A federal judge froze for two weeks a Trump administration regulation to restrict mail voting late Thursday, calling the U.S. Postal Service rule a violation of states’ power to administer elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s temporary restraining order reinstated a pause that she had lifted just a day earlier, following a U.S. Supreme Court procedural ruling Monday that allowed the administration to implement the policy. The federal government will likely appeal Thursday night’s order.
Throughout months of litigation, Talwani, whom President Barack Obama appointed to the Massachusetts federal court bench in 2013, has shown strong skepticism about President Donald Trump’s power to compel states to overhaul their mail voting systems.
She did so again Thursday, saying the government had not produced any evidence of fraudulent mail voting that the rule was intended to fix. The voting rights groups and Democratic states that sued, however, had shown that voters would be disenfranchised in the Nov. 3 midterm elections if the rule remains in place then, she wrote.
“The USPS’s interest in correcting an unsubstantiated problem through likely unconstitutional means is dwarfed by the overwhelming risk of pervasive disenfranchisement of citizens who need access to mail ballots in order to vote,” Talwani said.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled Monday the two dozen Democratic state officials had sued too early when they challenged Trump’s executive order that USPS had not yet codified in a final rule. The ruling did not mention that the Postal Service had actually published a final rule the previous business day, Aug. 21.
The states and voting rights groups promptly refiled lawsuits Wednesday to challenge the final rule, asking Talwani to keep it from taking effect while the case proceeded.
In the interim, the Trump administration forged ahead with the rule’s implementation, publishing an FAQ earlier Thursday on various aspects of the rule and arguing in court that it was not seeking to take over election administration.
The rule creates new requirements for mail ballot envelopes, which states say would present a major challenge to complete before this year’s elections.
It also requires states to send the federal government lists of voting-age citizens, which would be cross-referenced with federal citizenship data, and forbids the Postal Service from delivering or collecting ballots from people who are not confirmed to be eligible voters through that process.
Trump and administration officials have characterized the rule as a tool for election integrity and Trump has long claimed fraud was rampant in mail voting, without ever providing evidence.
All states allow some form of mail voting. Eight states, primarily in the West, and the District of Columbia, mail ballots to every registered voter.
