A Florida county's mail ballot envelopes were nearly rejected by the U.S. Postal Service over a razor-thin spacing discrepancy, offering a preview of the chaos election officials fear if President Donald Trump's mail-voting restrictions take full effect this November.
According to the liberal site Democracy Docket, USPS flagged Leon County's ballot envelopes because two design elements sat just 0.014 inches closer together than regulations allow. Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley didn't hide his frustration with the rejection.
"It's ridiculous," Earley told the Tallahassee Democrat.
Earley told Democracy Docket he sent the county's envelope design in for USPS review as soon as the agency's final rule was published, wanting to get ahead of any potential problems for Leon County voters, even though the design was identical to barcoded mailers the office had relied on successfully in 2024. The rejection came Sept. 2, barely two months before Election Day, and Earley's office only got the design approved after appealing, receiving final sign-off on Sept. 10 following what he described as an initial denial and additional back-and-forth with the agency.
Had the appeal failed, Leon County would have had no time to reprint the envelopes before Florida's Sept. 24 deadline to mail ballots out.
The near-miss comes amid a broader legal battle over Trump's March executive order targeting mail voting, which prompted USPS to draft sweeping new envelope design and verification rules. A federal court injunction currently keeps USPS approval voluntary and bars the agency from refusing to mail noncompliant envelopes, but the Supreme Court could lift that block at any moment.
Hundreds of election officials, including Earley, have already warned the justices in an amicus brief that exactly this kind of technical, hair-splitting rejection could disenfranchise voters if the rule takes full effect nationwide.
Compounding the problem, Earley says the online portal officials are supposed to use to submit ballot designs and voter lists to USPS doesn't actually exist yet.
"None of that's been developed," Earley said. "Nobody out here has a login to this portal because there is no portal."
With Leon County already required to print unique barcodes for all 32,000 of its mail voters, and still nearly tripped up by a fraction-of-an-inch spacing error, election officials warn the incident is a warning sign of what could happen nationwide if the Supreme Court allows the rule to proceed before November.