Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let Him Seize Control of Mail Ballots Before November

The Constitution could not be more clear. The Elections Clause hands the power to regulate federal elections to states and Congress. Not to the president. Not to an executive order. Not to a man who has spent five years insisting that every election he loses is rigged.

And yet here is Donald Trump, through his Solicitor General D. John Sauer, literally begging the Supreme Court to hurry up and let him implement a scheme that would let the U.S. Postal Service decide whether your mail ballot gets delivered. The Justice Department filed an emergency appeal Monday after the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling blocking the order in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Then they filed a supplemental brief Wednesday practically stamping their feet, warning that if the Court does not act fast, the “clock will run out” on their ability to impose these restrictions before November.

Let us be precise about what this order does. Trump signed it in March. It directs Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile citizenship lists and hand them to states. States would then send their voter lists to USPS. And the Postal Service would be instructed to refuse to deliver any mail ballot to a voter who is not on that list. Postmaster General David Steiner has already told senators that mail carriers would not deliver ballots in states that refuse to participate.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

Let that sink in. A federal agency under presidential control would have the power to physically prevent eligible citizens from receiving their ballots. Forty-eight million Americans voted by mail in 2024. Thirty-five million in 2022. This is not a policy debate about election integrity. This is a structural attack on the mechanics of democracy itself.

The pretext is noncitizen voting, which study after study has shown is vanishingly rare and already a felony punishable by deportation. Trump promoted these changes as safeguards against a problem that effectively does not exist. The real harm is not hypothetical. It is the 48 million people who would be subject to a federal vetting system run by agencies that have never managed an election and have no business trying.

Judge Indira Talwani in Boston blocked the order in June, ruling that the administration lacks the power to build its own citizen-voter database and that USPS cannot impose new rules on state mail ballots. The 1st Circuit upheld her. Even the D.C. Circuit, which allowed the order to proceed on procedural grounds in separate cases, suggested it is constitutionally dubious once it is developed enough to challenge. The administration’s own brief sidesteps the Elections Clause entirely, arguing instead that it is simply “too soon” for courts to rule. Sauer calls the lower court’s injunction “preemptive.” The translation: let us build the apparatus first, and then you can decide whether it is illegal.

Joe Ravi (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

There is a detail that lays bare the bad faith. The executive order itself requires states to notify USPS of their participation no fewer than 90 days before a federal election. That deadline passed last week. The administration is now asking the Supreme Court to override its own timeline, waive its own deadline, and green-light a process that has not even produced a final rule. They are not asking for order. They are asking for chaos on a deadline.

The Supreme Court has the briefs. It has not ruled. Every day of delay is a day the order stays blocked, and every day it stays blocked is a day closer to an election where millions of people will need their ballots to arrive.

The call to action is straightforward. Contact your secretary of state and demand they refuse to hand over voter rolls to a federal agency. Pressure your members of Congress to publicly oppose this order. Support the organizations litigating this, including the League of Women Voters, which secured the nationwide injunction. And tell everyone you know who votes by mail to request their ballot early, track it, and follow up if it does not arrive.

John Torrey (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

The right to vote is not a privilege a president can condition on a federal database. It is the floor. When someone tries to raise that floor to a ceiling, you do not negotiate. You organize.

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