we are the only country that has to endure such a Nation Destroying SCAM,” Trump wrote.
“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do – And now they have an open field to do so!” he continued, adding: “The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!”
What’s next?
Trump’s controversial order to restrict mail-in voting was one of several ways in which the administration has sought to assert more control over the nation’s elections process.
The Department of Justice has launched a state-by-state review to scrutinize how officials manage voter rolls and remove ineligible voters. The agency sent letters to dozens of states asking them to describe how they identify people who are felons, dead, nonresidents, or noncitizens, and how they remove them from their voter lists.
The department also sued Orange County, California, for not providing enough identifying information in response to a records request, and filed documents in support of lawsuits brought by the right-leaning group Judicial Watch that say Illinois and Oregon have not been removing enough people from their voter rolls.
In total, the DOJ has sued at least 30 states for unredacted voter lists. It has lost nearly two dozen of those cases, court records show. The rest are pending.
In early September, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asked the Justice Department to investigate whether voter systems that count votes from barcodes and QR codes are in compliance with federal standards.
Contributing: Sarah Wire and Erin Mansfield