Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Rules Return to Supreme Court

When last we looked in on the Supreme Court’s review of Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, less than two weeks ago, it was clear that the Court’s August 24 decision would not be the final word. The Court decided that it was premature to rule on the EO and that nobody had suffered any injury giving them legal standing to challenge it. Much of the briefing leading up to that decision focused on the preliminary question of who suffered more harm while the case was ongoing: the administration in not being able to prepare to carry out the EO, or the plaintiff blue states in not knowing if they needed to prepare to comply with it.

The administration complained about the appallingly overreaching effort by resistance-mad Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts to bar the United States Postal Service even from writing regulations to implement the EO. Judge Talwani then attacked the USPS for issuing conditional rules before the Supreme Court’s decision, and she issued her own broadside even after the Court made clear that she never had Article III judicial power to issue any such order — an order transparently aimed at running out the clock so that even a win in the appeals court would leave the administration unable to implement its rules for the midterm elections. The states, at the same time, have a legitimate practical complaint that they can’t well be expected to print up millions of ballot envelopes compliant with the new USPS rules when they’d be seeing those rules for the first time only at the last minute. The online portal for the states to communicate with the USPS apparently isn’t even operational yet.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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When last we looked in on the Supreme Court’s review of Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot executive order, less than two weeks ago, it was clear that the Court’s August 24 decision would not be the final word. The Court decided that it was premature to rule on the EO and that nobody had suffered any injury giving them legal standing to challenge it. Much of the briefing leading up to that decision focused on the preliminary question of who suffered more harm while the case was ongoing: the administration in not being able to prepare to carry out the EO, or the plaintiff blue states in not knowing if they needed to prepare to comply with it.

The administration complained about the appallingly overreaching effort by resistance-mad Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts to bar the United States Postal Service even from writing regulations to implement the EO. Judge Talwani then attacked the USPS for issuing conditional rules before the Supreme Court’s decision, and she issued her own broadside even after the Court made clear that she never had Article III judicial power to issue any such order — an order transparently aimed at running out the clock so that even a win in the appeals court would leave the administration unable to implement its rules for the midterm elections. The states, at the same time, have a legitimate practical complaint that they can’t well be expected to print up millions of ballot envelopes compliant with the new USPS rules when they’d be seeing those rules for the first time only at the last minute. The online portal for the states to communicate with the USPS apparently isn’t even operational yet.