Supreme Court hands preliminary win to Trump on mail-in ballots executive order
The Trump administration wants to exert greater control over mail-in ballots ahead of the 2026 midterms despite the primary role states play in overseeing elections.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court handed an initial win to the Trump administration Monday in its effort to implement an executive order aimed at limiting who can receive mail-in ballots ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
At issue are provisions that seek to create a federal list of eligible voters and order the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those people.
The justices, divided 6-3 along ideological lines with conservatives in the majority, lifted an injunction a Massachusetts-based judge imposed in June that prevented key aspects of the executive order from going into effect this year in California and 22 other states that had challenged it.
The court also granted a similar application filed by Alabama and 11 other states.
The high court said in its unsigned decision that the states filed their lawsuit too soon.
“The Court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful,” the Supreme Court said in an unsigned decision. “On that score, time will tell. But the Order itself does not harm the States, so the District Court lacked jurisdiction to bar the Government from trying to implement it.”
The move from the high court clears the way for the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with a proposal to create lists of residents in each state who are eligible to vote.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-trump-mail-voting-order-usps-dhs/
Issue still must be decided by lower court.
With just over two months to go before pivotal elections, the high court’s ruling won’t be the last word on whether the president’s order will be allowed to go forward.
The case now returns to the lower courts, and a key part of the executive order remains blocked because of a ruling in separate litigation that must also be resolved for the order to go into effect before November.
The legal fights have been closely watched by election officials who have expressed concerns about a quick timeline to comply with the order.
The high court’s decision was not on the merits of the executive order but on a narrower legal question: whether 23 states and the District of Columbia had been harmed by the executive order and met the legal bar to challenge it.
https://archive.ph/qHPJW#selection-483.0-501.229