Block comes a week before first midterm mail ballots due out

A federal judge on Thursday issued a 14-day hold on the government implementing President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, stalling the directive for the second time about a week before the first mail ballots were due to be sent out for the midterm elections. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani’s order came in a case that could be headed back to the Supreme Court, which on Monday had overturned an earlier ruling of hers that had blocked the order from taking effect.

Talwani focused her written ruling on the practical time and resource constraints facing plaintiff states. She wrote that “plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms.”

The hold pauses the administration’s work on implementing the directive during the 14-day window, while the legal challenge to the order continues. Compliance with the directive, as Talwani described, would require states to design new mail ballots, obtain approval of those designs, produce the ballots, update their own election management systems, and train election officials to use the U.S. Postal Service portal and upload citizen data to it.

The 14-day hold is the second judicial pause of the same directive. The Supreme Court on Monday overturned Talwani’s earlier injunction that had blocked Trump’s order from taking effect, lifting that order and clearing the way for the administration to begin moving toward implementation. Talwani’s new order has now temporarily stopped that work again. The scope of what the high court addressed was not described.

With ballots due to go out in about a week, the proximity of the midterms has framed the timeline of the dispute, a case that could be headed back to the justices.

The Associated Press reported Talwani’s decision Thursday; Nicholas Riccardi wrote the story.