A coalition of Democrat-led states warned the Supreme Court this week that lifting a block on President Donald Trump’s mail-voting executive order would cause “extreme” changes as states prepare to send out ballots for the midterm elections.
The group of 22 Democratic states, as well as the District of Columbia, sued the Trump administration in June in a federal court in Massachusetts and got a judge to halt the executive order, which aimed to create federal eligibility lists and restrictions on the delivery of mail ballots by calling on federal agencies to enact policies in line with those goals. A federal appeals court upheld the injunction, leading the Trump administration and a coalition of GOP-led states to petition the Supreme Court last week to lift the injunction.
The Democrat-led states said in their brief to the high court, dated Monday, that lifting the injunction would invite chaos to mail voting processes right before the hotly contested November elections.
“This Court has repeatedly warned about the dangers of altering election rules on the eve of an election,” the brief from the Democratic states said. “That is exactly what a stay would do here. It would allow the federal government to rush out an unprecedented, legally indefensible voter-verification and ballot-interception program that would, among other things, give the U.S. Postal Service far-reaching new powers and responsibilities.”
The brief warned that the executive order being unblocked would force the states to create new voter lists and redesign their mail ballots “mere weeks before States begin sending out mail and absentee ballots, and less than three months before the midterms.”
“The consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme. Because of the high risk of errors and the limited window for correcting mistakes, many of the millions of voters who rely on mail voting—especially voters with disabilities and those in rural areas—would likely be denied mail ballots and, as a result, disenfranchised,” the brief said.
“Many more voters would be confused—either because they wouldn’t receive their mail ballots or would fear that USPS would fail to deliver their voted ballots to state officials for tabulation,” the brief continued. “And state and local elections administrators would be forced to divert time and resources away from critical election-preparation tasks to prepare and update the new USPS voter lists; train elections officials on USPS’ ballot-interception program; reformat (and in many instances, reorder and repurchase) ballot envelopes to comply with USPS’ new design standards; and attempt to educate voters on the federal government’s last-minute effort to insert itself into state-run elections.”
The Trump administration and GOP states argued that the injunction should be lifted because the district court’s decision to block the order was premature, claiming that the Democrat-led states did not have proper standing to file the lawsuit since there was no specific policy being challenged.
“If and when the agencies take concrete actions that actually injure them, the States can pursue claims at that time, at which point courts can resolve any legal questions presented in a non-hypothetical posture,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the petition for the Trump administration to the Supreme Court.
GOP STATES URGE SUPREME COURT TO LIFT BLOCK ON TRUMP’S MAIL-IN BALLOT ORDER
There is no concrete deadline or timetable for a decision on the emergency petitions, meaning the Supreme Court could rule on the Trump administration and GOP-led states’ requests to unblock the executive order at any time.
The Trump administration has seen significant success on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket since returning to office early last year, with a historic number of emergency requests and wins, but it has had a mixed record on the merits docket. During the last term, the administration won cases over Trump’s firing power within the executive branch and ending Temporary Protected Status for Haiti and Syria, along with various other immigration cases. The major losses for the administration last term came in cases over Trump’s sweeping tariffs, his birthright citizenship order, and his bid to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook.