The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Donald Trump, the former president, and rejected his efforts to impose new mail-in voting restrictions for the midterm elections.
Supreme Court Ruling
The ruling issued on Monday means that the United States Postal Service (USPS) will continue to send ballots normally. Mail-in voting has begun in states including Alabama, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, and western states like Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington will soon join this process.
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Trump's Proposed Restrictions
The plan, which is still blocked, sought to require states to provide USPS with a list of names and addresses of voters following an executive order from Trump, and ballots would need to have specific barcodes on the envelopes to be sent by this postal agency.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston issued a temporary order against USPS, prohibiting the agency from imposing these new requirements on states. The judge stated that these requirements are likely illegal as the postal service has no authority to control mail-in voting.
Trump's Position and Voting Statistics
The majority of the Supreme Court decided to uphold that temporary order. Trump has claimed that this request to change USPS rules was aimed at preventing illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens, a problem that many studies have shown to be very rare. In this case, government lawyers have not presented any evidence of fraud in mail-in voting to the courts.
Trump has consistently criticized the voting method used by about one-third of voters in the last two federal elections. According to a national poll by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, in 2024, the percentage of voters who reported voting by mail was higher among Democrats (37%) than Republicans (24%).
In a social media post last year, Trump stated that he would "lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots" and claimed that "elections can never be honest with mail-in voting." Interestingly, Trump himself voted by mail in Florida this year.
This news is developing and will be updated.
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Source: npr.org
