The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Thursday, asking it to let the United States Postal Service implement rules with tighter vote-by-mail restrictions while a legal challenge works its way through the courts.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in March directing changes to the Postal Service requirements for mail ballots. These include creating lists of U.S. citizens over the age of 18 and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. Mail-in ballots would also have to include an Official Election Mail logo and barcode.
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The U.S. Supreme Court in August ruled that a lawsuit filed by states against the order was filed prematurely, as the administration hasn’t taken steps to implement the plans yet.
The Postal Service then posted changes to its website, leading the states and Washington, D.C. to file their suit again.
Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked these mail voting rules from going into effect.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said most states already ordered their ballots. North Carolina is set to start sending out mail-in ballots on Friday, and other states plan to do the same soon.
Forcing states to comply now, Talwani said, would cause “irreparable harm” because they don’t have enough time or money to redesign ballots, update election systems and train workers before the midterms.
Election workers have expressed similar concerns to news outlets such as CNN, saying it would take hours of staff time, and millions of dollars, to comply with the rules.
“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.
Congress has not given the Postal Service the authority to regulate election mail, Talwani added.
She also said “the record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.”
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer, in the filing asking the Supreme Court to halt Talwani’s order, argued that “while states have primary authority to regulate the manner of elections, they cannot choose to use the federal mails to carry out their elections but then insist that their election-related mail is somehow exempt from the Postal Service’s rulemaking authority, conferred by Congress, to regulate envelope design and addressee information.”
“Neither the statutes nor the Constitution contains or compels any such carveout from this type of core regulation of the use of federal mails,” Sauer wrote.
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