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Supreme Court fight
President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the administration to move forward with implementing a sweeping executive order aimed at mail voting that lower courts blocked in nearly two dozen states.
“Trump administration urges Supreme Court to allow order targeting mail-in voting before midterms WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to clear the way for an executive order from President Donald Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections”
The order would give the US Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security new roles in screening state voter rolls for potential non-citizen voters, including requiring states to submit lists of eligible mail voters to the US Postal Service.
The administration’s appeal argues the executive order is “general policy guidance” and stresses that the Postal Service had not finalized any regulations.
Twenty-three Democratic-led states challenged the order, and a federal district court blocked its implementation for this year’s election in the states that sued, while the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision over the weekend.
US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court in the appeal that “the executive order is an intra-branch directive from the president to his subordinates.”
Agencies, timing, and judges
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to lift a judge’s block, calling the halt premature, with Solicitor General D. John Sauer saying courts have no power to intervene yet because the US Postal Service and other involved agencies are still sorting out how they’ll implement Trump’s directive.
Sauer argued that “the injunction is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order.”
The administration asked for an immediate “administrative” order to put the lower court decisions on hold, but the 1st Circuit reasoned that local election officials had already had to devote resources away from preparing for this year’s election.
The appeals court said the states’ efforts have “necessarily entailed a diversion of staff time and attention from other pressing election-related tasks,” including preparing public-education materials and rolling out new voting technology.
The Supreme Court asked the states challenging the order to respond to the administration’s appeal by Aug. 3, according to USA Today.
What’s at stake
Trump’s executive order would require states to use individualized ballot tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes and would “prioritize” federal prosecution of state election officials who send or receive ballots to non-citizens or others ineligible to vote.
The administration also instructed Homeland Security to provide lists of state residents it believes are eligible to vote, while the government acknowledged in court that its own databases of US citizens are incomplete.
The dispute is tied to the November midterm elections, with The Hill saying the administration wants the high court to immediately intervene to ensure agencies can resume in time for this year’s midterm elections.
USA Today quotes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, saying Trump’s executive order is “nothing other than voter suppression by another name,” and that the court “must reject this latest, brazen attempted power grab.”
The Washington Post reports that a divided panel upheld a federal judge’s block, finding it would “sow confusion” and “threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters,” and it notes the Supreme Court gave the states until Monday to respond to the administration’s appeal.
