President Donald Trump's administration asked the US Supreme Court on Thursday to let the Postal Service enforce new requirements for mail ballots, escalating a legal fight less than two months before the November 3 midterm elections. The emergency request seeks to lift a temporary order from US District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, as North Carolina begins sending ballots on Friday and other states prepare to follow in September.
The Postal Service rule requires state and local election offices to use agency-approved outgoing and return envelopes with individualized barcodes. Officials would also have to upload voters' names, addresses and barcode data to a federal portal. Under the rule, noncompliant ballot mail could be returned to election offices rather than delivered, although the government says the Postal Service would not decide whether a voter is eligible.
Talwani paused the mandatory provisions for 14 days on August 27. Her court found that challengers were likely to show the agency lacked authority for the rule and that it conflicted with states' constitutional role in administering elections. In a later order included with the government's Supreme Court application, she said officials would need Postal Service approval for envelopes and would have to certify each voter's information before using the federal mail system.
The Justice Department argues that the requirements regulate the mail, not elections, and describes the design and information standards as modest safeguards against fraud. Democratic-led states and voting-rights organizations say ballot materials have already been printed and that redesigning envelopes, training workers and uploading records so close to voting would create costs, confusion and a risk that valid ballots are delayed or rejected. The administration has not presented evidence of widespread mail-voting fraud, according to AP and CBS.
The Supreme Court's conservative majority lifted an earlier injunction on August 24, ruling that a challenge brought before the final Postal Service rule appeared premature. That decision did not determine whether the restrictions are lawful. The new application concerns the finalized rule, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked the states and voting-rights groups to respond by Tuesday morning, CBS reported.
The dispute now overlaps with the start of actual voting in an election that will determine control of Congress for the remainder of Trump's term. The federal portal was still undergoing refinements on Thursday and was expected to become available for voluntary use the following week, a Postal Service executive said in a court filing. Talwani is also considering a longer injunction, leaving election administrators to prepare while both the district court and Supreme Court weigh their next steps.
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