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A lower court blocked the mail-in ballot restrictions, ruling Trump lacked authority to change state election rules.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to move ahead with sweeping restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections, as it continues its push to reshape how federal elections are run.

In an emergency filing on Monday, the Justice Department asked the country’s highest court to pause a lower court ruling that blocked parts of Trump’s March executive order in 23 Democratic-led states and Washington, DC. The pause would remain in effect as the legal challenges play out, per the request.

The executive order directed federal agencies to help create state lists of eligible voters and required the US Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. It also instructed the Justice Department to prioritise investigations into election officials accused of issuing ballots to ineligible voters.

US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the order in June, ruling that Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally change how states administer federal elections. She noted that under the Constitution, states oversee voter-eligibility requirements.

Over the weekend, the First US Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause that ruling, prompting the administration to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

In its request to the top court, the administration argued that the order amounted to “general policy guidance” rather than a directive dictating how states should administer elections.

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote: “The injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful.”

He urged the Supreme Court to act quickly as the new policy would have to be in place by August to be effective by the midterm election in November.

Trump has long claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud undermined the 2020 presidential election and has repeatedly questioned the security of mail-in voting, despite studies showing that such fraud is rare.

He has promised to end the widespread use of mail ballots before the midterms, which will determine which party takes control of the US House of Representatives and Senate.

Voting rights advocates say restricting mail-in voting could disproportionately affect Democratic voters, who have historically been more likely than Republicans to cast their ballots by mail.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to lift a judge’s order and clear the way for state-by-state lists of citizens who are eligible to vote by mail.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal and said judges in Boston had wrongly intervened too soon.

In March, Trump ordered the U.S. Postal Service to direct states to compile a list of citizens who are eligible to vote. This list would limit who may receive a mail ballot.

He also ordered the Department of Homeland Security to “compile and transmit state-specific lists of individuals who are citizens and will be 18 years of age or older at the time of an upcoming election,” Sauer said.

Lawyers for California and 22 other Democratic-led states sued, arguing the states, not the federal government, have the constitutional authority to set the rules for voting and elections.

In June, they won before a federal judge in Boston who blocked Trump’s order from going forward, at least in the 23 states which had sued. Her decision was upheld over the weekend by the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.

In his appeal, Trump’s solicitor general focused on a procedural question, not the issue of whether the president has the legal authority to impose national rules on state-run elections.

Sauer said the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security had not issued final specific plans to comply with Trump’s directive.

“Courts cannot enjoin implementation of Executive Orders that leave open material issues that still need to be resolved by agencies,” he wrote.

He asked the court to lift or stay the “premature injunctions.”

Time is running short, he said.

“Absent a stay … there will not be sufficient time to obtain appellate relief before the November election,” Sauer said. “That is especially true because implementation efforts for any USPS rule or DHS policy will need to begin well before November … particularly given that absentee and mail-in voting begin (in some States) several weeks prior to Election Day.”

The justices asked for a response from the 23 Democratic states by Aug. 3.

July 25 (UPI) — A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration cannot implement tighter rules for mail-in voting in the mid-term elections this November.

The ruling, handed down by the First U.S. Circuit of Appeals on Saturday, will prevent his administration from creating a list of eligible voters and from requiring the U.S. Postal Service to refuse to deliver ballots to people who are not on the list, The Hill and Bloomberg News reported.

The three-judge panel rejected the administration’s appeal of lower court rulings in late June and early July that an executive order issued in April to expand the federal government’s role in managing elections could not be put into effect.

The April 1 executive order was condemned by critics at the time as an attempt by President Donald Trump and the administration to interfere with the mid-term elections, and led to 23 states and the District of Columbia to file suit to stop it.

The appeals court said in its ruling that the federal government failed to make its case for lifting the federal government’s injunction, which was partially based on the lower court preventing the executive order from going into effect.

“To be sure, the injunction prevents the federal Defendants from enforcing the EO in the Plaintiff states’ upcoming primary and general federal elections in September and November,” the judges wrote.

Trump, who continues to falsely claim that he won the 2020 election, signed the order under the guise of election integrity based on his also false claims of widespread voter fraud.

The fraud allegations center on ineligible people casting mail-in ballots, of which Trump and his administration have not shown happened in significant numbers during the 2020 election.

The order directs the Department of Homeland Security to build a state citizenship list based on federal date, to send the lists to state elections officials to verify mail-in ballots go to eligible voters and for the USPS not to send out absentee or mail-in ballots to people who do not appear on the lists.

President Donald Trump has sought to limit mail-in voting and has ordered his administration to impose limits on the practice.

A federal judge in the United States has blocked proposed restrictions on mail-in voting that were championed by President Donald Trump.

On Wednesday in Washington, DC, District Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the NAACP, a civil rights organisation, in its case against the US Postal Service (USPS).

Sullivan found that the restrictions would likely violate a 2021 settlement requiring expedited handling for mail-in ballots.

He therefore granted the NAACP’s motion to enforce compliance with the settlement, dealing another setback to the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape the US voting landscape.

“NAACP has plausibly suggested — and the Postal Service has not disputed — that the Proposed Rule is already having a ‘real impact on present day affairs’,” Sullivan wrote in his ruling.

The case revolves around a rule the Postal Service put forward in May that would require states to provide lists of absentee and mail-in voters. Ballots that do not conform to the list would be returned.

The proposed rule would also require a new envelope design for mail-in ballots, governing logos and barcode placements. Failure to comply would result in the Postal Service refusing to deliver the ballots.

The NAACP argued that the proposal would run afoul of a 2021 legal settlement that forces Postal Service officials to take “extraordinary measures” to ensure timely delivery of ballot mail.

The settlement “stipulated that the Postal Service agreed ‘to prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail’”, Sullivan wrote in Wednesday’s ruling.

The decision comes less than five months before the November 3 midterm elections, which will decide whether Trump’s Republican Party retains control over both chambers of Congress.

Trump has expressed fears that he may be subject to a third impeachment if Democrats flip the legislature.

He has also spread unfounded theories that US elections are vulnerable to “vote rigging”, pointing to commonplace election tools like mail-in voting and electronic voting machines.

Elections are administered by state and local election officials, as established in the US Constitution. But the Postal Service’s proposed rule came as the result of efforts under the Trump administration to impose new limits on voting.

In March, Trump issued an executive order called “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”. In it, he directed the Department of Justice to take action against states that “fail to comply” with certain standards for mail-in ballots.

He also accused states that accepted absentee or mail-in ballots after Election Day of violating the law.

But in another blow to Trump, the Supreme Court on Monday upheld a state law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted even if they were received after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked on or before that date. The president’s executive order has also been blocked by lower courts.

Civil rights advocates applauded the court’s Wednesday decision and warned against Trump’s efforts to limit mail-in voting.

“The court today correctly recognized that USPS’s plan to create roadblocks to mail-in voting was inconsistent with its commitment to timely deliver election mail,” said Allison Zieve, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which argued on behalf of the NAACP.

“USPS’s plan was unwise, unlawful, and a threat to the millions of voters who rely on mailed ballots to participate in our democracy.”

Sam Spital, the associate director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, which also argued for the NAACP, called the Postal Service’s proposed plan “a blatant attempt” to disenfranchise voters who rely on mailed ballots.

“Today’s decision recognizes that USPS cannot disregard its legal obligation to timely deliver mail-in ballots to all voters,” Spital said.

BOSTON — A federal judge on Tuesday heard from voting rights groups and a coalition of two dozen states that want the courts to halt President Trump’s executive order seeking to create a federal voter list and limit who can receive a mail ballot.

The plaintiffs argued in two lawsuits that Trump’s order should be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. They also told the court that the move imposes a costly burden on state election officials to comply and would spread fear about the possibility of prosecution.

“This is going to be a sea change in the way that some states administer their ballots,” said Michael Cohen, who was part of a team representing California, adding that “it will be difficult to overstate the disruption that this will cause.”

Trump’s executive order, the second one aimed at elections during his second term, comes as he continues to raise the specter of widespread voting by noncitizens as a reason to change election rules. But states already have detailed processes aimed at keeping their voter rolls accurate, and voting by noncitizens has been shown to be rare. It also is a felony that can be punishable by deportation.

His latest order is being challenged through multiple lawsuits, including two filed in U.S. District Court in Boston.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the League of Women Voters in one of the two Boston cases, has called the order “a dangerous attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters nationwide.” The group said the order transforms “the U.S. Postal Service from a neutral mail carrier to an arbiter of who may cast a ballot by mail.”

“This case challenges an extraordinary and abusive assertion of executive power over the administration of federal elections,” the organization said in its complaint.

The hearing comes less than a week after another judge declined to halt the order. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, agreed with the Trump administration’s contention that it was too early to block the order because it has yet to be implemented.

The administration, in its motions to dismiss the lawsuits, argued that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring their claims. They also argued the motions are premature and that plaintiffs lack the legal basis to bring their Administrative Procedure Act claim, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

Stephen Pezzi, a lawyer for the Trump administration, said the harms the plaintiffs referred to were subjective, since much can change with the voting list before it is finalized. He also said no one would be prosecuted for violating the executive order.

Missouri Solicitor Gen. Lou Capozzi, speaking for the states supporting the list, argued it was too early to say how his state might use the list, but that it was “unlikely” any voter would be removed this year from the voter rolls because of it.

“We are not exactly sure how we would use it,” Capozzi said, adding that “we don’t want this process to be strangled in the crib, so to speak.”

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani took the requests for motions to halt the order, along with motions to dismiss the cases under advisement.

During oral arguments, Talwani expressed concerns about whether the federal system envisioned under the executive order could be ready for the upcoming midterm elections and about the risks posed to election workers who rely on a state list that differs from the federal one. She also raised doubts about the reliability of a federal list — noting, for example, women who changed their names after getting married or someone who has moved from state to state might be missed.

“Isn’t there a reasonable fear and concern on behalf of voters that they will be precluded?” Talwani asked.

Trump issued the order in March after a bill he supported to overhaul voting stalled in Congress. The order would have had the federal government create a list of eligible voters and then directed the postal service to deliver mail ballots only to those on the list. Election officials argued that it was ripe for abuse and could cause chaos, and the postal union has objected to the idea of mail carriers policing ballots.

The postal service has published a proposed rule required by Trump’s executive order in the Federal Register. Among other things, the rule would not apply to primary elections or overseas ballots.

Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.

Casey writes for the Associated Press.