US judge extends block on Trump order targeting mail-in voting
In the United States, federal Judge Indira Talwani extended the ban preventing the US Postal Service from implementing President Donald Trump’s order aimed at restricting mail-in voting during the midterm elections. The preliminary injunction replaced a temporary ruling through which the judge had previously blocked the USPS plan, The Guardian World reports.
Election campaign timeline
The Trump administration has already asked the US Supreme Court to overturn Talwani’s previous temporary ruling and will likely challenge the new order as well. At the same time, there is increasingly little time left for significant changes to election procedures: North Carolina began sending out its first mail ballots on Friday, while other states are expected to do the same soon.
Nearly one-third of US voters vote by mail. Election officials say they do not have enough time to restructure their systems in line with the new US Postal Service directives.
In her ruling, Talwani stressed that the plaintiff states are required under their laws to send out millions of ballots by specified deadlines. In her assessment, changing procedures at such a late stage of the election cycle would almost certainly lead to significant disenfranchisement of eligible voters.
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Lawsuits over the order
The order allows states to voluntarily adopt the new system, but no state has yet said it intends to do so. Trump has long sought to restrict mail-in voting, although he himself often votes this way. He baselessly linked his defeat in the 2020 election to alleged fraud in mail-in voting.
Trump’s previous order to change election rules, including a requirement to provide documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, was blocked by federal judges last year. They noted that the US Constitution grants the authority to establish election procedures to the states and, in certain cases, to Congress, not to the president.
After the order on mail-in voting, issued in March, Democrats and voting rights groups filed several lawsuits. Talwani heard two of them and initially halted the order’s effect until November in June. At the end of last month, the Supreme Court overturned that decision without determining the legality of Trump’s actions: the conservative majority found the lawsuits premature because they had been filed before USPS published rules for implementing the order. After the rules appeared, the plaintiffs filed the lawsuits again.
