The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a rule to block delivery of mail ballots in states that have not complied with an executive order President Trump signed in March directing the USPS to halt election mail unless states hand over voter lists. One part of Trump’s March order directed the Postal Service to issue just such a rule. Several pending lawsuits contend that both orders amount to an illegal executive branch seizure of election administration that the Constitution reserves to the states.
About 30 percent of all ballots are now cast by mail. The Postal Service is a potential choke point. The NAACP on June 3 filed a motion in federal court seeking to block the Postal Service’s proposed regulation. The NAACP points out that the proposed regulation violates a 2021 settlement agreement that requires timely delivery of election mail to all voters.
Judges have not yet ruled on the suits, on the ground that the USPS order is not yet final and that no harm has yet ensued from Trump’s earlier order. The Postal Service proposed the 20-page draft rule on June 2, with a 30-day comment period, and a final rule to be issued 30 days after that. This would mean that the system for states to comply would become operational just weeks before the November election, creating maximum confusion and disruption.
The two orders—Trump’s and that of the USPS—are part of a scheme to convey voter rolls to the Justice Department, which could then come up with all manner of spurious reasons to purge the rolls. The proposed USPS rule explicitly states that the Postal Service will cooperate with other law enforcement agencies. The Department of Homeland Security has its own system to keep track of immigrants and citizenship.
On June 5, the Department of Justice filed a notice in federal court on its collaboration with DHS. The notice describes a scheme by Homeland Security and its subsidiary U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to implement a “State Voter Roll Verification” that allows state election officials to submit their voter rolls to the DHS Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system.
Trump and his henchmen have long alleged massive voter fraud. But every serious investigation of supposed voting by noncitizens, or multiple voting, or fake voting by dead people has found that such fraud is vanishingly rare.
The Justice Department has demanded that at least 48 states turn over voter files, as specified by Trump’s March executive order, and has threatened state officials who refuse with criminal prosecution. The DOJ has sued Washington, D.C., and 30 states for refusing to provide their statewide voter registration lists with driver’s license and Social Security numbers. But every case that has come before a judge—eight so far—has been dismissed.
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That suggests that when federal judges do issue rulings on the companion USPS order, that one could well be blocked in court, too. But if courts wait until September, plenty of confusion could persist in the meantime.
The more serious problem is that several red states are cooperating with Trump voluntarily. According to the Brennan Center’s tally, which is regularly updated, at least 16 states have either provided, or committed to provide, their voter registration lists, including driver’s license and Social Security numbers: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.
According to the Brennan Center, “The DOJ has asked states to agree to a ‘confidential memorandum of understanding’ in connection with handing over their full voter files. That agreement reveals … the DOJ’s plans to interfere with the states’ authority to run elections.”
There are a couple of ways this could play out. The best case is that the federal courts, which have been unsympathetic to Trump’s attempted power grab of elections, could block DOJ attempts at purges even in red states that cooperate. The worst case is that some form of illicit purges will go forward.
Either way, we can expect continuing trench warfare between defenders of the right to vote and the serial efforts of the Trump administration to suppress it. Given his deepening unpopularity, Trump and his allies in Congress survive politically only by undermining the most basic of democratic checks on autocracy.
