Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Postal Ballot Plan Ahead of Midterms

The U.S. Supreme Court late Monday declined to allow the Trump administration to put the Postal Service at the centre of decisions over who receives a mail ballot, easing a period of uncertainty that had hung over preparations for this year's midterm elections even as voting got underway in some states.

The dispute grew out of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March. Under the plan, states would have been required to adopt a uniform envelope design for mailed ballots and to submit lists of eligible voters to an online portal the administration was building. The Postal Service would have been permitted to withhold delivery of ballots from states that did not comply.

A whistleblower report warned that the postal system's requirements could result in millions of mail ballots never being sent, potentially disenfranchising large numbers of voters in an election that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of Trump's term.

Lower courts had blocked the administration from carrying out the rules. The Supreme Court rejected its attempt to stay those decisions. Three justices — Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas — signalled varying degrees of willingness to let the plan proceed in current or future elections. A majority, however, noted that the administration was "unlikely to succeed on the merits" in defending its plan.

Election officials across the country had warned that introducing sweeping changes so close to a general election would be chaotic and nearly impossible to implement, particularly in a country where roughly a third of voters cast ballots by mail. The concern was sharpest in eight states where voting is conducted almost entirely by mail: California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington. Those states would have faced the difficult task of adapting quickly without an extensive network of polling places.

After the decision, voting rights advocates and state election officials moved quickly to reassure voters that elections would run as they always have in each state. California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said election offices could now return to their core work "without a dark cloud hanging over us." Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican who serves as the state's chief election officer, said Utahns could have confidence that the 2026 election would proceed as normal.

Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read called the outcome a victory for voters and the rule of law, saying it gave election officials the certainty they needed ahead of a major federal election. Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar described his reaction as one of relief and excitement, noting that more than half of his state's voters cast ballots by mail in the June primary. He also said some damage had already been done, with false claims about mail voting eroding public confidence, and urged voters to trust the process and participate.

Voting rights experts welcomed the majority's language on the merits of the case. Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said the court was not obliged to explain its scepticism about the government's position but chose to do so, a signal for the future. David Becker, a former Justice Department lawyer who now heads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, said the executive order would have done nothing for election integrity while imposing a costly new bureaucracy on states and disenfranchising voters. In his view, the majority's wording makes it unlikely the rules will ever apply to any election.