Trump again appeals to Supreme Court on mail-voting restrictions with
midterm elections looming
[September 04, 2026]
By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, MICHAEL CASEY and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
BOSTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme
Court to reject an order by a federal judge that halts it from
implementing a new rule regulating mail ballots, hours after being
unable to tell that judge whether the computer system that would govern
the entire project was operational yet.
The administration filed its appeal the afternoon before mail ballots
were scheduled to be sent out by North Carolina, which on Friday kicks
off a wave of states shipping ballots out for the rapidly approaching
midterm election. Its appeal was part of a flurry of last-minute
litigation as the federal government struggles to implement President
Donald Trump's restrictions on mail ballots before the midterm elections
in November, and came even as legal wrangling over Trump’s executive
order continued in lower courts.
The high court's conservative majority previously allowed the
president’s plan to move ahead, but they have not decided whether it is
legal.
Under Trump’s executive order, the U.S. Postal Service could refuse to
deliver ballots from states that do not follow a uniform envelope style
and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal that was
apparently still inactive Thursday.
During a hearing in Boston, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani
repeatedly questioned Department of Justice attorney Michael Velchik
about whether the Postal Service could actually implement Trump's plan
from an executive order he issued last spring. The key piece is the
online portal, which would track tens of millions of mail ballots.
States would be required to upload their list of mail voters to the
portal to have ballots delivered, and if the data there didn't match
what was on the envelopes, the ballots would not be sent.
Unclear if key system has been set up
“I don’t even have a declaration from the Postal Service: ‘This is how
it will work.’ I don’t have it. I have nothing,” Talwani said, adding
later that it felt like the government was running an “experiment” to
see if the system would work in the upcoming election.
“As you sit here today, you can’t tell me the government has a program
ready to go?” Talwani asked.
Velchik repeated that the Postal Service would “fully implement the
rule” that it published last month, triggering the latest round of
litigation. He argued the main issue is whether Talwani has the legal
power to stop it.
“The $64,000 question is, is this authorized by the statute?” Velchik
said.
Talwani is considering whether to extend her temporary order barring the
Postal Service from requiring use of the system through Sept. 10. The
first state to send out all its mail ballots, North Carolina, is
scheduled to begin shipping them out Friday, with other states quickly
following.
Talwani has been here before. In June, she prohibited the administration
from implementing Trump's executive order for the November election,
ruling the changes came too close to voting for the federal government
to embark on such a project.
But the Supreme Court late last month ruled that Talwani's order was
premature because the Postal Service had not yet published regulations
governing how it would apply Trump's order. The agency did so just
before the high court ruling came down, prompting Democrats and voting
rights groups to swiftly re-file their lawsuits.
They counter that the president has no authority to set election rules,
which is a power designated by the Constitution to the states and, in
some cases, to Congress.
Tangled legal fight goes up to election deadlines
They won an initial victory with Talwani's 14-day restraining order. In
a sign of the pressures on the administration, its lawyers already
appealed that order to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, but
they added the Supreme Court appeal Thursday and urged the top justices
to act quickly.
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Illustrating the challenge, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the high
court justice designated to deal with appeals from the region, set a
Sept. 8 deadline for the plaintiffs to file their arguments, likely
pushing any decision into the middle of next week at the earliest.
Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his
2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses
that method to cast his own ballot.
Election officials say there's simply no way they can comply with
the Postal Service directives, which could require a complete
overhaul of their operations. Before it delivers mail ballots for
any state, the Postal Service would have to approve the design of
the envelopes that contain them and have the state upload a list of
voters receiving them to an online portal.
Some ballots have already gone out. A few municipalities in
Wisconsin opted to send mail ballots to voters earlier this week,
but Friday marks the full kickoff of voting as North Carolina starts
shipping its mail ballots to all voters who requested them.
The administration has contended the changes are relatively minor
and legal.
“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,” Trump's solicitor general, John Sauer, wrote in the
appeal.
Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU, one of the organizations that sued to
block the plan, said the administration is simply generating more
uncertainty.
“The only emergency here is the one the administration created,”
Lakin said in a statement. "The court’s temporary order preserves
the voting procedures Americans have relied on for years, and it
should stand.”
No red states have said they'll use system
Thursday's hearing before Talwani focused more on practicalities —
especially that the portal was still not active, while most election
offices have already printed their envelopes and ballots.
Velchik told the judge that the federal government is offering
states the choice to opt into the system, but the Postal Service has
yet to identify a single state that has done so. None of the 12
states that intervened in the lawsuit to argue the Trump
administration has the right to require the program have announced
that they have voluntarily opted into it.
Talwani scolded Missouri Solicitor General Lou Capozzi for arguing
on behalf of the project.
“You want the voters in your states to be disenfranchised,” Talwani
said. “I don't understand the interest.”
Capozzi said that was misinformation: “There is no risk that people
would be disenfranchised.”
A whistleblower report made public this week warns that the postal
system's requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never
being sent. The new rule requires all ballots to be physically
brought to post offices before being mailed to voters. But if a
single one's bar code registers an error, the whole batch gets
thrown out, even if it contains tens of thousands of legitimate
ballots.
___
Riccardi reported from Denver.
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