President Donald Trump’s efforts to have the U.S. Postal Service become the final arbiter of who can receive and cast a mail-in ballot have been temporarily blocked by a federal judge who said it was “practically impossible” for states to comply with a “likely unconstitutional regulation” in time for the Nov. 3 general election.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston on Thursday night placed a 14-day hold on the Postal Service implementing a March executive order from Trump that gives the USPS power to regulate mail-in voting for the midterm elections.
On Friday, the Trump administration appealed Talwani’s ruling.
Both moves are the latest in what has been a confusing series of legal decisions this week that included the U.S. Supreme Court allowing the Postal Service to work to implement the executive order, the Postal Service finalizing its vote-by-mail rules and legal challenges filed by 25 states, including Illinois, and voting rights advocates such as the League of Women Voters.
At issue are Postal Service rules requiring that states provide it with a list of voters eligible to receive and cast mail-in ballots, as well as get its approval for new trackable envelopes to send and receive ballots. If states do not comply, the Postal Service will not mail ballots to voters, under the rules.
Federal government lawyers have argued that the new Postal Service rule “merely imposes modest conditions on the sending of mail.”
But lawyers for the objecting states and voter advocacy groups contend the rule violates the constitutionally defined role of states in administering elections, the federal Voting Rights Act and laws governing separation of powers, privacy and Postal Service regulations for universal mail delivery.
“The U.S. Constitution is clear: States have the power to administer elections, not the federal executive branch, and I will continue to fight against this blatantly unconstitutional rule that would only create disorder and undermine confidence in our upcoming general election,” Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in a statement.
In announcing that Illinois had joined two dozen other states in challenging the rule, Raoul noted Trump’s long-standing opposition to mail-in ballots and called it “yet another unlawful attempt by the Trump administration to control state voting systems.”
Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, at an unrelated event in downstate Carbondale, said Trump was seeking to use the Postal Service to take federal control of the election process.
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“Donald Trump wants to keep people from voting because he knows he and his party are going to lose in November. That’s why he’s trying to prevent people from voting by mail,” Pritzker said. “It’s up to the states to run elections, not up to Donald Trump or the federal government.”
Though Trump has regularly used mail-in voting to cast his ballots, he has falsely maintained that fraud involving mailed ballots cost him the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump also has falsely contended on social media that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” and “must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them … to do.”
But the federal judge Thursday night noted that the court’s record “continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting” despite the administration’s stated effort to enlist the Postal Service “to help ensure election integrity, fraud prevention, and facilitation of federal law enforcement.”
“The USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote,” Talwani wrote in granting the 14-day temporary restraining order against the Postal Service.
“If Plaintiff States are unable to comply with the Final Rule, an outcome that seems unavoidable given the timeframe, they will violate their obligations under the Constitution and State laws to administer elections,” Talwani wrote, adding that federal government lawyers have offered “no reply” to those states that say compliance for the midterms will be impossible.
Talwani has scheduled a Sept. 3 hearing — just two months before the election — on whether to issue a longer-term injunction blocking the new mail-in voting rule. Legal experts expect the challenges to the Postal Service rule and Trump’s executive order could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mail-in balloting begins in some states within weeks and starts in Illinois on Sept. 24.