President Donald Trump's Justice Department defended new mail-in ballot restrictions by comparing election mail to cremated human remains and replica explosives.
The argument came in a combined opposition filed Thursday in Boston federal court, where the department is fighting two emergency motions to block a Postal Service rule governing federal ballot envelopes. The Postal Service said the requirements are now in effect, Reuters reported Thursday.
Ballot mail belongs to a category that is "sensitive, but non-dangerous," the department wrote, and the Postal Service has long imposed special rules on such items. Cremated human and animal remains must travel in Postal Service boxes and stay trackable by barcode, the filing said, because the agency considers them "sensitive matter."
Replica explosives must be handed over at a retail counter and shipped by Registered Mail, the department added, "rather than being prohibited from the mail altogether."
The department conceded the fit is imperfect, writing that ballot mail "does not present precisely the same operational issues as cremated remains or replica explosives."
The Postal Service has no legal responsibility for administering elections, the filing said, a point it raised to argue the rule regulates mail rather than voting. The rule grew out of an executive order Trump signed March 31, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, which is helping challenge it.
Trump's order also directed the Department of Homeland Security to build state citizenship lists from federal databases with documented accuracy problems, the Brennan Center said.
The order "threatens criminal penalties for election officials, mail carriers, and others," the group wrote.
It further told the attorney general to prioritize investigating and prosecuting election officials who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters, a directive that follows the citizenship-list section, the Brennan Center said.
"[E]lection officials who issue ballots to individuals not on the faulty lists created by DHS will be treated as criminals," the group wrote.
Under the rule, states must upload the name and address of every intended ballot recipient to an online portal and submit envelope designs for review, the filing said. The department reached for elder-abuse mail scams to argue it may police fraud through envelope rules.
"[T]here is no evident reason why the Postal Service could not impose special design and registration rules for envelopes used to send solicitations to such locations," the department wrote of retirement communities targeted by scammers.
"Whether or not voter fraud is common or uncommon, the Postal Service has the legal authority to take the measures in this rule to facilitate enforcement of federal law," the rule says, as quoted in the filing.
Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia sued this week, saying the rule gives the agency an "unprecedented gatekeeping role," MS NOW reported.
Voters cannot add themselves to the list or check whether they appear on it, the Democratic groups challenging the rule said, Democracy Docket reported.
"[T]here can be no do over and no redress," those plaintiffs wrote of the coming election, the outlet reported.
State election officials keep full control over who may vote by mail, the department said. The rule displaces no state election law.
No court has ruled on whether the rule is lawful, and U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani lifted the last order blocking it Wednesday, CNBC reported.
"Every prior challenge was filed before the rule existed, which is why the administration has won on ripeness four times running without once defending the rule's legality," Hofstra University law professor James Sample said, according to MS NOW.
A fuller defense of the rule is due by 11 p.m. Saturday, and the first ballots go out next week.