Trump's mail ballot restrictions battle

The US Postal Service published a 95-page final draft in August of new rules, sought by the Trump administration, that would require states to give USPS voter-specific mailing lists and use agency-approved, barcoded ballot envelopes trackable by the Postal Service - rules a Massachusetts federal court had already blocked, though the administration kept them ready to take effect immediately if that injunction were lifted. On 15 September, with midterm voting already underway in several states, the Supreme Court declined the administration's emergency request to enforce the rules, saying in an unsigned order that the government was 'unlikely to succeed on the merits.' Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring, said the Postal Service likely does have the statutory authority to impose such rules eventually, but that doing so this close to the midterms would be 'arbitrary and capricious' since election officials lack time to comply; Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Alito writing the challengers were pursuing what the court has called a 'Hail Mary pass' that 'rarely succeeds.'

Trump reacted furiously, calling the ruling among the 'most destructive, hurtful, and damaging' in US history and saying the three justices he appointed (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett) 'are not the people I interviewed' and are 'merely a shell of their original selves,' while praising dissenters Alito and Thomas as 'legends both.' Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration would comply with the ruling while defending Trump's right to criticize the court. Mail ballots, cast by about a third of US voters and already in use in eight fully vote-by-mail states, have been the target of Trump's unsubstantiated fraud claims since his 2020 loss, even though he has voted by mail himself; research cited by Al Jazeera puts documented mail-ballot fraud at about four cases per 10 million ballots.