Two months before the midterm elections, the Trump administration goes on the offensive again on postal voting

The Trump administration again asked, Thursday, September 3, the Supreme Court of the United States, predominantly conservative, to allow it to apply a presidential decree aimed at more strictly regulating postal voting, two months before the crucial mid-term elections. This is the latest salvo in a legal battle which is intensifying a few days before the first mail-in ballots are sent to voters in certain states.

Donald Trump regularly denounces the possibility in many American states of voting by mail. He cites this voting method as one of the main reasons for his defeat – which he still does not recognize – in 2020, against Democrat Joe Biden. On March 31, he signed a decree intended to more strictly regulate postal voting, a measure contested in court by a group of states governed by Democrats and an organization of women voters.

Without ruling on the merits, the Supreme Court granted it provisional success on August 24, by authorizing the entry into force of the decree until further notice. The six conservative judges of the highest court in the country, against the opinion of the three progressives, had considered that the suspension of the decree by a federal court was premature since the United States Postal Service (USPS) had not yet published its rules for implementing the text.

But on August 27, the same judge suspended the decree again, these rules having been published in the meantime. This magistrate judged “impossible in practice” for the States, which are responsible for organizing the elections, including federal ones, to comply with the text in time for the mid-term elections, further noting that the decree was “probably unconstitutional”.

A new computer system criticized

The government’s legal adviser, John Sauer, disputes this reasoning in a written argument addressed to the Supreme Court on Thursday. “Contrary to the court’s and opposing party’s assertions that the Postal Service is attempting to federalize the rules for mail voting, the adopted rules impose only modest requirements,” concerning the envelopes and the information relating to the recipients, he minimizes.

The new computer system developed by the USPS to enforce the order could prevent millions of Americans from voting, a whistleblower warned Tuesday. “Potentially, millions of American voters may not receive – on time or at all – their mail-in ballots for the upcoming election”he warns, quoted in a letter from Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal.

The order directs Immigration and Social Security to create a federal list of eligible voters, and the Postal Service to issue mail-in ballots only to people on that list. The stated objective is to limit the risk that foreigners will be able to vote in the American elections, a specter regularly raised by Donald Trump and the Republican camp, although the phenomenon is extremely rare, according to official statistics.

Donald Trump’s unpopularity has reached such levels that Republicans fear it will cause them to lose the majority in the House of Representatives, or even the Senate, during the midterm elections in November. In the United States, nearly a third of voters voted by mail in 2024, according to the United States organization.