Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan to Restrict Mail-In Voting, for Now
New York Times · LC · trust 63/100
The administration asked the court to clear the way for President Trump’s order that creates “state citizenship lists” and directs the Postal Service to decide who gets a mail-in ballot.
Listen · 5:55 min Share full article Volunteers processing mail-in ballots on Nov. 5, 2024, in Dearborn, Mich. Credit... Nick Hagen for The New York Times By Abbie VanSickle and Ann E. Marimow
In an emergency order, the justices said President Trump could proceed with implementing an executive order he had signed, which directed the U.S. Postal Service to help decide which voters should receive mail-in ballots. Under the executive order, the Department of Homeland Security will also create lists of U.S. citizens that the administration believes could be used to monitor voter rolls for noncitizens.
The decision means the administration can move ahead with planning for restricting the use of mail ballots even as a lower court continues to weigh the legality of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But with a little more than two months until Election Day — and considerably less time before early voting begins in many states — it remains unclear whether the White House’s rules will be in effect for a midterm election in which control of both chambers is at stake. Additional legal action is a near certainty with the plan’s fate not yet final.
A separate injunction by the same lower court complicates matters. That court action prevents the postal service from implementing some parts of the executive order. That case could also soon be headed to the justices.
Monday’s order from the Supreme Court was unsigned, as is typical in such emergency rulings. The majority wrote that it agreed with the government’s argument that it should be able to move forward with its plans, finding that the Trump administration was “likely to suffer irreparable harm” unless the justices lifted a freeze that had been imposed by lower courts.
The three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warning that the majority “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”
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