Judge Again Blocks Trump Mail-Voting Order Ahead of Midterms
The administration calls it election security. The court says the executive branch cannot regulate elections with fewer than 90 days to go.
BOSTON—A federal judge on Tuesday barred the U.S. Postal Service from implementing President Donald Trump’s March election order before the November midterms, adding another legal obstacle as the administration asks the Supreme Court to revive the plan.
The March executive order sought to create a federal list of eligible voters and direct the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on that list. The White House has presented the plan as an election-security measure. Its challengers argue that the Constitution assigns election administration to the states and Congress, not the president.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani sided with the League of Women Voters and other voting-rights groups, issuing a preliminary injunction that bars the Postal Service from taking steps to implement the order for this year’s midterm elections.
“The executive branch has no authority to regulate elections,” Talwani wrote. She also noted that fewer than 90 days remained before the midterms and said an injunction was needed to prevent changes on the eve of the election.
Talwani had already blocked core provisions of the order in June in a separate case brought by Democratic-led states. The administration asked the Supreme Court in late July to lift those earlier restrictions. Tuesday’s ruling creates an additional barrier even if the administration prevails in that appeal.
The White House said the administration would continue lawfully pursuing the election-security agenda voters elected the president to enact. In its motions to dismiss, the administration focused on whether the challengers had standing and whether their claims were premature; Talwani noted that it had not yet defended the order’s constitutionality in this case.
The administration says its objective is election integrity; the challengers say stable, lawfully enacted rules are what preserve public trust. For now, the effort to make the rules more certain has produced two lawsuits, multiple injunctions and a request for Supreme Court intervention—the familiar Washington method of simplifying a process by adding several more processes to it.
Sources: Associated Press: Judge halts Trump order to expand Postal Service role in elections
