Trump LOSES mail-in ballot crackdown fight as Supreme Court rejects his eleventh-hour plea with weeks to midterm elections
- Sign up HERE for our weekly DC Insider newsletter - your guide to what's rocking Washington, rattling the White House and setting tongues wagging on Capitol Hill
- See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred Source
By BREANNE DEPPISCH, US SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER
Published: | Updated:
The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major loss in his quest to restrict the use of mail-in ballots just weeks before the midterm elections.
Lawyers for Trump had asked the Supreme Court to allow his executive order allowing US Postal Service rules allowing the government to 'check' mail-in ballots against a central repository of registered voters in each state - and reject ballots from voters not listed in the database.
The appeal was the third time the Trump administration asked the high court to intervene - in a sign of its outsize interest in the matter.
Critics have warned that the new USPS rules ordered by Trump, and their eleventh-hour implementation, risked creating widespread chaos in the run-up to Election Day, and could disenfranchise millions of US voters who cast their ballots by mail.
Many states are preparing to send out their mail-in ballots to voters this month, including North Carolina, who did so Friday. By next week, six extra states will have followed suit.
Solicitor General John Sauer had decried a lower court judge who blocked Trump's order as ‘baseless’ and threatening further confusion for voters.
But critics of the rule argued it would disenfranchise millions of US voters - including roughly one-third of voters who cast their ballots by mail.
Demonstrators appear at a 'Defend the Vote' rally in Washington, DC. Trump has sought to crack down on mail-in voting, part of a broader effort to exert more federal control in elections
A mail-in ballot drop box sits on a table in Virginia ahead of the 2024 elections. Trump's executive order seeks to restrict the use of mail-in ballots, used by some one-third of US voters
Supreme Court justices are seen posing for their group portrait
'Each day the injunction is in place risks sowing confusion and chaos because the injunction makes those preparatory steps voluntary, rather than mandatory,' Sauer told the Supreme Court.
Despite his vocal concerns with the process, Trump himself voted by mail in the Florida Republican primary last month.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.