US Supreme Court rejects Trump bid to restrict mail ballots as voting begins

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's bid to restrict mail ballots for the midterm elections, capping a flurry of last-minute legal action with voting already underway.

The decision allows states to continue sending out mail ballots under the same processes they’ve used for years and have accounted for nearly a third of votes cast.

It represented a stark defeat for Trump on an issue he consistently has emphasised as vital to ensuring election integrity even though there is virtually no evidence of fraud with mail ballots.

The Supreme Court majority did not detail its reasoning, as is typical for its emergency docket. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the brief order.

The Trump administration had asked the court, once again at the centre of a roiling political controversy, to clear the way for restrictions before the pivotal November contests for control of Congress.

Alito wrote in his dissent that the Postal Service “has broad authority to regulate the mail” and likely does have the power to enforce Trump's restrictions.

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Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions should not go into effect for the midterms but indicated he might rule in favour of the Trump administration if the issue comes back before the court at a later time.

Election officials have said there was simply no way to carry out a complete overhaul in the weeks before the midterms. Indeed, Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin began sending mail ballots to voters over the past week while the new system was still not active.

The administration’s efforts had the potential to be especially disruptive in states like Washington and Oregon that send out ballots entirely by mail.

“Washington’s election workers are already hard at work preparing to carry out a safe, secure, and accurate election,” Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a written statement. “Now, that work continues without having to upend our election processes to meet unrealistic ballot mail requirements.”

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In Colorado, where voters also cast ballots almost entirely by mail, Secretary of State Jena Griswold called the court’s ruling “a major victory for Colorado and American democracy. Mail ballots have been protected for Colorado voters.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration plan would require states to adopt a uniform envelope style and submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal. The Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots to states that didn’t comply.

A whistleblower report, though, said the postal system’s requirements could lead to millions of mail ballots never being sent, because the portal wasn’t properly built and a single bar code error could result in an entire batch of ballots being tossed out.

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Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenged the restrictions in court, arguing that the president has no constitutional authority to set election rules that would “virtually eliminate mail voting on the eve of a major election."

Lower courts agreed and blocked Trump’s plan, including a preliminary injunction issued by a judge nominated by the president.

But the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that federal control of the Postal Service allows them to set rules for mail ballot handling and that compliance was possible.

The federal government won an early procedural decision at the Supreme Court, but the justices pointedly did not decide the legality of the plan.

Trump has long opposed mail voting and falsely blamed it for his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, even though he often uses that method to cast his own ballot, including as recently as this year.