US court blocks Trump mail-ballot overhaul

Washington: The US Supreme Court on Monday (local time) blocked the Trump administration from enforcing sweeping new postal requirements for mail ballots in the November midterm elections.

The justices rejected an emergency appeal seeking to suspend a lower court injunction against the US Postal Service rules.

“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction,” the court said in an unsigned order.

It added that the factors governing emergency relief did not favour lifting the injunction.

The decision does not settle whether the Postal Service has the legal authority to impose the requirements in future elections. It effectively prevents their use in the Nov. 3 midterms, when control of the House and Senate will be decided.

Nearly one-third of American voters used mail ballots in 2024, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post put the number at about one-third of voters.

The Postal Service adopted the rules in August following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in March.

They would have required states to redesign ballot envelopes with election-mail logos, machine-readable features and specialised barcodes unique to each voter. States would also have been required to submit the designs for federal approval and upload voter names, addresses and barcode information to a new Postal Service portal.

Mailings that failed to comply would not have been accepted and would have been returned to state election authorities.

Election officials said they could not implement the changes so close to voting. North Carolina and Wisconsin had already begun mailing ballots. More than a dozen other states were preparing to send ballots by the end of the week, The New York Times reported.

About 300,000 absentee ballots had already been sent in North Carolina.

“Voting has begun,” North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson said. “You don’t change the rules in the middle of the election.”

Election officials from both parties had urged the court to stop the requirements for the 2026 election. Republican officials in Utah and Michigan were among those who welcomed the clarity provided by the ruling.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Alito said the Postal Service has “broad power to regulate the delivery of mail” and argued that the challengers had not shown that the agency clearly exceeded its authority.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined the majority but said the agency might have the power to adopt such regulations.

“There is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority,” Kavanaugh wrote.

He said applying the policy this year “would be arbitrary and capricious” because state and local officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

The administration maintained that the rules were constitutional and were intended to protect election integrity. Democratic-led states and voting-rights organisations argued that the Postal Service was attempting to regulate elections, a power primarily exercised by states under the US constitutional system.

IANS