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Mail voting order blocked
A federal appeals court on Saturday upheld an injunction against President Donald Trump’s mail-in voting order, ruling that the Trump administration could not implement the directive in 23 states and the District of Columbia while legal challenges proceed.
The 1st U.S. Circuit of Appeals declined to lift a lower-court injunction from June that ruled parts of President Trump’s order were unconstitutional after Democratic-led states, including California, Massachusetts and Washington, sued the administration.
The order directed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to put together a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and directed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate officials who mail ballots to people who are “not eligible” to vote.
In her June 25 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani said Trump had no authority to have the DHS compile this data and that the USPS equally had no authority to follow the orders about mail-in voting.
The Department of Justice said that absent a ruling in its favor it may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, as the appeals court rejected the administration’s appeal in a 2-1 decision.
Judges weigh costs and threats
The appeals court’s 2-1 ruling rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause the lower court order, with one judge, Joshua D. Dunlap, a Trump appointee, dissenting to part of the ruling.
Judge Talwani’s June 25 ruling kept in place barred the USPS from refusing to deliver mail ballots to states that refuse to comply with DOJ demands for their unredacted voter lists.
The appeals court said the summary-judgment record showed that changing mail ballot envelopes would force the plaintiff states to incur “monetary and operational costs,” and it rejected the administration’s argument that those costs should be disregarded for now.
The ruling also focused on the executive order’s threats to criminally punish state or local officials who refuse to comply, describing it as an “unprecedented federal incursion into states’ exclusive power to determine voter eligibility.”
In its emergency motion appeal, the Trump administration argued the executive order “does not change anything at all about elections in any State,” but the appeals court pointed to the administration’s failure to answer whether it would prosecute a state official for sending a ballot to someone not on DHS’s approved list.
Deadlines, Congress control
The appeals court said the executive order set “rapidly approaching deadlines” requiring states to coordinate with federal officials and comply with new voting procedures for the upcoming September and November elections.
The dispute is tied to the November elections that will decide control of Congress, and the court’s decision keeps key parts of the order suspended while lawsuits continue.
The Guardian reported that the March order directed DHS to compile and transmit to states a list of confirmed U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state, derived from citizenship and naturalization records and other federal databases.
The same reporting said the order required the USPS to only deliver ballots to voters on each state’s approved mail-in ballot list, and it noted that USPS issued new proposed rules requiring states to provide the names and barcodes tied to their mail-in ballots.
The stakes for the administration are also legal, because the Justice Department warned that without a ruling in its favor it may be forced to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene as the injunction remains in effect.
