voting

Judge Leibowitz’s decision underscores state jurisdiction over voter qualifications, limiting federal actions.

A United States federal judge has ruled that a law criminalising voting by noncitizens is unconstitutional, dealing a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration as it cracks down on alleged election fraud ahead of November’s midterm elections.

US District Judge David Leibowitz in Miami dismissed a federal case on Thursday against Chelsea Cox, a Florida resident originally from Jamaica who had been charged in October 2025 with illegally voting in the 2020 presidential election.

Leibowitz, who was nominated to the bench by former Democratic President Joe Biden, found that under the US Constitution, only individual states, not the US Congress, have the authority to set voter qualifications.

Since every state already requires US citizenship to vote, he wrote, it is up to Florida, not the Department of Justice, to prosecute Cox for breaking that rule. “Florida can and does,” he wrote, noting the state already has its own laws against the conduct Cox is accused of.

The ruling applies only to Cox’s case and it does not bind judges elsewhere, though about 45 similar cases remain pending nationwide. At least four other defendants have raised the same constitutional challenge.

Court filings show Cox entered the US as a tourist in 1999, overstayed her visa, and later used a fraudulent birth certificate from the US Virgin Islands, a US territory in the Caribbean, to obtain a Florida driver’s licence and register to vote in 2012.

Trump has falsely claimed that noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and rare, cost him the 2020 election, and has cast it as part of a broader effort by Democrats to dilute Republican support.

The Department of Justice has charged at least 60 people with the offence since Trump returned to office in January 2025.

Among 129 people charged with “voting by an alien” since 2021, none was accused of conspiring to sway an election, backing a candidate, or being paid to vote, according to Reuters. Most were found to be lawful permanent residents who had registered by mistake or on the incorrect advice of an election worker or government clerk.

Cox’s lawyer, Bruce Udolf, welcomed the ruling and said he hoped authorities would not now seek to deport her, citing her declining health conditions.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — After a splashy White House send-off usually reserved for presidential trips abroad, President Reagan today began a 13-state political blitz, telling voters they can cast their ballots for him “one more time” by electing Republican senators Nov. 4.

Trying to transfer his personal popularity to GOP candidates, Reagan coupled the personal note with a patriotic appeal, saying retention of a Republican Senate would be important not just to him but also to the country.

At GOP rallies here and in Waukesha, Wis., the President noted that his own name will not appear on a ballot again.

‘My Last Campaign’

“This is my last campaign, and if you’d like to vote for me one more time, you can do so by voting for Kit,” Reagan said here at a rally for former Missouri Gov. Christopher Bond, who holds a slim lead over Democratic Lt. Gov. Harriett Woods in their race for the Senate.

At the Wisconsin rally for GOP Sen. Bob Kasten, Reagan said:

“You know, my name will never be on the ballot again, but don’t think you can’t vote for me. If you want to vote for me, vote for Bob Kasten, so that we can have a Republican Senate that will work with me instead of against me and be around after I’m gone.

“Don’t just do it for me–do it for yourself,” he added. “Do it for Wisconsin. Do it for America.”

Reagan said that after he asked for a no-tax-raise pledge, “Bob Kasten signed up right away–but so far his opponent (Democrat Ed Garvey) has refused to sign. I think that tells the whole story right there.”

Not Aware of Any Pledge

However, Garvey spokeswoman Susan Rensberger, said today, “To my knowledge we’ve never heard of or seen such a pledge.”

Pete Roussel, deputy White House spokesman, later said Reagan’s remarks were intended “in the spirit of a rhetorical question.” He said of Garvey, “So far we are not aware of his making that pledge but we are giving him the opportunity.”

Before setting off on the two-day, four-state swing this morning, Reagan made maximum use of the White House as a political platform, addressing a crowd of several hundred invited GOP campaign workers and executive branch employees.

It was the latest kickoff of a campaign he has been waging for months.

Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. introduced the President as the GOP’s “greatest asset,” and a U.S. Marine jazz combo played “Grand Old Flag” as Reagan paused for brief remarks on the South Lawn before boarding his helicopter.

‘Progress … or … Paralysis

Such departure ceremonies usually are reserved for presidential trips abroad. Reagan will be back in the White House on Friday before setting out on the campaign trail again next week.

On the campaign trail, Reagan said the election of Republicans like Bond and Kasten “could very well decide whether we keep control of the Senate–or lose it to the liberal leadership of the Democratic Party.”

“And that’s the difference between two more years of progress or two years of paralysis,” he said.

Reagan also plans to speak on behalf of Republican Sens. Don Nickles in Oklahoma and Paula Hawkins in Florida before returning to Washington.

Next week, the President has campaign appearances scheduled in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Colorado, Nevada, South Dakota, Washington, Idaho and California.

WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”

He was unimpressed.

“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”

“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”

Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.

Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.

Independent or a Trump ‘pawn’?

When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.

He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.

“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”

The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.

Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.

Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.

During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.

Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.

Steiner didn’t follow the traditional path to power in Trump’s Washington

The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.

While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.

Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.

“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”

By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.

“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.

He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.

Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.

Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.

“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.

That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.

“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.

The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.

“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.

Challenges ahead for the Postal Service

Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.

The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.

And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.

The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.

Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.

“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”

Sloan writes for the Associated Press.

The once simple message, “Get out the vote,” now has a corollary: “Protect the vote.”

That message was hammered home Saturday for dozens of voting rights groups, community organizations and unions attending a rally to recruit and train poll watchers for the November election.

Organizers for several groups brought together under the banner of Love Powers L.A. offered scenarios of the threats that could materialize on Nov. 3 — from ICE raids to intimidation by the Proud Boys — and detailed strategies to counter them.

Their goal was to raise a cadre of volunteers for a Neighborhood Vote Protection Program to observe 650 polling places throughout the 11 days of voting and to turn fear and confusion sought by election deniers into a celebration of the right to vote.

“We want to make it a season of excitement,” said Jeremy Payne of the social justice group Catalyst California.

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1. David Gutierrez right, of Inner City Struggle, signs up Jocelyn Elizalde, 22, and Manuel Becerra, 19, from left, to help with outreach, during an event held by Love Powers LA, representing dozens of community groups and labor unions, provide education and training to Angelenos on how to protect their vote and respond to threats of election interference at East Los Angeles College on Saturday, September 26, 2026. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times) 2. Participants including Evelyn Gonzalez, right, attend a workshop for activist dance and street activation during an event by Love Powers LA, representing dozens of community groups and labor unions, providing education and training to Angelenos on how to protect their vote and respond to threats of election interference, at East Los Angeles College on Saturday, September 26, 2026. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

The event kicked off with multicultural music by Native American, Korean and West African drum ensembles.

Speakers from groups as diverse as Can’t Stop California, Inner City Struggle and Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education: SCOPE detailed the threat and their programs to respond to it for 300 prospective volunteers.

“L.A. is a target for retribution and spectacle,” said John Lee, also of Catalyst California. “When they try to steal an election, it is a sign they know they are losing.”

Godfrey Plata of L.A. Forward, left, and Jung Hee Choi of We Are California present skits on how to talk to neighbors about voting during the event Saturday.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The event, involving numerous nonprofit organizations, stayed away from endorsements or political messages aimed at the coming election. But speakers didn’t hold back on their views of President Trump.

“Trump is a chicken and a loser,” said Jung Hee Choi, of the umbrella group We Are California.

Choi described two personality types, skeptics and frozen, that the group is targeting.

She urged volunteers to hold ballot parties in their homes to move skeptics “from the couch to the poll” and routine voters from the “frozen mode to the fight mode.”

“We need people out at the polls,” she said. “You are the greatest tool to fight back and grow our movement.”

The groups held their event just a day after Trump’s latest move in his attempt to reshape voting in America.

The Supreme Court upheld Trump’s expanded use of government data to search for noncitizens who are registered to vote. The impact of the decision is likely to be limited, other than to highlight Trump’s distrust of elections and his unproven claims that a large number of illegal voters are casting ballots.

Love Powers L.A., representing dozens of community groups and labor unions, provides education and training to Angelenos including Azenith Morales, Marise Roxas, and Liezl Japona, from left, of the Filipino Workers Center, on how to protect their vote and respond to threats of election interference.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

Breakout sessions covered how to plan a ballot party, activist dances and street activations.

Attendee Joe Pugh, who works for the community services organization ATAP, said she planned to host a block party to push the importance of voting in South-Central.

“They’re always talking about ‘my vote doesn’t count,’” she said.

During the poll monitoring session, Emma Olson Sharkey, a partner at the Political Law Group, outlined what poll watchers should look for and what they should do about it.

Their role, she said, is not to engage. They will observe and report any attempt to intimidate voters or poll workers.

The organization provides an online report form to report incidents.

“We hope it is boring,” Payne said. “In most cases, nothing will happen.”

WASHINGTON — Several of the nation’s largest voter engagement and racial justice organizations are facing steep funding shortfalls and staffing cutbacks just as voting is getting underway in an election that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Trump’s term.

The shortfalls are setting off alarms among Democratic strategists, who are betting on high turnout and robust voter protection efforts to boost the party’s chances this fall. They are worried that many grassroots groups will not be able to mount effective registration and get-out-the-vote efforts, much less protect against the possibility of election interference from the administration given Trump’s efforts to restrict voting access and assert federal control over the election.

America Votes, a coordinating hub for more than 400 progressive groups, has fallen “well below” the level of funding it had during the 2022 midterms, the group’s executive director, Daria Dawson, said in a statement to the Associated Press. America Votes has acted as a nerve center for the voter mobilization efforts of groups such as the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, the AFL-CIO and SEIU labor unions, as well as local groups focused on racial justice, climate and civil liberties.

“There is still time to reach voters and bring them into this election, but we are no longer talking about a future opportunity,” Dawson said. “The window to engage them is open now, and it is narrowing every day.”

Racial justice activists feel betrayed

Wealthy donors and philanthropic groups have reduced their support of many liberal causes since the 2024 presidential election. That pullback has been especially stark for voting groups geared toward engaging communities of color.

While multiple organizers said some funders had expressed an interest in adopting different strategies, racial justice organizers have felt that as a betrayal.

A retreat in donor support is “handcuffing our ability to persuade our communities to vote in a year where there is no Voting Rights Act,” said Esosa Osa, a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Onyx Impact, a research group focused on combating misinformation in Black communities.

A Supreme Court ruling this year knocked out one of the last remaining pillars of that landmark 1965 law, essentially gutting it.

“We are watching surrender, not strategy,” Osa said.

A July memo that circulated among major Democratic fundraisers warned that “the organizations that registered and persuaded millions of voters to participate in the 2018 and 2022 midterms are drastically underfunded. They have raised nearly 40% less than they had at this point in those cycles.”

It further warned that funding voter mobilization groups was especially critical “given that the Democratic brand is underperforming on generic ballot tests relative to historical comparisons and the president’s approval ratings.”

The shortfalls have led organizations focused on engaging and mobilizing key voting groups to scale back operations and staffing over the last year. That has included programs aimed at registering and mobilizing lower-propensity voters, voters of color, and rural and younger voters.

The Democratic National Committee, which has faced its own funding challenges, has consolidated voter engagement efforts this year partly in response to the ecosystem’s past shortcomings. The DNC in a statement said it was making “historic investments” in its organizing but did not address the weaknesses among allied groups.

“We are expanding our voter protection infrastructure to defend Americans’ sacred right to vote, hold Trump and Republicans accountable in court, and register and mobilize voters across the country,” said Angelo Fernández Hernández, a DNC spokesperson.

‘Being Black … again has become a bad word’

The reasons for the troubled funding landscape are varied and at times unclear, according to nearly two dozen fundraisers and organizers who spoke with the AP. Some donors, still disappointed with the Democratic Party and some of its allies following the 2024 presidential election, have closed their pocketbooks to liberal causes entirely.

While a small group of liberal megadonors has continued to bankroll progressive causes, most focus their support on liberal legal organizations that have taken the Trump administration to court, rather than political or voter engagement groups.

Others, including major philanthropic institutions, have pulled back out of fear of retribution that giving to political or racial justice causes could draw the administration’s ire. Organizers who have engaged with potential donors said the administration’s targeting of political opponents and diversity initiatives seems to have put a chill on fundraising for their causes.

Tameka Ramsey-Brown, founding director of the Michigan Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said multiple donors since the 2024 election had asked whether her group could remove the word “Black” from its name or find financial conduits to mask the source of donations for fear of retribution from the administration.

“Just being Black in this country again has become a bad word, and it has made it that much more difficult just to raise money because funders don’t want the added pressure and stress or attacks on them by funding us,” she said.

Smaller budgets, shifting strategies

Many of the nonprofit groups that traditionally have conducted the registration, voter education and organizing say they are trying to adapt to their new, leaner reality.

Vamos a Votar, an initiative of the largest civil rights and advocacy groups focused on Latino communities, has had to readjust its ambitions this year due to a lack of investment from funders.

“This is shaping up to be a cycle where investments haven’t gone to the Black and brown communities that will ultimately decide this election,” said Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a member of the initiative.

In a September pitch circulated among donors, the coalition said it aimed to invest $27.5 million in voter engagement and persuasion efforts this year, but still required $5.4 million from donors to fund voter turnout efforts across 10 states and 17 House districts. Even that investment reflected reduced ambitions from previous pitches to donors early this year.

“It has been extremely disappointing to see that progressive donors are not meeting the moment,” said Héctor Sánchez Barba, head of Mi Familia Vota, one of the affiliated organizations. “We are not waiting. We are always on the front lines for our democracy and our communities.”

To counter the funding cutbacks, some groups have begun relying more heavily on artificial intelligence to provide voter registration guides, share information in multiple languages and track potential election issues. Some groups have increased their partnerships with ride-sharing companies to provide free rides to polling places instead of bus shuttles.

With fewer in-person organizers, some groups are also focusing on social media and partnering with liberal content creators to boost their messages.

“In my more than 30 years of organizing, it has never been this bad to raise money to support Black causes of any kind,” said Melanie Campbell, president and chief executive of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, a nonpartisan civil rights group.

“We’re going to do the work, our state affiliates are doing all that is possible. … But the bottom line is that those who believe that democracy matters should make sure they fund the work.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

HENRICO, Va. — In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections began Friday, ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide which party they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran and other pressing issues.

Election administrators say they are prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Trump has continued with efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how elections are run, through court challenges, an expansive federal hunt for noncitizen voters and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

Friday marked the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a handful of other states, including Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, can cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting center. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

At a voting location in Fairfax, Virginia, 18-year-old college student Sanya Singhal was among the first to vote early in person Friday morning, arriving well before the site opened to get in line.

“Why not just have a little fun in life, you know, try to be the first early voter?” she said. “I really want to participate in my democracy.”

At a voting location in suburban Richmond, a poll worker rang a bell as the building opened and about a dozen voters in line began to file in. Stephen Gura was excited to be the first.

“This election is critical. We need to stop the Trump agenda. We need to start electing people who will stand up for people in this district,” said Gura, who added that he voted for U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, and Shannon Taylor, the Democratic nominee against Republican incumbent Rob Wittman in the 1st Congressional District.

The Nov. 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether Republicans maintain control of the U.S. House and Senate. If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Trump’s term, most likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

Voting underway after unusual redistricting and Trump’s bid to control how elections are run

At the suburban Richmond voting center, a steady stream of voters flowed in and out for the first hour of early voting. William Curry, a 74-year-old retiree who described himself as a libertarian-leaning independent conservative, voted for Warner’s Republican challenger, Bert Mizusawa, and Wittman. Curry said he generally approves of the job Trump has done, apart from the war with Iran.

“He’s in a mess he can’t get rid of,” Curry said of the conflict.

On a rainy day in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Bill Goehring, 67, said he voted early at the county office because he will be traveling later. He voted for a mix of Democrats and independents, and said Trump’s “dictatorial tendencies are bad for America.”

The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence and Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

It also follows an unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House that began when Trump urged the Republican-controlled legislature in Texas to redraw its congressional map to help the party. California and other states followed.

The changes affect millions of people: Research shows 1 in 10 Americans this fall is a resident of a different congressional district than in 2024.

Those partisan efforts are expected to continue before the 2028 elections after a landmark ruling this year from the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act’s protections against racially discriminatory redistricting.

As the start of early voting approached, Trump was focused on efforts to assert federal control over election administration, even as the Constitution bestows the power to run elections on the states and, in some cases, Congress. The nation’s highest court rejected Trump’s bid to restrict mail ballots this week, but several of his administration’s other efforts to influence the voting process and mine state voter lists for illegitimate voters continue.

Virginia’s attorney general said Thursday that Trump’s administration may have violated several of the state’s laws after a whistleblower accused federal employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to hunt for noncitizen voters. In a letter, Attorney General Jay Jones demanded that the Department of Homeland Security confirm in writing whether it had directed anyone to access Virginia voters’ information without first obtaining permission from those voters.

Trump for years has raised the specter of widespread noncitizen voting in U.S. elections, and this year is no exception. But despite his administration’s insistence that hundreds of thousands of people are illegally on voting rolls across the country, research continues to show noncitizen voting is exceptionally rare.

David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican president continues “his disinformation campaign and his attack on election officials.” But he said he thinks despite that and other challenges, “ultimately the process will hold as it has in past years.”

Advocates suggest voters cast their ballots early

Voting rights advocates have encouraged voters this year to cast mail ballots early, in part because of concerns about recent changes in U.S. Postal Service operations that could delay the application of postmarks to ballots.

“Voting early, whether in person or by mail, is good for all of our communities because it gives voters options, eases lines on Election Day and can even mean faster results,” said Hannah Fried, co-founder and CEO of the voting rights group All Voting Is Local.

The top official at the U.S. Postal Service also encouraged voters who cast ballots by mail to get them in early.

“We say seven days,” postmaster general David Steiner said in an interview. “Everything is solved if people vote early.”

In a news briefing Thursday, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon urged people not to be swayed by stories they might have seen or read that cast doubt on election operations. They would be able to vote “just like they always have,” he said.

“I just want to reaffirm that Minnesota’s elections are fundamentally free, fair, accurate, honest and secure,” he said.

Swenson, Rankin and Raza write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York and Raza from Sioux Falls, S.D. AP writer Mike Catalini in Philadelphia and AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Fairfax, Va., contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A nonprofit run by Black federal lawmakers launched a multimillion-dollar effort Tuesday to engage lower-propensity voters in key districts in the midterm elections, following years of dissatisfaction over traditional efforts to reach such voters.

The Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s “SO VOTE” campaign will seek to register and mobilize young voters, as well as voters in majority-Black and rural communities, across the South, Midwest and West. The campaign involves partnerships with dozens of local organizations, the institute said, with in-person and online outreach to voters often sidestepped by major political campaigns.

“For decades, as far as I can remember, there are those of us who have always complained about the fact that neither party spends the significant and requisite time with Black and brown and poor and rural communities,” said Marcia Fudge, a former Democratic congresswoman from Ohio who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Biden administration.

“So we finally decided to take it upon ourselves to do something that we didn’t think anybody else in the industry was doing,” said Fudge, who is spearheading the new effort alongside former Black Caucus colleagues.

Effort blends old tactics with new technologies to boost turnout

Voter engagement efforts will cover outreach across Georgia and Mississippi, as well as target voters in 16 congressional districts that are likely to determine control of the House.

Instead of traditional television advertising, the campaign will convene local civic groups and houses of worship, as well as fraternities and sororities. The effort will also use some now-widespread techniques in political campaigns, such as geotargeting online ads and partnerships with local content creators for audiences who mainly receive their news online.

While the voter engagement efforts are officially nonpartisan, the Black Caucus’ targeted races are in many regions where Black voter turnout could prove key to whether a Democratic candidate prevails in closely divided House districts. Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana Democratic congressman who served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, said the effort would focus on repeatedly engaging voters in rural communities who feel alienated from Democratic campaigns.

“If you’re not happy with the way things are going, then voting is part of the solution, but it takes constant communication,” Richmond said.

The Black Caucus’ institute has raised about $1 million for the campaign, primarily from individual donors, and plans to spend at least $4.5 million in the midterm election cycle.

Campaign responds to GOP redistricting and disappointing turnout in the past

The new outreach effort follows years of disappointment and frustration among some in the Black Caucus at the broader Democratic Party’s efforts to court Black, rural and younger voters.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, an influential South Carolina Democrat who decried the lackluster voter turnout in the 2024 election, said the campaign “allows us to put to practice that which we have been proposing, and we have never had the resources to do it. But this year we do.”

The effort is also a response to Republican-led redistricting efforts in multiple states, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

“These Southern states are trying to minimize Black political participation and ultimately Black political strength,” he said. “So what we have to do is take that low-propensity voter and elevate their participation so they become an additional voice to be reckoned with.”

Brown writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.

The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.

Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.

Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.

Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.

Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”

“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”

He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.

Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.

Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.

“Compliance with the USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the state attorneys general told the court last week.

The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.

But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.

In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”

“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.

Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.

State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.

Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”

And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.

But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.

The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”

On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.

What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.

Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.

“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.

The far-right Sweden Democrats party could enter government for the first time if right-wing bloc wins.

Voters in Sweden are heading to the polls in an extremely close general election that will see either the far right enter government for the first time or the centre-left opposition reclaim power.

Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats was among the first to cast her ballot after polling stations opened at 8:00am (06:00 GMT) on Sunday.

The 59-year-old, who in 2021 became the first woman to serve as Sweden’s prime minister, voted with her husband at a school in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.

Pre-election opinion polls have long credited the four parties in her left-wing bloc with a comfortable lead over conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.

But the gap narrowed significantly in the final days of the campaign.

“It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take. Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation?” Andersson told reporters after voting.

Her party has pledged to boost the welfare state and help struggling households cope with the rising cost of living.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second four-year term at the helm of the European Union nation.

He has led Sweden since 2022 with a three-party centre-right coalition. It relies on outside support from the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration, far-right party that has moved towards the political mainstream, for a parliamentary majority.

If the right-wing bloc is re-elected, the Sweden Democrats can expect Cabinet posts in the next government.

Kristersson has promised to focus on improving Swedes’ everyday lives, following his government’s clampdown on organised crime and immigration.

“We want to use our new and far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people … to make Sweden great again,” Kristersson told news agency AFP before the vote.

The Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, took 20.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 election to become the biggest party on the right.

Kristersson announced in April that his conservative Moderates would allow the party into government if the right has a majority – though he would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats are the stronger party.

Voting stations close at 8:00pm (18:00 GMT) when exit polls are expected to be published, with the first reliable results expected several hours later.

Some eight million people are eligible to vote in the election, in a country of 10.6 million where voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent.

About half of voters have cast their ballots in advance.

Sept. 10, 2026 12:04 PM PT

WASHINGTON — An appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on President Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, a decision that comes as the Supreme Court considers the same case and states have already started sending out ballots for the high-stakes midterm elections.

The three-judge panel refused to lift a preliminary injunction against the order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani. It prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing Trump’s directive. The Postal Service has said it would not deliver ballots from states that did not pre-clear their envelope design with the federal government and submit a list of voters to an online portal, which has yet to be activated.

Election officials warn that it’s impossible to comply with those terms, especially with the first mail ballots already being sent out in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

The panel of three judges nominated by former President 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, a reference to a rule published by the Postal Service to implement Trump’s order.

The panel wrote that the Trump administration had done little to dispel arguments by many election officials that the changes would bring “chaos and widespread disenfranchisement.”

“Indeed, appellants have not even seriously challenged this aspect of the district court’s ruling, much less demonstrated why it is clearly erroneous,” the order states.

The government also hasn’t shown evidence of past fraud to justify the restrictions, the judges said.

A request for comment from the White House was not immediately returned.

The panel’s decision comes even as the Supreme Court is already considering the same case, which is part of a frenzied legal rush as states are beginning to send out mail ballots for this fall’s midterm elections. Democrats and civil rights groups in a separate lawsuit in Washington, D.C., also are trying to halt the executive order.

The 1st Circuit also had upheld a previous hold Talwani placed on the executive order. But that ruling was lifted by the Supreme Court in a procedural decision that did not determine whether the plan was constitutional.

The plaintiffs swiftly filed new lawsuits after the Postal Service finalized its rule governing mail ballots.

Riccardi and Whitehurst write for the Associated Press.