President Donald Trump has failed to put severe restrictions on voting by mail for November’s midterm elections that will decide control of Congress.
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But he may have succeeded in confusing voters about how they can vote, and he could have an opening to make all aspects of voting harder for the next presidential election.
“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court,” Trump posted on social media Tuesday, hours after the high court blocked his attempts to limit who can vote by mail and how, “one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting ‘disaster.’”
Election experts say voting by mail is safe and secure. Here’s how Trump tried to change mail voting and what happens now.
Trump has falsely claimed noncitizens vote en masse, zeroing in on voting by mail as a tool.
He issued an executive order in March trying to prevent people who aren’t marked as citizens by his administration from voting by mail. Trump tried to instruct the Postal Service to dramatically change how it accepts and delivers ballots. This went up and down the courts for months, ending late Monday when the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s rules from going into effect. Many states are preparing to mail ballots or already have for November’s elections.
The justices didn’t explain why, but lower courts have litigated this issue extensively. Presidents typically don’t have control over how elections are run; the Constitution grants that authority to states and Congress. It’s also very close to the elections, and bipartisan election officials warned the new rules would create havoc:
The Trump administration said the rules were necessary to prevent voter fraud. Voting rights groups saw the intent very differently.
“Nothing has changed with regard to voting by mail and absentee,” said Tammy Patrick, a former election official in Arizona now with the nonpartisan Election Center.
But she pointed out that there are still quite a few voting rules in flux. Some states that engaged in redistricting are still litigating their maps, meaning voters’ representatives and polling places might change before the election. Other communities are slashing polling locations.
Beyond that, Trump administration officials haven’t ruled out the possibility that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might be serving warrants near the polls. The Justice Department plans to send 1,000 monitors to polls. Election officials are deeply concerned that events on Election Day could scare people away from voting.
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“It’s the same messaging we had in the 2020 pandemic, where there was uncertainty around certain things to vote,” Patrick said. “And I feel like we’re in a similar moment of chaos that’s purposeful by some to keep voters confused. So it’s important for voters to keep an eye on what’s happening and make a plan on how they want to vote, where they want to vote and try to vote early.”
Trump has failed to make other major changes to how the midterm elections are run. He couldn’t get the Republican-controlled Congress to pass his Save America Act to require proof of citizenship and IDs to vote. Courts have blocked other attempts at changing voting.
It’s unclear whether Trump could get the Postal Service to play a bigger role in deciding who gets mailed ballots in time for the presidential election.
In its unsigned order blocking Trump’s rules, the Supreme Court said the administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits” of changing the rules of mail voting.
“It’s unlikely these rules will ever apply to any election,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney and head of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, in a briefing to reporters.
But at least three conservative justices appeared to leave the door open for letting the Postal Service change the rules in future elections.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) said election officials are doing their best to prepare for anything to make sure Americans can vote.
He pointed out that elections have been held successfully and fairly through the Civil War, World War II and the coronavirus pandemic, and after countless natural disasters like fires in Hawaii and flooding in North Carolina.
“We see threats coming out of D.C. the same way we see all other threats,” he said in an interview this spring after Arizona won a lawsuit against the Justice Department to keep voters’ data private. “We need to have backup plans in case a building burns down the night before an election, for example.”
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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