Yet Another Federal Judge Blocks Trump Mail-In Voting Executive Order

The Trump administration just can’t take no for an answer, which, sadly, isn’t surprising considering the nature of President Donald Trump’s character. Yet another federal judge has blocked Trump’s executive order that creates significant restrictions on mail-in voting. 

The New York Times reports that Judge Carl J. Nichols issued his ruling overnight on Sunday. Nichols’ ruling is similar to Judge Indira Talwani’s previous blocks on the executive order. He emphasized that the Trump administration provided little “evidence that there will be significant fraud in the upcoming elections” if the executive order isn’t allowed to be implemented. 

On the other hand, he wrote, there was an “increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections” should he allow the executive order to be implemented. 

“The public has a strong interest in ensuring that doesn’t happen,” he wrote.

The lawsuits filed against Trump’s executive order largely focus on a requirement that the United States Postal Service (USPS) create a rule that allows it to withhold ballots in states that haven’t submitted their voter rolls to a federal database. The rule also requires states to redesign their mail-in ballot envelopes to meet new federal requirements. 

While Talwani’s ruling focused on the rule’s constitutional violations, Nichols emphasized that no federal statute gives USPS the power to screen voters. “As the government concedes, the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the rule,” he wrote.

Election officials in multiple states have consistently spoken out against the rule, saying that there is no time to implement the changes ahead of the November midterms. In many states, ballots have already been finalized and mailed to absentee and overseas voters. Even postal workers have come out against the rule. 

The American Postal Workers Union, which consists of 200,000 postal workers, released a statement urging the Supreme Court to uphold the block on the executive order. The union said that postal workers haven’t received formal training on the new system and that it would lead to the “catastrophic wholesale non-delivery” of thousands of ballots.

The Trump administration received a brief reprieve last month after the Supreme Court struck down Talwani’s block, saying the block was premature as the rule wasn’t finalized. They stressed that the ruling wasn’t on the legality of the executive order. The USPS issued the final rule shortly after the Supreme Court lifted the block, prompting Talwani to block it again. 

Despite repeated court blocks, a whistleblower said the USPS was still proceeding with implementing the rule as planned. The whistleblower also said that the online portal that states are supposed to send their voter rolls to is glitchy and will likely result in thousands of voters being disenfranchised. 

While Talwani is an Obama appointee, so her block isn’t necessarily surprising, Nichols was appointed by Trump. The fact that even when the administration goes to judges they think would favor them, they still lose, should be a sign of the executive order’s unique awfulness. 

Hopefully, this signals how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the executive order ahead of the midterms. 

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Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Mail-In Voting Exective Order

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