Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Order Restricting Mail Voting
Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Order Restricting Mail Voting
Trump Asks Supreme Court to Allow Order Restricting Mail Voting
The Trump administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow it to move forward with an extensive executive order restricting mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm elections.
The executive order, signed in March, would require states to hand over their eligible voter rolls to the federal government. It would mandate that the U.S. Postal Service refuse to mail ballots to those the administration determines are ineligible to vote. At one point, the postal service proposed to meet that requirement in part by only delivering ballots in states that had handed over their voter rolls.
The order would also require individualized tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes. Twenty-three states, all led by Democrats, challenged the executive order, saying it is unconstitutional and designed to suppress legal voters.
The Trump administration isn't directly defending the executive order but says that the states challenging the order did so prematurely because the mandates haven't been implemented yet. "The executive order is an intra-branch directive from the president to his subordinates -- which, of its own force, does not change anything at all about elections in any state," D. John Sauer, U.S. Solicitor general, said to the Supreme Court in the appeal.
A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court ruling that blocked the order, saying it would "threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters" and "sow confusion," and that the U.S. Constitution grants states — not the president — authority to administer elections. The panel noted that the executive order "directs unprecedented levels of involvement by federal officials in how states administer elections."
The order would also require the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile lists of voting-age citizens living in each state, and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election.
Trump has consistently raised unfounded concerns about mail-in voting, which nearly every state allows and some use exclusively. The practice, especially common in Western states, enjoyed strong bipartisan support until Trump sought to undermine its credibility during the 2020 election cycle.
The US government on Monday filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court seeking authorization to implement President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting, which lower courts have blocked. The request comes 99 days before November's midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress.
The 1st Circuit panel pointed to the approaching midterms as a reason to block the order for now. A full analysis of the executive order could be considered on a longer timeline, but state election officials faced imminent consequences if they did not begin preparing for the order’s requirements in time for the November general election and September primaries, the judges found.
