President Donald Trump’s attack on mail-in voting was dealt a devastating blow Thursday after a federal court rejected a major Trump administration demand, reports show.
Trump has long sought to restrict mail-in voting for the upcoming midterms, with his voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act featuring several restrictions on eligibility for mail-in ballots. With the SAVE Act stalling in Congress, Trump signed an executive order in March that also included several restrictions on mail-in voting, though it was temporarily blocked by a lower court.
The Trump administration requested of the First Circuit Court of Appeals that the body lift the lower court’s order that blocked the implementation of Trump’s executive order, but on Thursday, the three-judge panel outright rejected the request, writing in their nine-page opinion that the executive order could cause “chaos and widespread voter disenfranchisement” if implemented ahead of the midterms.
Moreover, the three-judge panel found the Trump administration's central defense of the executive order — that it would help prevent voter fraud — to be without merit.
“There is no record evidence of past fraud or a likelihood of impending fraud related to the November 3 election,” the panel’s opinion reads.
“Thus, we see no obvious error in the district court's conclusion that allowing this Final Rule to be effective for the soon-arriving November 3 election will likely result in the disenfranchisement of millions of voters across the country while providing minimal — if any — gains in combating voter fraud.”