Federal officials charged a Utah letter carrier Tuesday with throwing 300 primary ballots in a church parking lot dumpster, an incident that a top U.S. Justice Department official said made the case for stricter regulations of voting.

The prosecution of Damon Matai Seei, of Payson, Utah, showed “voting fraud is real,” acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter said at a press conference at DOJ headquarters in Washington.

The Justice Department gave the arrest an unusually high profile, spotlighting the administration’s efforts to combat voter fraud after the U.S. Supreme Court this month blocked a new U.S. Postal Service rule limiting mail voting from going into effect for this year’s elections.

The regulation was meant to “address the chronically abused mail-in ballot system,” McCotter said. He criticized the trial judge who initially blocked the rule, which would have required special tracking and design features, among other things such as creating a national database of eligible voters.

“Election integrity should not be a political or partisan issue,” McCotter said. “Who could be against properly tracking mail-in ballots? Unfortunately, but entirely predictably, that regulation was blocked by a judge in Massachusetts. … The Trump administration, however, will continue taking aggressive actions to protect our elections.”

Postal Service rule

U.S. District Judge Indiria Talwani’s order blocking the rule is only in effect for the Nov. 3 elections, a provision meant to preserve the status quo because the rule was finalized mere months before the midterms. The merits of the case are still being argued. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Talwani’s decision.

The prosecution of Seei, and the attention the administration sought to give it, undercut a key argument the administration made in the case: The rule included only “modest” technical specifications for a category of mail and should not be interpreted as an election regulation.

The U.S. Constitution grants states the authority to administer elections, with policy oversight from Congress. 

In siding with the Democratic states and voting rights groups who filed suit, Talwani and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit said the rule was clearly an attempt to affect election policy and was not restricted to a modest mail regulation.

Trump and mail-in voting

President Donald Trump has railed against mail-in voting and claimed, without evidence, that it is a major source of election fraud and contributed to his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.

Since Trump retook office in January 2025, the department has charged 70 immigrants with illegally voting, compared with only 13 in the four years of Biden’s term, McCotter said Tuesday.

“And we intend to bring many more,” he added.

Homeland Security Investigations, a Homeland Security Department agency, has made 160 recent arrests, from 1,600 open voter fraud cases, HSI acting Deputy Executive Associate Director Matthew Millhollin said.

A reporter in the room noted that 70 prosecutions amounted to a bare fraction of the 150 million votes cast in the 2024 election.

McCotter responded that the Utah case involved 300 ballots, and that law enforcement had only scratched the surface of possible incidents. “Thousands more” cases were being investigated, he said.

“The folks on the other side, the opponents of the president, insist this has never happened, that there is no voting fraud,” he said. “And so when we have dozens of cases … I think that discourages and defeats their characterization.”

No partisan motive alleged

Seei, who is no longer a postal worker, intentionally threw out about 300 mail ballots on June 3 that were being mailed to voters in advance of the June 23 primary in Utah, according to charging documents.

In an interview with law enforcement, he indicated he did not have a political motive but said he threw away the mail, which also included advertisements, “because he wanted to ‘lighten his workload’ so he could presumably go home earlier,” prosecutors said.

Melissa Holyoak, the top federal prosecutor for Utah, traveled to Washington, D.C., for Tuesday’s press conference. She noted that 95% of the state’s voters cast their ballots by mail.

Many people in Seei’s delivery area in Eagle Mountain, Utah, complained to the Utah County Clerk that they hadn’t received ballots, Holyoak said. Using county databases, the clerk found that voter participation was “remarkably low” in the area where complaints originated.

“As American citizens, we have certain freedoms and rights,” Holyoak said. “And one of those fundamental rights is the right to vote. But when defendant allegedly tossed the mail-in ballots into a parking lot dumpster, those citizens’ right to vote were also thrown away.”

The federal public defender representing Seei did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Voting rights groups and Democratic officials are looking to defend against what they see as possible election interference from the Trump administration ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, now that they’ve won a major battle over mail ballots.

Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization, announced a “voter protection” campaign Thursday that would place thousands of volunteers at polling sites in 25 states.

The initiative is designed to counter potential administration moves to intimidate voters, such as ordering troops or law enforcement officers to polling places.

The Democratic Party is also upping its voter protection efforts, launching its own initiative this week to deploy 10,000 volunteers to assist voters at polling locations in all 50 states plus seven U.S. territories.

Both efforts are described as preemptive efforts to head off any possible attempts by President Donald Trump to skew election results. Trump for years has alleged, without evidence, U.S. elections are beset by myriad attempts at fraud.

He has used that pretext in attempts to enact policies to restrict voting, including the order limiting vote-by-mail that the U.S. Supreme Court blocked for this election. 

‘Breathing down our neck’

Voting rights advocates say they are preparing for more efforts to dissuade voters from casting ballots. 

Voters are “facing aggressive and deliberate threats from this administration and anti-voter forces that are tied to this administration,” Common Cause CEO Virginia Kase Solomón said. “Whether it be voter intimidation at the polls, the attacks on mail-in voting or attempts to collect your personal data, the barriers that voters are facing right now … are not only real, they are urgent. And they are intentionally designed to make everyday Americans give up.”

The Democratic plan, led by the Association of State Democratic Conferences, a coalition of the 57 state and territorial party leaders, was also in part a reaction to Trump, ASDC Chair Jane Kleeb said in an interview.

“We had to react to the threat that was breathing down our neck,” Kleeb, who is also the chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, said in an interview.

Trump has broadly accused Democrats of trying to cheat, and has placed particular focus on the possibility of noncitizens voting.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis wrote in a Thursday email that the administration would continue to guard against that possibility.

“Despite extreme Democrats and the media claiming it never happens, the evidence of non-citizens registering and voting in our elections continues to pile up,” Bis wrote. “Any non-citizens found registering and voting in our elections will be arrested and held accountable. Only Americans should be electing American leaders.”

The Justice Department has charged a handful of voter fraud cases of foreign nationals in recent months. 

The administration has also argued a software glitch in New Jersey that registered 6,600 noncitizens showed why tighter regulations on voting are needed.

“There continues to be a narrative and a concern that noncitizens are voting,” Ari Mittleman, the executive director of the civic education group Keep Our Republic, said, adding that examples like the New Jersey glitch kept the issue “on the minds of many.”

Troops at the polls?

Common Cause officials and Kleeb highlighted the possibility of federal troops or law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at polling places as a strong concern.

“We don’t know exactly what Donald Trump is going to do,” Kleeb, whose interview was conducted before the Supreme Court’s mail voting decision on Sept. 14, said. “But if we take him at his word, he will disrupt the vote-by-mail process, and he will have people outside of polling locations to intimidate voters.”

Administration officials have dismissed the idea of sending federal agents to the polls, but have not completely ruled it out. 

FBI Director Kash Patel repeatedly dodged the question during a U.S. Senate hearing Wednesday.

At a press conference this month, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said ICE would not have a sizable presence at election sites, but could deploy as part of the agency’s routine duties.

“ICE isn’t there to patrol the polling places,” Mullin said. “We’re there to enforce specific threats. The only reason why we would be at polling places: Because there is a threat to that polling place or we are serving a warrant on someone we are actively tracking down.”

And then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called a question about sending ICE agents to the polls “disingenuous” at a February press briefing.

“I can’t guarantee that an ICE agent won’t be around a polling location in November. I mean, that’s frankly a very silly hypothetical question,” she said. “But what I can tell you is I haven’t heard the president discuss any formal plans to put ICE outside of polling locations.”

Disinformation, distrust

Trump’s relentless focus on election regulations has contributed to a distrust of elections. Only 34% of adults in a AP-NORC and USAFacts poll this month said they trust government certifications of election results “a great deal” or “quite a bit.”

Solomon said on the Thursday press call announcing the voter protection drive that the administration and its allies were seeking to sow distrust in the election.

The program, which the group said was the country’s largest nonpartisan election protection effort, hopes to counter that narrative by installing voter advocates at polling stations.

Volunteers will receive about an hour to 90 minutes of training on their state’s voting laws and how to help voters. ASDC volunteers will also receive about an hour of training. 

“They are trained to check for things like signage, polling place accessibility, long lines,” Common Cause Director of Policy Carol Evans said. “They are trained to be a positive and joyful presence at the polls to make the experience better for voters. And importantly, they are our eyes and ears on the ground to alert us to serious issues.”

In another voter education initiative, Keep Our Republic has launched a series of town hall-style events in the five states in which it operates — Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — to give election officials a platform to speak to voters and increase trust in the election process, Mittleman said.

The Trump administration will comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s order this week blocking new restrictions on mail voting for this year’s elections, but President Donald Trump was right to attack the ruling, U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said during a wide-ranging White House press conference Tuesday.

Concerns about the dangers of artificial intelligence are overstated, military action in Iran is not a war and the justices wrongly decided the case in which the Justice Department argued in defense of a U.S. Postal Service rule overhauling vote-by-mail requirements before the election, Blanche told reporters during a roughly half-hour briefing in the White House Rose Garden.

Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney before joining the government, began the press conference praising federal prosecutions of terrorism and election fraud suspects. 

But he quickly transitioned into a broad defense of recent Trump actions and administration policies.

The Trump administration will continue prioritizing “election security” ahead of this year’s midterms, despite its setback at the Supreme Court on the proposed mail voting regulation, he said. 

“Of course we’re going to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision, as we always do,” he said. 

“That doesn’t mean that we’re not going to do everything in this administration that we can to make sure that there are free and fair elections,” he added. “There’s this constant pressure and this effort by the media and mostly by Democrats that somehow doing that is a bad thing. Everybody should want that.”

Trump’s morning Truth Social post articulating regret over nominating some Supreme Court justices who have ruled against him was “what a democracy is about,” Blanche added.

“As far as President Trump’s Truth about about the justices, he is very frustrated, and … he has every right, and, indeed, he should communicate his concerns with the Supreme Court whenever he has them,” Blanche said. 

“I am also upset about the Supreme Court decision. But the idea that President Trump shouldn’t be allowed to communicate to the American people his frustration, I don’t share that.”

While opining on a host of issues, Blanche declined to comment on potential criminal investigations, including when asked about Minnesota Democratic U.S. Rep Ilhan Omar and longtime public health official Anthony Fauci.

AI as campaign issue

Anxiety about artificial intelligence “conveniently became a flashpoint this week,” Blanche said, suggesting Democrats sought to ramp up discontent ahead of Nov. 3 midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

Asked about how AI should be regulated and if development should be slowed, Blanche said the Department of Justice’s mission is to prosecute, not regulate. 

But he echoed Trump’s comments this week that U.S. companies should press forward with the technology to remain competitive with China.

Political figures from both parties have commented on AI policy following a call by the chief executives of top companies for a development slowdown amid disclosures the technology could pose an existential threat to humanity.

“When the leaders of the top AI companies are sounding the alarm about the potential for imminent threats, we need to take them seriously,” Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said Tuesday. 

“This is an emergency, and we need to treat it like an emergency. If the risk of AI is anywhere near the level that it has been characterized to be, then we have an obligation to act on a bipartisan basis immediately.”

In the Rose Garden, Blanche questioned whether Democrats were raising the issue in good faith or for an electoral advantage.

“Every Democrat senator suddenly races to a microphone to talk about AI after being eerily silent for months and months and months,” he said. “So to talk about the timing of this as being nothing but an effort to to influence the midterms, I shouldn’t have to say that out loud. Of course, that’s what it is. And that shouldn’t be what drives the decisions that we’re making around AI. We can’t lose the AI race to China, right?”

Hegseth ‘phenomenal’

Asked about the articles of impeachment Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie introduced Tuesday against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, objecting to continued military action in Iran even after the House passed a resolution calling for an end to the war, Blanche said Hegseth was doing “a phenomenal job.”

The Justice Department ensures that all Defense Department activity is lawful, Blanche said. 

He added that the conflict should not be categorized as a war.

“You called it a war,” he told the reporter who asked about the impeachment. “I disagree with that characterization, as does most of Congress.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday kept in place a lower court’s order blocking President Donald Trump’s embattled plan to place new restrictions on mail ballots for this year’s midterm elections.

The unsigned, one-paragraph order upheld a Massachusetts federal court’s injunction on a U.S. Postal Service rule until after Nov. 3 and did not decide whether the rule itself was lawful. But a majority of the court said the Democratic state officials and voting rights groups challenging the rule were likely to succeed.

Two of the court’s stalwart conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented from the decision. Alito wrote that the Postal Service has “broad authority to regulate the mail” and that at this preliminary stage of the suit challenging the rule, its policy should remain in place.

“I express no view on whether the Government would be likely to succeed on de novo review of the Postal Service’s powers,” he wrote. “But for now, the Government has satisfied its burden of making a strong showing that the plaintiff States’ … claim is not likely to succeed.”

In a brief concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the rule, which codifies technical requirements on the envelopes carrying ballots and requires states to collect and send to the federal government lists of eligible voters, may be legal, but was unworkable for the midterm elections 50 days away.

“There is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority,” he wrote. “But applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious …  because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

In a social media post Tuesday morning, Trump excoriated the decision, saying, without evidence, it would allow Democrats to use vote-by-mail to cheat.

“It is a big loss for Republicans, and America itself, and makes cheating by the Radical Left ‘Dumocrats,’ on Mail-In Ballots, a much easier thing to do – And now they have an open field to do so.” 

He also complained about other high-profile rulings that he lost and, without naming them appeared to aim particular ire at the justices he appointed to the court: Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.

“This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years,” he wrote. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”

Case continues

The rule’s challengers argued, in part, that the regulations would be impossible to install ahead of Election Day. Several election administrators, pro-democracy groups and others declared to the court that they agreed with that argument. 

The Postal Service did not bring any evidence against those claims.

Democrats and voting rights advocates also argued the rule was illegal and unconstitutional. The executive branch has virtually no role in elections administration, which is a state responsibility with congressional oversight under the U.S. Constitution, they said. 

The case, tried before President Barack Obama appointee U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, will continue to evaluate the legality of the rule for future elections.

Challengers react 

The groups and officials challenging the rule, as well as other Democrats, hailed the ruling in statements.

“Today’s order from our nation’s highest court makes clear that states cannot be forced to undermine their mail voting systems and risk voter disenfranchisement because of the President’s political agenda,” Massachusetts Attorney General Joy Campbell said. “Mail voting is safe, secure, and reliable, and I will continue to stand up for Massachusetts residents who rely on mail ballots to ensure that they can have their voices heard in the November election.”

Virginia Kase Solomón, the president and CEO of Common Cause, one of the groups suing to block the rule, called the decision “a major win for the millions of everyday Americans,” including elderly and rural voters, and those with disabilities, who depend on vote-by-mail.

“This executive order was a blatant power grab designed to silence voters and undermine our elections, but it failed because the people and the law were on our side,” she said in a statement. “Our Constitution is clear: states run our elections, and voters choose their leaders—not the other way around. No administration can strip the people of their power.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose state was the lead plaintiff in the case, said the rule was part of Trump’s “attacks on democracy” for the past 20 months.

“California stood up for democracy and we won,” Newsom wrote on social media. “Today is a good day for democracy, the rule of law, and the American people looking to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.”

Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for governor, said the court “just sent the message that President Trump and the Postal Service need to stay the hell away from our elections.”

California and Colorado are among the eight states that send ballots to every registered voter.

Spokespeople for the Postal Service and U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the administration in the case, did not respond to emails seeking comment late Monday.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will revoke limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that run on coal and natural gas, according to regulatory documents Administrator Lee Zeldin signed Monday.

The administration framed the action to repeal 2024 limits on greenhouse gas emissions from virtually all power plants other than wind, solar or hydro-powered as lowering energy costs, which the war with Iran has driven up, as energy producers will save at least $310 million on compliance. The move could produce a tenfold increase in coal power, the agency said.

“Americans will see a decrease in electricity prices, but this is just the beginning,” Zeldin said in the release. “We are working to go even further so that American energy can be fully unleashed. Realizing the full potential of American energy means more jobs, lower prices, and a more prosperous America.”

Environmental groups and elected Democrats blasted the move, which would roll back regulations set by Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, for hastening climate change and increasing air pollution. Some called the action a corrupt favor to an industry that boosted President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“It’s simple. Big Oil & Big Coal give millions to help get Trump elected. He lets them pollute more. You get dirtier air, extreme heat, flooding, & droughts,” Maryland U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, wrote on social media. “Trump’s trading away your health & safety to pad his donors’ pockets. Polluters win, Trump wins, you lose.”

Repeal of Biden carbon pollution standards

The EPA published two regulations in the Federal Register in a single effort Monday that it said would reduce energy costs and boost availability, while complying with judicial rulings in recent years that restricted the agency’s power to regulate climate change.

A final rule would partially repeal the Biden-era Carbon Pollution Standards, which the agency said was not achievable by their 2032 target date and would lead to power plants shutting down. And a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking considered stripping all greenhouse gas limits on fossil-fuel power plants since 2015.

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican who leads the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, applauded the move.

“Finally, under President Trump’s leadership, we are ending the Biden-era Clean Power Plan 2.0, which was designed to eliminate coal and natural gas power generation, drastically increasing Americans’ electric bills,” she said in a statement. “I have long opposed this rule and warned of the devastating economic impacts it would have in West Virginia.”

Zeldin laid the groundwork for the move last year by repealing the agency’s “endangerment finding” that formed the basis of federal regulation targeting climate change.

Monday’s release called concerns about greenhouse gas emissions’ effect on climate change overblown, while elevating “baseload power” generation as a much more important issue for Americans.

“Models continue to show that (greenhouse gas) emissions from power plants have no material impact on global climate change,” the release said. “In fact, if all carbon dioxides were eliminated tomorrow, there would be no meaningful climate impact.”

That finding is disputed, including by an EPA webpage, the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action noted. 

“Electric power generation is the second largest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution, contributing to climate change, which is threatening public health and affecting ecosystems at multiple levels,” the EPA webpage, which was last updated in December, says.

“The EPA’s own publicly available analysis contradicts the administration’s laughable claims that the U.S. power sector doesn’t meaningfully contribute to climate change or harm public health,” Pete Wyckoff, Evergreen’s vice president for policy, said. “If the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would rank as the world’s fifth-largest emitter of climate pollution.”

Regulation moving to states

Rhode Island U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, blasted the move and rebutted the EPA’s cost-saving rationale, saying the agency’s “own analysis” showed a 2024 Biden rule would have saved about $20 billion annually in “prevented climate disasters and health care costs.”

“The fossil fuel-captured EPA’s decision to end its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants is a tragic and expensive mistake,” Whitehouse said. “In refusing to address this national crisis, EPA is shifting the costs of climate change onto every family in America.”

More frequent natural disasters driven by climate change cost lives as well as billions in damage to buildings and infrastructure, property insurance, agricultural losses and more “long-term destabilization of the national economy,” he continued. “But the Trump EPA refuses to measure these costs and is only interested in tabulating, and inflating, the alleged costs to industry.”

Whitehouse added that the decision could backfire on fossil fuel energy producers, as more states and local governments would seek to fill the void left by federal regulators and place their own limits on fossil fuel energy generation.

President Donald Trump has, at times, justified his campaign against mail-in voting in explicitly partisan terms, claiming Republicans’ electoral chances hinge on whether the practice is allowed.

A new analysis from a Democratic-aligned voting rights group, shared first with States Newsroom, shows he may be right: Eliminating mail-in voting would be more disruptive to Democratic voters than Republicans.

Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based advocacy group founded by Democratic former state Rep. Stacey Abrams, analyzed vote-by-mail data in seven 2024 swing states and potential battlegrounds for the 2026 midterm elections. 

Records indicated that Democrats voted by mail more often than Republicans.

The partisan differences didn’t swing any battleground states in the 2024 presidential election, all of which Trump won.

But if Trump succeeds in restricting mail voting in the 2026 midterms, which he is attempting through a contentious executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to enforce new requirements, it could help Republicans win key House and Senate seats as each party seeks a narrow path to a majority in either chamber.

Dems’ mail voting edge

For example, in Michigan, one of the toss-up U.S. Senate races that will determine control, more than 2 million voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to the Fair Fight analysis. 

Nearly half came from Democrats, while Republicans sent 39%, a difference of about 200,000 votes in Democrats’ favor. That gap represents a smaller number of votes than the margin of victory for the winner of the state in the last three presidential elections.

In North Carolina, another state with a close U.S. Senate race in 2026, Democrats voting by mail outnumbered Republicans by about eight percentage points in 2024, though mail ballots accounted for only about 5% of all votes, according to the data.

In a Friday statement to States Newsroom, Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo blamed Trump for undermining trust in vote-by-mail and encouraged voters to view mail voting as a viable method.

“Trump is a desperate loser who has spent years lying to his supporters about mail voting ‘fraud’ – as a result many stopped using a method they once trusted,” she said. “Voting by mail is secure, convenient, and accessible. Whether voting by mail, early, or on Election Day, make your plan to vote now and see it through.”

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis portrayed the rule on mail ballots as a “commonsense” election security measure.

“If securing America’s elections – through commonsense methods like voter ID and proof of citizenship – would make it harder for Democrats to win elections, perhaps they should reconsider the methods they’re using to ‘win,’” Bis wrote.

The Fair Fight analysis shows the partisan gap narrows in states with more mail-in voting.

In Arizona, where 83% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, Republicans held a 5-point margin in mail voting, roughly the same as Trump’s 5.5-point victory in the state. And in Nevada, where 44% of ballots were cast by mail, the mail-in vote was almost evenly split among Democrat, Republican and “other” voters.

Mail voting history

Until 2020, mail voting enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

An April 2020 study published by Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research found that in the six Western states — Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah and California — that had started implementing a system of mailing ballots to every registered voter, the policy did not help either party while modestly boosting turnout.

“Vote-by-mail does not have meaningful partisan effects on election outcomes,” the authors wrote.

But as states ramped up mail voting in the 2020 election as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the issue turned more partisan, with Democrats more likely to stay away from in-person voting. 

Trump, then running for reelection, cast unfounded doubts on vote-by-mail’s integrity and warned of dire effects for Republicans.

“MAIL-IN VOTING WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE FRAUD AND ABUSE,” he tweeted in May 2020. “IT WILL ALSO LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE CAN NEVER LET THIS TRAGEDY BEFALL OUR NATION.”

After several cycles of roughly equal rates of mail voting, Democratic mail voters nearly doubled Republicans, 60% to 32%, in 2020. The gap narrowed in 2024, with Democratic voters outpacing Republicans 37% to 24%.

Trump’s claims

While the Postal Service is now arguing in court its rule based on Trump’s March 31 executive order is not an election regulation but only includes “modest” technical specifications for mail, other statements by Trump show the purpose is directly tied to election administration. 

Trump’s order justified new regulations on mail ballots to maintain “public confidence in election outcomes” and “enhance election integrity.”

He previewed the effort in an August 2025 social media post saying he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” that again made the issue explicitly about partisan advantage.

“WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” he wrote. “Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether the rule can be in effect for this year’s midterms.

The Democratic-led states and voting rights groups suing to block enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict mail-in voting warned in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday the policy would have disastrous consequences for the upcoming midterm elections if it is allowed to move forward.

Less than two months before the Nov. 3 elections, at least two states have already begun sending ballots to voters, and officials in several others have voiced serious concerns that complying with the U.S. Postal Service rule this election cycle is impossible, opponents said.

The Democratic attorneys general of 23 states, the District of Columbia and the governor of Pennsylvania told the high court they strongly object to the Trump administration’s request that justices allow the rule to move forward.

“Whatever else may be said of USPS’ new rule, it would wreak havoc on States and their voters if it takes effect at this late point—when some States, including North Carolina and Wisconsin, have already begun to mail out ballots,” they wrote.

Only Democratic state officials have sought to challenge the rule in court, but Wednesday’s brief noted that top elections officials in the Republican-led states of Utah, Florida and Ohio have also warned the rule would cause “catastrophic harms.”

The suit, now at the Supreme Court, was brought by the attorneys general of California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin, along with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

“Allowing USPS’ new rule to take effect would be virtually certain to prevent many millions of Americans from casting mail ballots in this fall’s elections,” opponents wrote.

The record in the Massachusetts federal court that issued the preliminary injunction blocking the rule’s enforcement that the administration is seeking to overturn includes “unrebutted evidence” that “establishes that compliance with USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms,” the state officials wrote.

Spokespeople for the White House, Postal Service and U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the Trump administration in the case, did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday.

The case is on what’s known as the court’s emergency docket, and it’s not clear when a decision on whether or not to keep the preliminary injunction in place will be issued.

Voting rights groups echo Dems

A coalition of voting rights groups also filed a response Wednesday, making similar arguments.

The groups, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, emphasized the likelihood of disenfranchisement for many of the roughly 50 million voters set to receive ballots from the states challenging the rule.

Even if the mail specifications under the rule could be met in time for the election, the online portal the Postal Service has rushed to develop is not ready, the challengers wrote. 

Several friend-of-the-court briefs also made that argument, including the federal employee whistleblower who reported last week that the portal’s rushed development would lead to numerous errors if used this election. 

As of late last week, states had not yet been given access to the portal, which is supposed to be the mechanism for verifying compliance with the rule, even as some began mailing ballots.

“USPS’s Rule gives states mere weeks to implement sweeping changes to their election systems—even though USPS has not yet established the necessary infrastructure to administer its new requirements,” they wrote. “The Rule would disrupt the administration of mail voting mid-election and disenfranchise eligible voters nationwide, including voters in all-mail states like Colorado and Utah and elderly, rural, and disabled voters who must vote by mail.”

Beyond Postal Service power

In addition to the impossibility of states’ complying with the Postal Service rule, which places new requirements on ballot mail and requires states to transmit voter data to the federal government, less than two months before Election Day, the regulation impedes states’ constitutional authorities and oversteps the executive branch’s powers, the state officials and groups wrote.

The U.S. Constitution specifies that administering elections is a state responsibility, though Congress may pass laws governing certain elements. The executive branch has virtually no role unless specifically delegated by Congress, the rule’s challengers wrote.

And Congress never passed a law to give the Postal Service the kind of power over election mail that the rule claims, they said.

“To the contrary, Congress has exhaustively enumerated the types of materials that USPS can lawfully refuse to deliver,” the state officials wrote. “Ballots are not among them.”

The rule bans postal workers from delivering ballots that do not meet any of the conditions specified in the rule, including pre-approval of envelope designs and lists of eligible voters that the administration plans to check against a citizenship database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.

Outsiders weigh in

A flurry of 17 friend-of-the-court briefs hit the Supreme Court docket Tuesday and Wednesday. 

None sided with the administration.

The briefs, representing bipartisan former governors, state and local election officials, military voters, the Postal Service workers’ union, good government organizations, Democratic campaign groups and others all said the rule was impossible to comply with at this point in the election cycle.

“The late-breaking USPS Final Rule—which was promulgated mere months before the November 3, 2026 general midterm elections, and which mandates sweeping, costly, and burdensome changes to mail-in voting procedures—would prove disastrous for election officials and election administration,” local officials and the pro-democracy group Center for Election Innovation wrote. “And it would seriously undermine the upcoming elections.”

In another filing, a bipartisan group of current and former local and state election officials said it was impossible to comply with the rule this year. 

Their brief noted that many of their members were Republicans or represented Republican-majority districts and emphasized that they took no position on the rule’s legality. 

But they said implementing it now was infeasible and ran afoul of a Supreme Court principle that changes in election policy should not happen during or close to an election.

“The principle rests on incontestable facts about voters and about the people who run elections: that late changes breed confusion, that confusion keeps eligible voters from voting, and that a chaotic election erodes confidence in the result,” they wrote. They “therefore suggest only this: that the November 3, 2026 general election be conducted under the rules that were in place when the election’s administration began.”

The hotly contested U.S. Postal Service rule restricting mail-in voting usurps Congress’ authority, as well as states’ power to administer elections, more than 250 current and former members of Congress said in a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

All 47 members of the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus, 199 current House Democrats and 15 former House Republicans signed the friend-of-the-court brief opposing President Donald Trump’s policy to add several requirements to mail ballots. 

The U.S. Constitution “is unambiguous” in empowering states to run elections, while Congress can enact laws to oversee elections generally, they argued.

“Congress has passed several laws regulating federal elections—though it has always done so surgically, deliberately leaving the States with considerable room to maneuver,” they wrote.

The executive branch has no role, they said. 

The Trump administration has argued the rule, published last month, requires only “modest” technical specifications for mail ballots and that states transmit lists of eligible voters to receive the ballots. The rule is a targeted measure affecting mail delivery, not elections, the administration says.

But the lawmakers say that argument fails. 

The agency cannot take action related to elections without a congressional directive, they wrote. Congress never wrote a law asking for the requirements included in the USPS rule, they said. 

Executive order

In this case, Trump spurred the Postal Service to write the rule in a March executive order, based on the unsubstantiated premise that vote-by-mail is vulnerable to fraud. 

That shows the rule is meant to address Trump’s concerns about election administration, not mail specifications, the lawmakers said.

“The integrity of our constitutional system depends on each branch keeping to its assigned role,” they wrote. “The Framers set up a two-part system that gave States default authority to regulate federal elections subject to Congress’s authority to override the States. The Framers did not provide the President with any authority to interfere in that system, nor has Congress imbued the Executive Branch with any such authority by statute.”

Spokespeople for the White House, USPS and the Department of Justice, which is representing the Trump administration in the case, did not immediately return messages seeking comment Tuesday.

In a separate brief, the legal advocacy group the Society for the Rule of Law made a similar argument, saying the federal postal law the administration has cited provides only broad language that does not empower the agency to regulate election mail.

“The non-election, boilerplate … provisions on which Applicants rely are not a secret, alternative way for the USPS to bar ballot mail, conditionally or otherwise, on the eve of election day,” the group wrote. “Under the federalism presumption and the major question doctrine, the USPS needed a clear statement of statutory authority.”

Rushed delivery

The rule would require technical elements such as unique barcodes on ballot envelopes. Elections experts say those requirements are unworkable in time for the fall’s midterm elections because states have already designed, printed and — in some cases — begun sending ballots.

The rule would also require states to send to the federal government lists of eligible voters, which would be checked against a Department of Homeland Security database to verify citizenship. 

The rule bans the Postal Service from delivering ballots to registered voters who are not verified through that method.

The online portal that the rule says states should use for this process has still, less than two months until Election Day, not been introduced to states. A whistleblower last week reported the rushed development has led to myriad problems with the tool, which could result in legitimate ballots being rejected.

Opponents, including more than 20 Democratic state officials and voting rights groups that sued to challenge the rule, say it would risk disenfranchisement for the millions of voters, including Trump, who vote by mail.

High court ruling pending

The rule has been the subject of rapidfire legal fighting over the past several weeks, and the Supreme Court is now weighing whether to overturn a Massachusetts federal judge’s order pausing the rule while litigation continues, after the Trump administration filed an appeal over the weekend.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Sunday asked the states and voting rights groups challenging the rule to file their response to the application by Wednesday at 4 p.m. Eastern.

That district court injunction from Judge Indira Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, held that the rule was likely unconstitutional and unlawful for reasons the members of Congress articulated Tuesday: The Constitution grants states and Congress the power to oversee elections and states would be harmed if they are forced to comply with the regulation before courts can determine its legality.

A U.S. Postal Service rule restricting mail-in voting, like the executive order from President Donald Trump that spurred it, is unconstitutional, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said in a Friday order extending a freeze on the policy.

The Trump administration quickly appealed the order to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.

Then Sunday, the administration also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the preliminary injunction, saying Talwani rushed it without considering the actual text of its final rule.

“The district court’s continuing prejudgment of the rule is baseless, and an immediate stay is warranted,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a Sunday application to the court.

Sauer described the rule as containing “only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail.” He added that USPS had long recommended the design requirements it was seeking to codify in the rule.

The Supreme Court will consider the application on its emergency docket. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Sunday asked the states and voting rights groups challenging the rule to file their response to the application by Wednesday. It’s unclear when a ruling would come.

Friday injunction

Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, issued a preliminary injunction late Friday, 60 days before Election Day, blocking the U.S. Postal Service rule from going into effect while court challenges play out. The injunction converts a 14-day pause she ordered a week prior.

The Massachusetts federal judge voiced several serious concerns about the policy, including that it infringes on states’ constitutional power to administer elections and Congress’ power to legislate election policy.

The rule, which the Postal Service published last month based on a Trump executive order in March, would disenfranchise voters who depend on mail voting, give states the impossible task of overhauling their election systems ahead of a fast-approaching election and assert power the agency does not have under the U.S. Constitution, Talwani said.

Not an election regulation, USPS says

The administration and a handful of GOP state attorneys general have defended the rule as regulating mail, not elections. 

A statement from U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner restated the claim earlier Friday.

The portions of the rule establishing technical standards for ballot envelopes were based on longstanding best practices and were not “breaking new and uncharted ground,” Steiner wrote.

Similarly, a more controversial provision requiring states to send the Postal Service a list of eligible voters was also not complicated for the agency, he said, noting that USPS would not amend the lists.

“The USPS does not edit, change, review or question the contents of the list—the list is merely a list of voters that a State says are receiving a ballot through the mail,” he wrote. “So basically, the State provided list is a manifest identifying the recipients of ballot mail.”

Clash with law passed by Congress

Talwani said Friday the federal government’s denial that the rule is an election regulation “rings hollow.” 

“Throughout its body of election legislation, Congress has never delegated its Elections Clause power to the USPS,” she wrote. “Unauthorized by the Elections Clause, the Final Rule clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress’s Elections Clause powers but also that power left to the States.”

In addition to the constitutional principles the rule violates, it is unworkable ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, she said. 

All states allow some form of mail-in voting. The first ballots were sent Friday, with North Carolina starting to mail ballots to certain voters. 

Sauer noted that ballots had begun to “enter the mailstream,” with more states set to send ballots in the coming weeks.

That added urgency for justices to act, he said. If courts eventually allow the rule to take effect and states have not taken action to comply, it could threaten voters’ ability to cast mail ballots in those states, he said.

“There is a grave risk that States may not have taken the necessary steps to comply, due to the false sense of latitude created by the court’s improper injunction, potentially depriving those States’ citizens of the ability to vote by mail,” he wrote.

In a statement, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell, one of the Democratic attorneys general who sued to block the rule, said Talwani’s order would keep the commonwealth’s election administration on track.

“This order protects our ability to effectively deliver mail ballots to all residents relying on them to make their voices heard in the November election,” she said. “Voters should continue to vote-by-mail as usual and know that this system is safe and secure.”

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn a lower court and allow it to enforce a U.S. Postal Service rule restricting mail-in voting.

The trial judge, Indira Talwani of the U.S. District of Massachusetts, prejudged the rule before it was final when she issued a temporary restraining order last month and upheld it last week, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. The rule only regulates standards of mail delivery and doesn’t interfere with election administration, Sauer argued.

“Contrary to the claims of the district court and respondents that the Postal Service is trying to federalize the rules for mail-in voting, the Postal Service’s final rule imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail,” Sauer said.

Temporary restraining orders are not typically appealable, but Sauer argued that because of the impending midterm election, the court should hear the appeal. The rule carries out an executive order made earlier this year by President Donald Trump.

Election Day is two months from Thursday. One state, North Carolina, is expected to begin mailing ballots Friday.

Morning hearing

The government filed the application just hours after Talwani, whom former President Barack Obama appointed, heard oral arguments on whether to convert her two-week restraining order into a longer preliminary injunction to block the administration from applying the rule during the fast-approaching election.

Over months of litigation, Talwani has communicated disapproval of the rule and the government’s legal arguments and appeared skeptical of USPS’s position Thursday, according to reporters in the courtroom.

The rule would create new standards for the envelopes used to send ballots to people who vote by mail. It would also allow the federal government to verify voters receiving ballots are eligible. 

Democratic state officials and voting rights groups say that is an unconstitutional violation of states’ role in administering elections and goes beyond anything Congress has authorized the agency to pursue.

In addition to constitutional concerns, the rule raises practical ones. Experts in election administration say mandating wholesale changes to mail-in voting this close to an election would cause chaos. 

All states made arrangements to design, print and send mail ballots months ago. Changing those plans at this late stage would send them scrambling to update ballot envelope designs, have them approved by the USPS, printed in bulk and sent to voters — along with several other challenges, states have argued in court documents.

Multiple court decisions

The Trump administration has fought in court for weeks to allow the rule to go into effect before the midterms. 

Administration officials appealed an earlier Talwani restraining order blocking enforcement of the rule. That appeal is currently before the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

The Supreme Court last month sided with the administration in a procedural ruling finding that the Democratic state officials and voting rights groups did not have the ability to challenge Trump’s executive order before USPS issued its final rule. The challengers quickly refiled suits to reflect that the rule had been published.

The U.S. Justice Department and a handful of Republican-led states, including Missouri and Texas, defended the rule in the Thursday morning hearing, saying that it was a mail regulation within the agency’s purview, and did not seek to administer elections.

Voting rights groups have argued the rule risks disenfranchising voters and solves no urgent problem. 

Several phases of mail voting under the rule would put legitimate ballots at risk of rejection, they said, while the administration has shown no evidence that mail voting is particularly susceptible to fraud, as Trump repeatedly has claimed.

Portal problems

The buildout of an online tool the Postal Service plans to use to enforce the rule’s requirements for ballot designs and voter eligibility has also encountered problems, according to an explosive whistleblower report this week.

A USPS official provided a written declaration following Thursday’s hearing that the portal would be accessible to states that want to use it “sometime next week.”

The whistleblower account published Tuesday detailed many problems with the tool, which the whistleblower said should have been a yearlong project but was rushed out in months.

President Donald Trump’s executive order placing new restrictions on mail-in voting would assign state officials a Herculean task to reach compliance before the crucial midterm elections.

The order directed the U.S. Postal Service to strictly regulate the envelope design of mail-in ballots and to collect voter data from each state through an online portal, among other things. 

The Postal Service has argued in court that its rule is not an election regulation, but is within the agency’s purview as a standard for a specific type of mail.

But some state officials tasked with fitting their systems to the new regulations say it presents massive — if not impossible — challenges to reach compliance for the November midterms, when voters will decide whether to continue Republican control of the U.S. House and Senate. 

Ballot designs and printing are typically done months in advance of ballots being sent to voters, which begins this week. North Carolina is set to mail out ballots for the Nov. 3 general election on Friday. 

“In some States, it would be impossible at this point to comply with the last-minute rollout of USPS’ novel ballot-verification program,” more than 20 Democratic-led states suing to block the order said in a Wednesday court filing. “In other States, there will be chaos.”

The states presented a list of tasks state and local elections administrators would have to complete. 

That list includes: redesigning ballot envelopes and obtaining USPS approval “on an unprecedented timetable,” purchasing new envelopes, developing technological systems to meet barcode standards in the rule, uploading voter-specific information to the USPS portal that they have not yet received access to and training state and local officials and voters on the new standards.

“Each step of this process is fraught with an extreme risk of error,” they said.

‘Courts will stop it’

Because of the unworkable timeline and a general principle not to change voting policy too close to an election, officials believe courts will ultimately block the rule from going into effect for this year.

“There’s a pretty universal feeling that the courts will stop it from happening,” Katy Owens Hubler, the director of elections at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said in an interview.

“In general, you don’t want to be changing things right before the election. So in a lot of ways, it is already too late. Part of the rule relates to the absentee ballot envelopes themselves. And … almost universally, those have already been designed and printed.”

A Massachusetts federal judge has paused the rule from taking effect through Sept. 11 while multiple legal fights play out.

Tammy Patrick, the chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials, a nonpartisan industry group for state and local elections officials, said in a court declaration filed Aug. 28 the timeline was unworkable for the midterms.

“None of the Rule’s requirements can feasibly be implemented before the November 3, 2026, General Election,” she wrote. “Administration of the 2026 election is already well underway, with timelines, budgets, and staffing already set, many of which are unmovable or unchangeable.” 

The rule’s requirements “will place new and heavy burdens” on election offices whose budgets are “already constrained,” she added.

Election officials and USPS began preparing for the 2026 election months ago, she said. And states already set funding levels.

“The infeasibility of the Rule for election officials is obvious when you consider the calendar and preparation for the 2026 general election next to the Rule’s requirements and implementation,” she wrote.

The rule would force states to push through in a matter of weeks what should take a year, Matthew Weil, the vice president for democracy and bipartisanship at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, said.

“A year of lead time is the best practice before any new policy,” he said.

Envelope design

Some of the requirements themselves are not objectionable, according to experts. 

The standards for envelope design, for example, largely codify best practices the Postal Service has recommended for years.

But the rule also requires that USPS approve each design, possibly through an online portal that has yet to be introduced and has reportedly seen major problems in development.

Nationwide, there are about 40 mail design analysts who would be qualified to judge mail ballot designs. Asking every state, and many counties that have their own designs, to submit them at the same time would be unworkable.

“If even a fraction of election offices has to submit their new envelopes and materials … before the 2026 election, it would take weeks for USPS to work through the sudden volume,” Patrick wrote.

A similar problem could face election offices seeking to order printing of new ballots and envelopes, she said. The turnaround time for new envelopes could stretch 12 to 16 weeks, she said.

Despite those obstacles, the rule would mean any ballots that do not fit the new specifications would be rejected, possibly stopping many voters from casting ballots.

IT problem

Like the implementation of ballot envelope standards, the rule’s requirement that states electronically share voter files with the federal government has suffered from a rushed process, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint published Tuesday.

The Postal Service lacks the capacity to implement the executive order, David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said in a statement Tuesday.

“They secretly rushed development of the technology the order demanded, trying to piece it together in a few months rather than taking the time required for a proper rollout,” he said. “This slapdash effort is guaranteed to result in significant problems just weeks before the election, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters.”

Owens Hubler said states have not yet gained access to the portal.

“It’s a pretty big (information technology) project to have done very quickly,” she said. “And I don’t know that anybody’s actually seen it yet. So, that’s another aspect of putting it into place before the election that could be pretty tough.”

The Bipartisan Policy Center predicted the difficulty in building the portal in a July 6 comment on the notice of proposed rulemaking by the USPS. The center noted that state and local officials would have difficulty complying.

“Whether election officials can meet this burden at all depends on the successful deployment of a tool that does not yet exist,” the group wrote. “Building, testing, deploying, and training election officials to use a portal before October 4 (the beginning of the 30-day window during which election officials will be supplying lists to USPS) will be an enormous undertaking, and the risk of delay in the deployment of this portal is significant.”

The Postal Service did not respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday.

In a Tuesday statement, a spokesperson said the agency was finalizing the portal’s development, and called it “just one part of a broader, year-round effort” to ensure election mail is properly handled.

“The Postal Service is now finalizing the portal and will soon make it available to election officials who voluntarily wish to familiarize themselves with the platform,” the spokesperson said. “USPS will also provide tools, presentations, and other resources to help election officials understand the platform and make informed decisions about whether and how they wish to use it.”

Universal mail states

States that already mail ballots to every registered voter, and the large jurisdictions within those states, may have an easier time meeting the standards, Owens Hubler said. If they are not already in compliance, they likely have a relationship with a commercial printer that could possibly handle a short order.

But smaller, less-resourced counties and states that don’t have a robust mail-in voting program may have more trouble finding last-minute fixes.

The eight states that have universal mail voting — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington — “will be affected, but everyone’s affected,” Owens Hubler said. “And I think it is important to think of the ones that just don’t have to do this as often. They may, in the end, be more affected.”

The U.S. Postal Service rushed the development of electronic tools to comply with a Trump administration policy placing new restrictions on mail-in voting, and defied a court order to stop work on the system, according to an explosive whistleblower complaint published Tuesday by Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

The unnamed whistleblower predicted the result could be “foreseeable catastrophic disruption to our coming nationwide elections based on the reckless pursuit of readying a new, insufficiently tested, poorly planned mail-in ballot screening system.”

The system contains several massive flaws and, with virtually no time to spare before the November elections, USPS officials kept on developing an online verification system in violation of a Massachusetts judge’s injunction, the whistleblower said. 

The system’s verification standard is “a zero percent failure rate,” meaning that any batch of ballots that contain any single ballot with an error would result in an entire batch being rejected, the whistleblower said. 

The verification system itself is suspect due to a hurried and untested development of an online portal that states were to use to upload voter and ballot information for verification by federal officials, the whistleblower said. 

Up against a tight timeline ahead of the midterm elections, the agency also continued to develop an online tool related to the regulation, despite the federal court order to pause the work, according to the whistleblower.

No specific USPS officials were named as responsible for directing the work to continue in defiance of the courts. USPS did not immediately return a request for comment from States Newsroom.

States were expected to begin using the system as soon as Tuesday, according to the whistleblower.

Potential for millions of missing ballots

The allegations from the whistleblower, a federal official whose exact role is not specified, were detailed in a report by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group that is representing the whistleblower. 

Blumenthal, of Connecticut, attached the report to a letter to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner.

“The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk,” the report said. “Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

The new policy, which President Donald Trump initiated in a March executive order, has been the subject of intense legal fighting over the past few weeks that continues with an appeal now sitting at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. Democratic state officials and voting rights groups have said the regulation would likely disenfranchise voters.

Blumenthal said the USPS should reject the policy entirely.

“We urge you to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS,” he wrote.

‘Problems at every stage’

In a final rule published Aug. 21, the Postal Service said states would use a to-be-developed online portal to upload information about the envelopes being used for mail ballots and the voters who received them. USPS would also use the portal to verify that all ballots and voters complied with the requirements set out in the new rule.

But the project was beset with several challenges, in part spurred by the unrealistic timeline for development, the whistleblower said.

The whistleblower’s disclosure “identifies problems at every stage of USPS’s development of the Portal, demonstrating deeply flawed plans for implementation,” Blumenthal wrote.

A project of the portal’s size and importance would normally “take nine months to a year or more” to finish, according to the whistleblower’s disclosure. Smaller current Postal Service IT projects have been given eight-month timelines, according to the whistleblower. 

USPS began developing the mail ballot portal in June, just three months before it was to be introduced and less than five months before Election Day, according to the disclosure.

Individual elements of the tool have not been sufficiently tested, “rendering meaningful testing of the project impossible,” the whistleblower said.

“The Whistleblower believes that there has been insufficient internal testing of the system,” the disclosure said. “Such testing is critical to determine whether it will work on September 1, when states could be expected to start using it.”

Software developers on the project have “considerable concern” that the project skipped “standard principles of testing and debugging new software before launch,” the whistleblower said.

One faulty barcode

The IT problems heighten the danger of another major issue: a policy of rejecting entire batches of ballots based on a faulty barcode on a single ballot.

According to the whistleblower, “the administration has hidden the high likelihood” that standard raises for major disruptions in ballot delivery. 

“As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state – effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters,” the report said.

A misread barcode could result from something as simple as a voter’s changed name after marriage or a move of address, Blumenthal said.

Court order

The whistleblower said the USPS paused work for about a month after Judge Indira Talwani in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts issued an injunction against Trump’s executive order, finding, in part, that it likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s provision granting states the power to administer elections.

But USPS officials then ordered work to resume on the project, in defiance of the judicial order that remained in effect, the whistleblower said.

The whistleblower added that the agency ignored another temporary restraining order Talwani, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, issued last week and upheld Monday, and continued to work on the project.

In his letter to Steiner, Blumenthal asked if that was true and posed several other questions stemming from the whistleblower’s report, and asked for a response by Friday.

A Massachusetts federal judge on Monday declined the Trump administration’s request to overturn the temporary restraining order she signed last week that blocks the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out a rule placing new restrictions on mail-in voting.

The 14-day order published Aug. 27 was not appealable, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a brief order Monday. But even if the order could be appealed, the administration would lose on the merits, Talwani wrote. 

“It is likely that the USPS lacked authority to issue the Final Rule and that the Final Rule is substantively unconstitutional and contrary to law,” she wrote.

She dismissed the administration’s argument that the temporary restraining order came too close to Election Day as a “cynical interpretation” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Aug. 24 decision that allowed President Donald Trump’s related executive order to move forward on procedural grounds.

The high court found that Trump’s executive order, which directed the Postal Service to create the rule, could not be challenged until the rule itself was in place. It made no determination on the merits of the rule.

“A Final Rule has now issued and, contrary to Defendants’ cynical interpretation, the Supreme Court has not endorsed the view that any challenge to the Final Rule is now too late,” Talwani, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the bench, wrote.

She added that she disagreed with the USPS argument that the requirements of the rule, which would force states to overhaul their vote-by-mail systems ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections and to gain federal government approval of lists of voters who requested mail ballots, were “modest.”

The administration is also fighting Democratic-led states and voting rights groups in the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over Talwani’s temporary restraining order and in Talwani’s court over a longer pause of the final rule.

Several Republican state attorneys general, representing Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas, joined the suit on the federal government’s side.

The rule’s challengers say it is an inappropriate incursion of states’ power to administer elections, and would likely disenfranchise people who depend on mail ballots to vote. 

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, and despite his personal use of the service, that mail voting enables election fraud. 

The administration has said its rule is needed to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in federal elections, which studies have shown is rare.

Trump issued the executive order March 31. States and voting rights groups immediately sued to stop it, but the legal battle heated up last week with the Supreme Court’s procedural decision on its emergency docket. 

The states and groups challenging the law quickly refiled their lawsuits to reflect that the rule had been published Aug. 21.

A federal judge froze for two weeks a Trump administration regulation to restrict mail voting late Thursday, calling the U.S. Postal Service rule a violation of states’ power to administer elections.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining order reinstated a pause that she had lifted just a day earlier, following a U.S. Supreme Court procedural ruling Monday that allowed the administration to implement the policy. The federal government will likely appeal Thursday night’s order.

Throughout months of litigation, Talwani, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the Massachusetts federal court bench in 2013, has shown strong skepticism about President Donald Trump’s power to compel states to overhaul their mail voting systems.

She did so again Thursday, saying the government had not produced any evidence of fraudulent mail voting that the rule was intended to fix. The voting rights groups and Democratic states that sued, however, had shown that voters would be disenfranchised in the Nov. 3 midterm elections if the rule remains in place then, she wrote.

“The USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote,” Talwani said.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Monday the two dozen Democratic state officials had sued too early when they challenged Trump’s executive order that USPS had not yet codified in a final rule. The ruling did not mention that the Postal Service had actually published a final rule the previous business day, Aug. 21.

The states and voting rights groups promptly refiled lawsuits Wednesday to challenge the final rule, asking Talwani to keep it from taking effect while the case proceeded.

In the interim, the Trump administration forged ahead with the rule’s implementation, publishing an FAQ earlier Thursday on various aspects of the rule and arguing in court that it was not seeking to take over election administration.

The rule creates new requirements for mail ballot envelopes, which states say would present a major challenge to complete before this year’s elections.

It also requires states to send the federal government lists of voting-age citizens, which would be cross-referenced with federal citizenship data, and forbids the Postal Service from delivering or collecting ballots from people who are not confirmed to be eligible voters through that process.

Trump and administration officials have characterized the rule as a tool for election integrity and Trump has long claimed fraud was rampant in mail voting, without ever providing evidence.

All states allow some form of mail voting. Eight states, primarily in the West, and the District of Columbia, mail ballots to every registered voter.

Democrat-led states and voting rights groups re-filed lawsuits Wednesday to block the Trump administration from executing a new regulation to restrict mail-in voting, while a federal judge lifted a nationwide pause on the policy in line with this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that handed the administration a procedural win.

Democratic officials in 24 states and the District of Columbia launched a new federal lawsuit challenging a U.S. Postal Service rule establishing federal vote-by-mail standards as unconstitutional and a coalition of voting rights advocates filed a supplemental complaint against the USPS rule after the Supreme Court struck down a similar suit as premature.

The rule establishes new ballot-design requirements and mandates states collect information from voters and voting-age citizens and transmit that information to the federal government. It forbids the Postal Service from delivering or collecting mail-in ballots from people who have not been confirmed as eligible voters.

The Supreme Court’s decision Monday, with the three liberals dissenting, said states had not had the right to challenge President Donald Trump’s March 31 executive order because there was no corresponding enforceable final rule. 

The new filings largely incorporated earlier arguments, but updated the procedural history to reflect that the USPS rule is now final, and presumably open to legal challenge.

“As recently as August 12, 2026, USPS told the Supreme Court that there was significant ‘uncertainty concerning the government’s future actions,’” the voting rights groups wrote. “That uncertainty is now gone.”

In fact, the final rule published Aug. 21 hewed closely to the March executive order, the groups said.

“The Final Rule now makes concrete what Defendants previously called speculative,” they wrote. 

States’ responsibility

The voting rights groups said the rule would create a significant burden for voters.

The Democratic officials added that the requirements would place a significant strain on their resources, forcing them to scramble to overhaul their vote-by-mail systems less than three months before midterm elections.

And the rule impedes on a power that the U.S. Constitution expressly gives to states: election administration.

While Congress can make laws related to voting, the president and Postal Service have virtually no role, the state officials said.

“Whether a qualified voter may vote by mail is a question of state law, as is the question of whether a ballot will be accepted for processing and tabulation,” the states’ complaint reads. “Congress has not afforded USPS any authority whatsoever to set rules for federal elections or mail voting, even though Americans have cast ballots by mail for generations.”

The states also noted that Trump has objected to mail in voting for political purposes.

“One need not look further than the White House to explain USPS’s unprecedented and unlawful conduct,” they wrote. “President Trump has long opposed mail voting, expressing that it would ‘LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.’ Since reassuming office, the President has aimed to—in his words— ‘get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.’”

The states that brought the suit are: Massachusetts, Virginia, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon,  Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. 

Decision coming soon

Also Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Indiria Talwani removed her nationwide preliminary injunction blocking the administration from implementing the executive order that directed the USPS to create new restrictions and standards for mail-in ballots. She dissolved her order only to comply with the Supreme Court decision, which she suggested might be different if the court considers a complaint filed after the USPS final rule.

“While Plaintiff Organizations have substantial arguments that might persuade the Supreme Court to reach a different result if Plaintiff Organizations have an opportunity to present them, this court is compelled by the Supreme Court’s ruling” to lift the injunction, she wrote.

Talwani also set a quick briefing schedule for both cases Wednesday, with the final brief before a decision on a request for a new temporary injunction due Aug. 31.

That decision is likely to see an appeal.

White House response

Trump and administration officials have largely framed the order as an election security measure.

In a statement Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis repeated that defense and blasted Democrats for seeking to undermine the rule.

“The Supreme Court ruling was a major win for the security of American elections,” Bis wrote. “Radical Democrats continue to oppose commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders. The Trump Administration will continue to lawfully enact the agenda President Trump was elected on — which includes the safety and security of our elections.”