- The contested rules require states to rapidly overhaul mail voting with new voter lists and bar-coded envelopes.
- The Supreme Court is expected to rule relatively quickly, given the emergency nature of the appeal.
California and nearly two dozen other states warned the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday that allowing the U.S. Postal Service to move forward with President Trump’s new rules for mail ballots in the November election would cause “chaos” and could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
“In some States … compliance with USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the states argued. “In the remaining States, there would be chaos — and a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”
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The Democrat-led coalition — which includes California, 23 other states and the District of Columbia — also cited objections from lower-ranking state and elections officials in conservative states that have not objected to the Postal Service’s position, including the lieutenant governor and other officials in Utah saying implementation of the new rules would “be an unmitigated disaster.”
Similar warnings have emanated from Florida, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.
“Whatever else may be said of USPS’ new rule, it would wreak havoc on States and their voters if it takes effect at this late point,” the Democrat-led states wrote, pointing out that some States, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, have already begun to mail out ballots.
The states’ arguments were in response to the Trump administration over the weekend filing an emergency appeal to the high court, asking it to overturn a lower-court ruling halting the plan from being implemented for the Nov. 3 election.
The new rules — developed in response to a March executive order from Trump — require states to submit their complete voter lists to the Postal Service, and to adopt new ballot envelopes with individualized voter bar codes designed by the Postal Service. They require the Postal Service to then reject any mail ballots that don’t match those lists.
Trump’s order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to develop its own list of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to be compared against the state lists.
Trump and other supporters of the changes — including top officials from a dozen Republican-led states — argue they are necessary to prevent widespread voter fraud, including by noncitizens. Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.
The Democrat-led states sued to block the changes on multiple grounds, including that neither Trump nor the Postal Service have any authority to regulate state-run elections, that the changes would illegally prevent eligible voters from casting ballots, and that the timeline imposed by the new rule — formally issued by the Postal Service on Aug. 21 — made compliance by November impossible.
Independent voting rights groups also sued, alleging the new rules threatened to disenfranchise voters and make their work educating voters on their options for casting a ballot impossible to carry out.
A Postal Service whistleblower recently added skepticism to the agency’s ability to implement the new rules on its end, alleging in a statement published by congressional Democrats that the agency’s online portal for verifying ballots was built in a “slapdash” manner, is “fundamentally flawed” and threatens as built to reject thousands of ballots if just a single one cannot be properly read.
The chaos is the intentional obstruction of a verifiable election process.
If you vote be a citizen. Not a citizen be a legal resident or leave.
It is simple. Not rocket science.
Cannot follow these simple rules? Find another country.