Trump Tries to Undermine Voting Rights by Appealing Blocked Mail-Voting Order to Supreme Court
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The Trump administration is seeking to overturn judicial blocks on a controversial executive order that would restrict mail voting, a move fiercely opposed by Democratic-led states defending voter rights.
On Monday, President Donald Trump escalated his ongoing assault on voting rights by petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn district and appellate court decisions that halted his March executive order targeting mail voting. The order, widely criticized as a voter suppression tactic, would force states to submit lists of eligible mail voters to the U.S. Postal Service, which would then be prohibited from sending ballots to anyone not on those lists. The order also mandates intrusive individualized tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes and threatens state officials with federal prosecution for sending or receiving ballots to non-citizens or otherwise ineligible voters—a move seen as criminalizing basic election administration.
The Trump administration cynically labeled the directive as mere "general policy guidance," insisting that the Postal Service has not finalized regulations. However, 23 states led by Democrats have challenged the order, arguing that election administration is a constitutional responsibility of the states and that Trump’s order grossly exceeds presidential authority. A federal district court rightly blocked the order for the 2024 election, a decision that was upheld by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court highlighted the chaos caused by the order, noting that local election officials have already been forced to divert resources to assess compliance, including purchasing new ballot envelopes, which has disrupted other critical election-related work. Even a Trump-appointed judge agreed that states could challenge the envelope requirement, though disturbingly, he would have allowed the Department of Homeland Security to provide voter eligibility lists to states, despite the order not compelling state officials to act on that information.
In its brief, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer attempted to downplay the order’s impact, claiming it "does not require the states to do (or refrain from doing) anything at all" and seeking an immediate administrative stay of the lower-court rulings. The Supreme Court has set a response deadline of August 3, as the fight to protect voting rights from federal overreach continues.