Listen to this articleDear 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated using AI-based technology. Pronunciation errors may occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve results. The U.S. Supreme Court’s preliminary approval of President Donald Trump’s restrictions on mail-in voting has already raised uncertainty about the method nearly a third of the country uses to vote, even if it does not lead to a single procedural change during November’s midterm elections. The high court majority said Monday in an unsigned order that it has not determined whether Trump’s order is constitutional, but that the states that sued did not have the legal right to challenge it. But even the prospect of such sweeping potential reform drew dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who warned that the decision “unnecessarily injects chaos and uncertainty” into the midterm elections. Trump’s executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and directs the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on those lists. A second court order remains in effect prohibiting the postal service from making changes to comply with that order. Still, the administration on Monday night filed a motion calling for the second suspension to be lifted and published new regulations that would take effect Tuesday if the legal path is completely cleared. Those rules require a specific format for envelopes containing mail-in ballots, which may force some jurisdictions to completely overhaul theirs, and forces states to use an electronic system to identify to the postal service who votes by mail. If states do not comply, their mail-in ballots will not be sent. Michelle Curtis, left, and Angela McDonald, right, demonstrate against proposed changes to the handling of mail-in ballots on July 28 in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Marta Lavandier/The Associated Press) “I just don’t see it.” American elections are run by local officials in thousands of scattered offices, many of which do not even have a full-time employee. Tammy Patrick, program director for the Election Center, an association of 2,500 election officials, warned that it would be impossible for any state to comply with the new rules and that no one she spoke to has tried. “There is not a single state that makes its elections [this] way,” Patrick said in an interview. “There’s been an assumption that this isn’t going to happen because it couldn’t happen the way it’s set up, because no one does it this way.” Earlier this year, the Trump administration gutted the Federal Election Assistance Commission, a traditionally bipartisan body that helps election officials across the United States and that has maintained the national mail-in voter registration form. The commission found that 29 percent of Americans cast mail-in ballots in the midterm elections. 2024. Salinas, recorder of Yolo County in California and president of that state’s election officials association, noted that ballots in his state begin being cast in 11 days and that his county has already printed its envelopes. “The ability to do that, I just don’t see it,” Salinas said judges blocked Trump from creating new voting restrictions by executive order last year. This year, a bill to revamp voting procedures, the Save America Act, stalled. in the Senate, and Republicans informed the White House that it was probably nowhere near the 60 votes it would need to pass, even after Trump gave a prime-time speech. The Trump administration also suffered a defeat earlier this year when the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states can count ballots that arrive after Election Day. That case came a few weeks after Trump raised false allegations about the California election, in which the lead changed in some. races as more ballots were counted hours and days after polls closed are contrary to federal and state privacy laws. Trump has prevailed in two of the three presidential elections by having the highest percentage of mail-in or absentee votes, but he has consistently criticized the practice, saying it is ripe for possible fraud. As a result, Democrats are now more likely to use mail-in voting than Republicans, a partisan divide that was not as clear before Trump entered politics. national Election fraud exists, but it is usually individualistic in nature. He claims that millions of unauthorized US residents voted for his Democratic rival in the 2016 election, or that his election loss four years later to Joe Biden was rigged LISTEN | Trump’s efforts to change the midterm vote: Front Burner 26:24 Trump’s ‘big lie’ in prime time.
