Supreme Court Blocks Trump's Mail Ballot Overhaul as Other Election Efforts Persist

The Supreme Court this week brought an end to one of President Donald Trump's most ambitious attempts to reshape November's elections — a plan that would have required a sweeping overhaul of the country's mail voting systems on what election officials widely considered an unworkable timeline.

The decision, however, does not mark the end of the administration's broader push to assert federal influence over the midterms. Several other efforts remain active, even as mail ballots have already gone out in at least three states and early voting is beginning elsewhere.

In one ongoing initiative, the Department of Justice has instructed officials in more than two dozen states to preserve records from the 2024 election. The move is part of a campaign to compel states to hand over detailed voter data, despite repeated setbacks in court.

With much of that data still out of reach, the Department of Homeland Security has launched its own investigation aimed at identifying noncitizens on state voter rolls. A federal whistleblower has described the effort as rushed, prone to error and potentially in violation of state laws.

Trump has continued to assert without evidence that mail ballots are corrupt, that noncitizens are present on voter lists in large numbers and that Democratic election fraud is widespread. At the recent Republican convention, he urged supporters to "cheat like hell, like they do." After Monday's Supreme Court ruling, he criticized the justices, saying they lacked the "courage necessary to save our America."

Under the Constitution, elections are administered by the states rather than the federal government. Election officials have said they are prepared to conduct a safe and secure election regardless of the president's rhetoric. Democratic groups have indicated they are developing contingency plans in case armed federal officers are sent to polling places or Republicans make other attempts to interfere improperly in the contest, which will determine control of Congress next year.

With his mail ballot reforms blocked for now, other administration efforts continue. Trump maintains, contrary to extensive research, that large numbers of noncitizens vote illegally across the country. In his second term, he has sought to use federal power to address the issue, including through a major expansion of a federal voter eligibility database known as Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE.

The program was originally created under immigration law to require DHS to help federal, state and local agencies prevent government benefits from going to noncitizens. Trump last year directed changes to greatly expand its capacity for mass searches by election officials. His administration then sent letters and filed lawsuits pressing states to run sensitive voter data through the tool. Some states have agreed, while many have resisted to protect residents' personal information.

Since last year, at least 67 million registrations have been scanned through the program, but critics warn it could lead to the removal of valid voters from the rolls. Some registrants have already been flagged incorrectly. In June, a federal judge barred the new version of the SAVE program, calling it an illegal violation of Americans' privacy. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to block that ruling with an emergency order, and the court has yet to act.

Meanwhile, the federal government continues to press states to provide voter registration information including addresses, dates of birth, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned in July that state officials could lose funding or face investigations if they did not comply with Trump's election security demands. Last week, the DOJ sent letters to 29 states and the District of Columbia ordering them to preserve 2024 election documents and advising them they were "under investigation" and subject to ongoing litigation for failing to provide the data.

Numerous investigations have found that while noncitizens have occasionally appeared on voting rolls and cast ballots, such cases are extremely rare.

In a last-ditch effort to search for noncitizen voters without detailed data from all states, DHS in August ordered a group of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services staff to shift to a full-time manual review of state voter rolls, according to a whistleblower report released Monday. The anonymous whistleblower said federal employees are being directed to misrepresent themselves on voter lookup tools in a way that likely violates state laws as they compare DHS-provided data with state records to identify noncitizens who are illegally registered.

The effort, known as the "Unlawful Voter Initiative," also asks employees to create federal law enforcement records about voters based on unreliable data, the whistleblower account warns — a prospect that could wrongly implicate U.S. citizens in documentation that could prompt further investigation.

Asked about the initiative, DHS did not deny its work but said the investigation was being conducted "diligently and professionally." A department spokesperson said it had accessed publicly available data from state voter rolls and cross-referenced it with known aliens in its systems, adding: "It's not rocket science; it's an easy step to secure our elections."

Trump has repeatedly encountered court resistance in his attempts to reshape election administration, including through two executive orders tied up in lawsuits alleging the changes are unconstitutional. He has also been blocked in efforts to get the Republican-led Congress to pass a strict proof-of-citizenship bill called the SAVE America Act, which lacks enough votes in the Senate to pass.

At the same time, the administration has used its law enforcement powers in unprecedented ways. The FBI last year seized hundreds of boxes of ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia's most populous county without offering an explanation. The bureau has also demanded 2024 ballots from Michigan's Wayne County and received records related to the 2020 election from Arizona's Maricopa County.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said Tuesday that the administration would not be deterred by the Supreme Court's ruling in its efforts to investigate and combat voter fraud. "I expect you're going to see that work continue," he told reporters at a Rose Garden press briefing.

Tammy Patrick of The Election Center, which has nearly 2,500 election officials as members, said voting administrators felt a collective sense of relief at the high court's decision on mail voting Monday night, as it removed the main threat that could have immediately disrupted balloting nationwide. She and other election administrators maintained that established processes will hold for the 2026 midterms and that voters' voices will be heard.

"Voters should realize the midterms are going to be secure," Patrick said. "They're going to be legitimate."