USPS publishes mail-in ballot restrictions despite court injunction blocking them

On a Friday night in late August, the United States Postal Service released a 95-page document laying out new rules for mail-in voting. The timing was deliberate. Courts had already blocked these rules twice—most recently just eleven days earlier—but the Postal Service published them anyway, positioning the restrictions to snap into effect the moment a judge reversed course.

The rules themselves were sweeping. States would be required to hand over the names of anyone requesting a mail-in ballot. They would have to redesign ballot envelopes to include barcodes that postal workers could scan and track. States that refused to comply would lose access to mail-in voting altogether—the Postal Service simply would not distribute their ballots. In its filing, the agency argued these changes were necessary for operational efficiency and to comply with federal law. "These requirements do not amount to election administration," the document stated, "nor do they usurp state resources."

But the constitutional problem was plain to the judges who had already examined them. In June, US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the rules from taking effect, saying states could volunteer to adopt them but the federal government could not impose such policies unilaterally. When the Trump administration pushed forward anyway, Talwani issued a second injunction on August 11, this time addressing a separate lawsuit filed by voting rights organizations. She noted that the midterm elections were fewer than ninety days away. "Where the executive order is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and an erosion of trust in our democracy," she wrote, "the court finds that enfranchisement heavily outweighs the executive's attempt to unconstitutionally insert itself into the domain of election regulation."

The rules were a response to an executive order Trump had issued in March, instructing the Postal Service to implement new restrictions on mail-in ballots. Trump had made mail-in voting a centerpiece of his effort to reshape how Americans vote. He had repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that the method was ripe for fraud—even as he himself voted by mail in Florida's primary that month. Researchers have consistently found that election fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare, and every state already has laws prohibiting noncitizen voting and fraudulent ballot-casting.

The opposition to the rules had been swift and broad. Leaders from twenty-three states plus the District of Columbia challenged the Trump administration's plans. Voting rights organizations filed their own lawsuit. Now, with the Postal Service's Friday night publication, the battle entered a new phase. Marc Elias, a voting rights advocate and Trump critic, posted on social media: "Late tonight, USPS caved to Trump." Democratic lawmakers argued that the Postal Service was attempting to rewrite election rules with the midterm races just months away, when control of both chambers of Congress would be decided.

Postmaster General David Steiner had defended the plan in June, saying the rules would allow postal officials to "match the ballots that a state believes they're sending out to what actually gets sent out." But critics saw something different: a federal agency, at the president's direction, attempting to gather voter information and potentially reject ballots from states that did not comply with the administration's demands. The constitutional principle at stake was fundamental. Election administration, under the US Constitution, falls to the states. What the Trump administration was proposing—federal control over the mechanics of voting itself—represented a direct challenge to that arrangement.

The fate of the rules now rested with the courts. As the document sat online, waiting, the question was whether the injunctions would hold or whether a higher court would overturn them. The midterm elections were coming. Every day that passed brought the nation closer to voting day, and closer to the moment when these rules might suddenly become law.