How Trump's attempt to restrict mail ballots is being challenged in court

Geoff Bennett:

North Carolina today began mailing out ballots for the November election, the first state in the nation to do so. And that's as the Trump administration continues its legal fight to put new restrictions on mail-in ballots.

Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, has been following this story closely and joins us now with more -- Liz.

Liz Landers:

Geoff, late today, a federal judge in Boston indefinitely extended her order to prevent the Trump administration from implementing new restrictions on mail-in ballots. The plan would require states to use new scannable envelopes and provide the government with a list of voters eligible to receive mail ballots.

Here to help us understand all this is David Becker. He's the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research.

David, thank you for joining us.

David Becker, Executive Director, Center for Election Innovation and Research: Thanks for having me on, Liz.

Liz Landers:

This ruling just came out in the last few minutes, and in it, Judge Talwani writes that the U.S. Postal Service rule clashes with Congress and states' authority.

What else does she say in this ruling about the legality of what the Trump administration is attempting to do here?

David Becker:

Well, it's an extensive and very specific, very deliberate ruling. And we have to remember the hearing happened only 24 hours ago, put together very, very quickly.

And she goes through the history of this case. She goes into detail about the order, and she finds a couple of very specific things. She finds that this order originally is unconstitutional. It violates the Elections Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 4, which grants authority to run elections solely to the state legislatures or to Congress.

The president cannot, with the swipe of a pen, change election procedures. And she further finds that it violates several statutes that regulate how the Postal Service operates. So the Postal Service cannot just change choose to deliver some mail ballots and not to deliver other mail ballots if the states have determined that the people who were addressed on those mail ballots were entitled to receive them.

And then she says that, because of that, the plaintiffs, both the states that sued, about half the states in the country, mostly Democratic, and the voting rights groups that sued, were likely to win on the merits and were likely to experience irreparable harm.

And in this, she really went into how the final rules that the Postal Service put forth were going to create potentially chaos and confusion and disenfranchise thousands of voters potentially. And as we're sitting here 60 days before the election, she ruled ultimately that these rules cannot be mandatorily applied to the states.

Liz Landers:

This is still being contested by the Trump administration. They filed something yesterday to the Supreme Court asking them to rule on this.

If this rule from the Postal Service goes into effect, the Postal Service could decide not to deliver mail ballots in states that don't share voter data. Is that legal? What would the effect be there?

David Becker:

Well, so it's not legal.

And, furthermore, the way that the rules might go into effect, as indicated by a whistle-blower that gave a complaint earlier this week, the Postal Service also could decide to reject entire batches of thousands, perhaps as many as 10,000 ballots, simply for a typographical error on one, meaning they would reject ballots that undeniably were going to valid voters. That's illegal as well.

This rule -- these rules in the executive order are not going to go into effect for 2026. I'm very, very confident about this, regardless of the additional legal challenges. There are some challenges in the First Circuit Court of Appeals currently and in the Supreme Court currently relating to the original temporary restraining order that was issued by this judge about a week ago.

This judge has rescinded that temporary restraining order, in light of this more permanent this injunction that applies until final judgment in the case. And so I think the government is going to have to re-appeal to those to those entities.

But, even then, the Supreme Court didn't seem anxious to rule on this. They set briefing next week on this and might have to set new briefing on this. The First Circuit will consider this if it's appealed. But I remain completely confident, as you look at North Carolina and other states having already sent out ballots or preparing to send out ballots, the ballot envelopes are already printed as they have been used for many, many years.

The ballots are being printed. The mail voters who've requested ballots expect to receive those ballots, both Republicans and Democrats, and as election officials are moving forward, complying with their state laws. And I have utmost confidence that the courts are not going to derail this and inject chaos and confusion into a kind of slapdash rule that was put together by the Postal Service, which they're not very well suited to implement.

Even -- they even admit in the court filings that they're not even ready to implement it today if they wanted to.

Liz Landers:

Speaking of North Carolina, we spoke earlier today with Derek Bowens. He is the director of elections for Durham County, and he sent out 1,380 ballots by mail today to voters in his community. I asked him if his office has voluntarily taken up this U.S. Postal Service rule that they released a week ago.

Derek Bowens, Director of Elections, Durham County, North Carolina: We have not. Our direction in North Carolina comes from our authorizing agency, which is the state Board of Elections. So we would take our directives from them as the supervising entity.

So the direction from them has not been to implement or respond to any particular set of rules. We simply comply with North Carolina law with respect to mailing, and that's what every county board of elections in our state would be doing.

Liz Landers:

David, what state -- what are states supposed to do right now? What would you advise them?

David Becker:

Well, what states are supposed to do, and what they are doing right now is doing what they have always done, which is to comply with their state laws that apply to the mailing of ballots. They can do nothing else, and they do it very, very well.

And as you heard from Derek there, he's preparing to do this. He is following his state law, as all of the public servants, Republicans and Democrats, tens of thousands of them all across the country, are doing right now to make sure their voters can vote as conveniently and safely and securely as possible.

I think it's really notable. The court in Boston did leave open the possibility that a state could voluntarily choose to comply with these new postal rules. She did it with the temporary restraining order that was issued about a week ago, and she continues to do that with the preliminary injunction, which largely tracked the temporary restraining order.

So, theoretically, a state could choose to comply with these really draconian and poorly thought out rules that the Postal Service put out, particularly states that maybe find themselves more aligned with President Trump.

But I think it's really telling that not one has tried to do so. And I don't know that any of them will try to do so, particularly given the fact that the Postal Service itself does not seem well prepared to implement these rules, given how rushed it was, how much oversight it lacked, how slapdash the effort was.

Liz Landers:

David Becker, thank you so much for your expertise.

David Becker:

Thank you, Liz.