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.
Midterm ballots are already being mailed to voters even while the courts continue to consider whether the U.S. Postal Service can be involved in deciding who gets a mail-in ballot.
Twenty states send mail-in ballots to voters in the next week or already have, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The federal deadline to send ballots to military and overseas voters is at least 45 days before the election, which is also the week of Sept. 14.
For months, election officials at the state and local level have directed voters worried about their ballots being returned to place ballots in drop boxes, if available, or take them directly to a local election office.
Two dozen states have challenged a new Postal Service rule, finalized weeks before the election, as unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani placed the rule on hold, saying it would be impossible to carry out in time for this year’s elections. On Sept. 10, the 1st Circuit rejected President Donald Trump’s request to let the changes take effect. The administration took the unusual step of appealing to the Supreme Court before the appeals court weighed in. That decision could come any day.
The rule, which the Postal Service announced in May and finalized Aug. 26 in response to an executive order Trump signed in March, requires state and local election officials to submit voters’ names and addresses to USPS through a portal that is not yet available.
The Postal Service can refuse to deliver ballots that don’t meet the new rules or bear the name of a voter who is not on the list. The rule also establishes new design requirements, including a tracking barcode for mail-in ballot envelopes, that states must create and submit to the USPS for approval.
The Supreme Court is weighing whether the rules can be implemented for this election or be put on hold while the legal challenges continue. It will not address the constitutionality of the rule or Trump’s executive order.
USPS did not answer questions about whether ballots received by mail before the Supreme Court decides whether the stay remains can be returned by mail to election officials.
Activists and election officials are concerned that the rapidly changing and legally uncertain fight so close to the elections will lead to fewer mail-in ballots being submitted. Control of mail-in ballots could determine the outcome of the midterms.
Nearly 30% of voters cast a mail ballot in the 2024 election. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, according to the MIT Election Data & Science Lab.
What elections look like differs widely across the country because the Constitution leaves election administration to the states. That means the USPS voting rule would require changes to ballots and envelopes – most of which are either already printed or in the process of being printed – for 10,000 different state and local elections to in order for people to vote by mail.
Mail-in voting began in North Carolina on Sept. 4. It begins in Wisconsin on Sept. 17 and in Idaho, Minnesota, New York and Virginia on Sept. 18. Other states follow soon after.
A bipartisan group of election officials – including Republican secretaries of state – told the Supreme Court the rule is simply too disruptive to implement now. GOP officials in Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Georgia and Kansas, plus Utah’s lieutenant governor and roughly two dozen more local election officials, signed onto a friend of the court brief which took no position on the rule’s legality but stated that “late changes breed confusion, that confusion keeps eligible voters from voting, and that a chaotic election erodes confidence in the result.”
Regardless of if Supreme Court’s decides to lift the stay and let the mail voting restrictions take effect or not, legal challenges to the requirements will continue in a federal district court in Boston.
What happens in limbo?
Several state and local election officials have told USA TODAY that they are moving forward with their plans and complying with states laws governing when ballots must be sent unless explicitly told by the courts they must comply with the new rule.
“As far as citizens and the clerks are informed across the state, it is business as usual,” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, said.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, told USA TODAY, “We’re taking a wait and see approach.”
Some offices have tried to get envelopes approved under the new rule just in case. In an attempt to comply, Leon County, Florida, submitted its envelopes to USPS. They were rejected due to a minor spacing issue, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, which is part of the USA TODAY Network.
The elections office was informed by email Sept. 2 that a line saying “return service requested” was too close to the office’s return address. The two fields are supposed to be a quarter of an inch apart under Postal Service requirements. On the outgoing envelopes, which Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley’s office has used since the 2024 election, the two fields are separated by about 0.236 of an inch.
Earley said he plans to use the envelopes for roughly 32,000 vote by mail ballots anyway, citing a lack of time to get new ones ahead of the state’s Sept. 24 deadline to send them.
“There is not enough time, even for a rush request, to have these envelopes corrected and produced,” he said in an email. “And notably, these exact same envelopes have been used to mail many tens of thousands of ballots to Leon County voters in the 2024 elections and in the 2026 primary election without incident.”
What happens if the Supreme Court rejects the stay?
If the Supreme Court rejects the stay, the rule will likely be implemented for the 2026 midterm election as challenges to the constitutionality of the rule continue.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis has told USA TODAY that the USPS rule “was proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
How much of the preparatory work has been completed is unclear, but USPS has provided some detail on its website.
Ballot envelopes will have to comply with three new standards. Envelope designs must be reviewed and approved by the Postal Service. Each ballot envelope must include a official Election Mail logo, be able to be scanned by Postal Service machines and bear a unique Postal Service barcode connected to each voter.
States must create lists of voters who are approved to receive mail ballots and upload the lists to a new Postal Service portal. USPS will deliver mail ballots only to the voters on these lists, which must include name, address and the unique barcode.
A whistleblower has warned that the technology developed by the U.S. Postal Service to carry out the order could “derail the midterm elections,” saying it hasn’t been properly tested and risks “catastrophic failure” if implemented.
“Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all,” the complaint states, while “warning of catastrophic failure which could derail the midterm elections.”
A Postal Service spokesperson has said the agency is “carefully reviewing” the issues raised by the whistleblower. The agency has spent months developing a “simple, secure, and efficient” mail ballot system, and the work was “conducted in a manner consistent with court orders,” the spokesperson told USA TODAY.
Lastly, when states take their mail ballots to a Postal Service facility, the envelopes will be checked to see if they comply with the new regulations, including if the envelopes meet the new design specifications and have the required barcodes. Many jurisdictions send out tens of thousands, or even millions, of ballots in bulk mailings.
What if the stay remains in place?
If the Supreme Court allows the lower court’s stay to remain in place while it hears arguments about whether the rule is constitutional, USPS will not be allowed to implement the rule for 2026.
Election plans, which were made months, or even years, before early voting begins, will be allowed to continue as scheduled. Envelopes purchased months ago, some of which had stamps affixed weeks ago, will be filled with ballots and mailed out in accordance with state law.
Contributing: Maureen Groppe and Jeff Burlew