Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was prepared to let the Trump administration strip millions of voters of their ability to cast mail ballots in the 2026 midterms — and when the court's majority stopped him, he lashed out at the judge who ruled against the government.
The Supreme Court on Monday evening rejected the Trump administration's third attempt to revive a U.S. Postal Service rule that would have forced states to submit to a new barcode-verification system for mail ballots, and then empower the agency to reject an entire batch of ballots over a single mismatch, reported Slate's Richard L. Hasen.
"The government pushed this case to the limits — going not once or twice, but three times to the Supreme Court — and that two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas were willing to simply ignore mass disenfranchisement and side with Donald Trump’s bogus voter fraud crusade," Hasen wrote. "The court’s conservatives and liberals came to the brink, saw that ruling the other way risked serious election subversion, and said 'No.' For the time being, let’s celebrate that the center of the court did hold, even as dangers remain ahead in both 2026 and 2028."
The rule was set to take effect in the middle of ongoing elections, as North Carolina had already begun mailing ballots on Sept. 4, and USPS still did not have a working verification portal even as the court ruled.
In a three-sentence order, the court agreed with a federal district court that the government was likely to lose on the merits, finding USPS had exceeded its legal authority, and that the burden on election administrators and voters outweighed the administration's unsupported fraud claims.
Alito dissented, joined by Thomas, and argued the government was likely to prevail on the merits, echoing the administration's claim that the rule was necessary to stop fraud despite no evidence to support it.
Alito then blamed states and voting-rights groups who sued to block the rule, suggesting their litigation caused the delays. He also revived earlier insinuations blaming Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for "slow-walking" the case when it first reached the court in July.
"Totally absent from Justice Alito’s balancing were the voters," Hasen wrote. "They weren’t an afterthought; their interests were not considered at all. This is unsurprising, coming from the justice who has done more to hurt the cause of voting and voting rights than any on the court in at least a century."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing separately, agreed the government might ultimately win on the legal merits but concluded the equities favored voters this time, allowing the rule to be blocked.
That left Alito and Thomas as the only justices willing to greenlight the disenfranchisement risk just weeks before the midterms, with the court's remaining conservatives joining its three liberals in the majority to keep mail voting intact for now.
"There are good reasons to be furious, and worried about what this portends for the future," Hasen wrote. "But let’s not be all gloom and doom ... The Supreme Court has been terrible on voting rights, but so far it has held the line on actual election rigging. Let’s celebrate that, even as we gird for more battles to come."
