Supreme Court Rejects Mail-In Voting Restrictions

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the November midterm elections, allowing states to continue using their existing procedures for sending ballots to voters.

The ruling is a setback for Trump, who has repeatedly criticized mail-in voting as potentially fraudulent. Nearly one-third of votes are now cast by mail, making the issue significant as voting for the midterms is already underway.

The court's brief emergency order indicated that the administration's effort to implement the restrictions before the election was unlikely to succeed on the merits. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed that the restrictions should not take effect for the midterms but suggested he could take a different position if the issue returns to the court later.

The administration's plan would have required states to use standardized ballot envelopes and submit voter information through a federal online system. The Postal Service could have refused to deliver ballots from states that did not comply. 

Mail ballots were already being sent to voters in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin as the legal fight continued. Election officials said there was not enough time to overhaul existing systems before the election.

Democrats have argued that the president lacked constitutional authority to impose the new requirements and that the changes could sharply curtail mail voting shortly before the election.

Alito wrote in his dissent that the Postal Service has broad authority to regulate the mail and likely has the power to enforce the restrictions.

Trump criticized the Supreme Court in a social media post Tuesday.

“The Court’s inability and unwillingness to do the right thing for our Country will go down, in a very negative way, in the annals of History,” Trump wrote. “This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years.”