The Department of Justice is turning to the Supreme Court to greenlight a rule letting the U.S. Postal Service reject mail-in ballots.
On Thursday, Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency application that asked the justices to lift a temporary restraining order that U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued last week. Talwani's restraining order blocked a USPS rule that came from a March executive order by President Donald Trump imposing tighter ballot-mail requirements.
North Carolina is set to begin mailing ballots as soon as September 4, and Alabama on September 9, ahead of the November 3 midterms, the application noted. Sauer's application warned that once those envelopes enter the mail, "there is no retrieving them."
Sauer described the USPS rule that Talwani struck down as a light touch. Sauer told the court it imposes "only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements" on ballots sent through the mail. He insisted that the rule "regulates the U.S. Mail, not federal elections" and leaves states in control of who is eligible to vote.
The Trump rule requires state and local election officials to submit their ballot envelope designs for U.S. Postal Service approval, then upload each voter's name, address, and barcode into a government-run portal before any ballots can go out. When officials fall short, "the USPS will not mail ballots to voters," Talwani noted in her ruling last week.
The Trump administration justified the rule by comparing ballots to cremated remains and replica explosives, explaining that it's all "sensitive" mail that the USPS already governs through special handling rules.
Talwani rejected the argument when she issued her restraining order last week. She wrote that no party had identified "any delegation Congress has made that would permit the USPS to regulate election mail," and found the challengers likely to prove the rule unconstitutional. The record "continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting," Talwani added.