A US appeals court has rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to impose sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting before November’s high-stakes midterm elections, dealing a fresh blow to the president’s attempted crackdown.
The Boston-based first US circuit court of appeals declined on Thursday to put on hold an injunction issued by a lower court judge last week, preventing the US Postal Service (USPS) from tightening rules around postal voting.
The panel of three judges, nominated by Joe Biden, agreed with the plaintiffs that the president does not have the power to regulate states’ election policy.
“Appellants have not made a strong showing that the district court erred in determining that the Final Rule is likely unlawful,” they wrote, making reference to a rule published by the USPS to implement Trump’s order.
It comes as the US supreme court also considers Trump’s efforts to introduce new requirements curtailing the practice, which the US president has frequently criticized despite doing it himself.
Back in March, Trump signed an executive order seeking to prohibit the USPS from delivering ballots to any voters not on a nationwide list of eligible voters in each state created by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result would mean a limited delivery of ballots to only the voters on those approved lists.
Democratic states and voting rights groups swiftly filed several lawsuits, arguing that Trump’s ordered changes are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, state election officials who run the elections have said there is not enough time to overhaul their systems to meet the new federal directives. Indeed, with the midterms less than two months out, some states have already started sending out ballots.
The Trump administration has called its plans to limit mail-in ballots “commonsense measures” aimed at protecting voting security. Trump has called the order blocking those plans “unreasoned and unlawful”.
Trump has repeatedly sought to restrict voting by mail, despite doing it twice himself this year alone in his resident state of Florida. He has falsely blamed mail voting for his 2020 election loss to Biden, while promoting baseless claims of fraud.
The president’s order allows states to voluntarily use the new system. But as yet, none have announced they will do so.
The USPS, for its part, has said it stands ready to implement Trump’s new restrictions, which would require states to give the postal service the names and barcodes tied to mail-in ballots for federal elections, if the court injunctions are lifted.
However, it has also said in recent court filings that the technology needed to administer the president’s order is not even available. And earlier this month, a USPS whistleblower warned of “potentially catastrophic problems” if the agency were to try to carry out the order.