WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election. The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail. Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S.
Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections. Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.
Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented. California is a victory for California Atty. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.
Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now. Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning. Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail.
In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed. The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Deidre Henderson said it will be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now.
About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in the 2024 elections. But Trump has maintained that voting by mail leads to cheating and fraud. Election experts say there is no evidence of widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.
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