A federal judge on Wednesday cleared a key hurdle for President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting, despite Democratic state officials launching a fresh legal challenge as the midterm elections draw near. This latest legal battle follows a Supreme Court procedural ruling favoring Trump just two days earlier, creating the possibility that the matter will return to the justices ahead of the crucial votes determining congressional control. The initial batch of mail ballots is scheduled for dispatch next week.
District Judge Indira Talwani agreed to lift an injunction that had blocked the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing Trump’s mandate for the November vote. She explained she felt "compelled" to act after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court determined a similar order she issued in a distinct case was premature.
Talwani nevertheless said the executive order could unleash “chaos” and referred to it as “likely unconstitutional.” The administration can now move forward and implement a Postal Service rule published late Friday. It would require states to follow a uniform envelope style for mail ballots and to give the Postal Service a list of voters eligible to receive them. The new lawsuit, filed by about two dozen Democratically controlled states against the U.S.
Postal Service, marked a new phase in the high-stakes litigation. It came after the Supreme Court ruled against them in a separate case, but did not say Trump’s order was legal. The high court majority found the initial Democratic lawsuit was premature, but that was before the Republican administration issued a rule governing Postal Service delivery of mail ballots.
Election officials warn it will be impossible to implement before the first wave of mail ballots are sent out next week. Now, at the last moment, the federal government is attempting to meddle in those preparations and potentially threaten countless Americans’ right to vote,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of 25 Democratic attorneys general filing the lawsuit, said in a statement. All previous challenges were filed before the administration published its mail ballot rule Friday night.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis on Wednesday said the Postal Service’s proposals were “commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots” and that the administration would continue to work to implement them to boost “the safety and security of our elections.” The Postal Service said it would not comment because of the pending lawsuit. National Democrats on Tuesday cited the rule in asking the federal judge in the Washington case to block Trump’s order after he declined to do so last spring, saying the administration at the time had not taken concrete action. In Boston, Talwani also found that the administration had violated a separate injunction she had placed on the Postal Service in drafting the new rule, although she did not take any action against the government.
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