Appeals courts to rule on Trump USPS mail ballot rules for midterms

Voters weigh flying home as state officials flag disruption risks

The Postal Service has defended the plan as “modest data and mail preparation requirements” and pointed to what it describes as “visibility and law-enforcement benefits.” USPS has echoed President Trump’s use of illegal voting by non-U.S. citizens — an “incredibly rare problem,” according to NPR — to justify the executive order that prompted the new rules.

In two rulings against the USPS plan, Talwani, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, concluded that the Postal Service has no authority to control voting by mail. In both rulings, the judge noted that Trump administration lawyers have provided no evidence of mail-voting fraud to support rushing the new ballot requirements into effect for this year’s midterms.

Election officials around the country have countered with sworn statements. Don Millis, the Republican-appointed chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said in a sworn declaration supporting a lawsuit by two dozen mainly Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C., that complying with the new USPS requirement for specific envelope barcodes “would be virtually impossible for Wisconsin.” Millis added that there is not enough time or money to reprint ballot envelopes before the state’s Sept. 17 deadline for mailing absentee ballots for all requests received by then.

To meet the barcode requirement, Millis said election officials would need to print stickers and add them by hand — something he described as “an impossibility for many jurisdictions,” including small, rural communities that “often have a single employee performing all elections-related work.”

In states built around mail voting, the challenges would extend beyond ballot envelopes. Stuart Holmes, Washington state’s elections director, said in a court filing that the state “no longer has large-scale election-day infrastructure in place to accommodate a significant shift away from vote-by-mail.” Scott Nago, Hawaii’s chief election officer, said there is “simply insufficient time to coordinate the necessary polling places, volunteers, and logistical framework that would be necessary to emulate the prior polling place model that existed prior to the advent of elections by mail.”

Dena Dawson, Oregon’s elections director, warned that the rule could leave voters with no path to the ballot. “If technological or implementation failure prevents the delivery of mail ballots in this vote-by-mail state, Oregonians have no other means by which to cast their votes,” Dawson said. Oregon has conducted elections entirely by mail since 2000.

The legal fight also involves a whistleblower report released last week alleging that the Postal Service’s new systems for enforcing its ballot requirements have not been properly tested and could prevent many eligible voters from receiving their ballots in time for the midterms or at all. The USPS inspector general’s office has begun an independent review of those allegations, spokesperson Tara Linne confirmed in a statement.

Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS is taking the whistleblower’s concerns “seriously” and that the agency’s “standards for quality, security, and system integrity were not compromised” during the system’s “accelerated” development. USPS has only been able to confirm that it would roll out “sometime” this week the online portal state election officials would need to use to turn over their voter lists.

The uncertainty is forcing some voters to consider backup plans. Kelsi Kiper, a Texas-registered voter stationed out of state with her husband, an active-duty service member, has relied on the Postal Service to cast her ballots for nearly a decade. This year, she is weighing spending roughly $2,000 on flights and rental cars to vote in person. “It’s not something that I think a lot of us in the military are prepared to spend because many military families operate on a single income,” Kiper said. “For me, I think that it’s important to prioritize the rights that our active-duty members are serving to preserve.”

Ann Madden, a board member of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas and a challenger to the USPS plan, said the ballot she sent from France for Pennsylvania’s primary arrived too late to be counted. For the general election, Madden said she considered flying across the Atlantic to vote in person but cannot travel for personal reasons. Her current plan is to try FedEx or another private carrier. The mail ballot rule, Madden said, is “just going to make a bad situation worse.”

Sarah Streyder, executive director of Secure Families Initiative — an advocacy group for military families that is also suing over the USPS plan — raised concerns about military voters who do not identify themselves as covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. The Postal Service says it will deliver those voters’ ballots as usual. Even with that exemption, Streyder said, service members and family members who register through standard civilian registration forms could still see delays if the USPS plan goes into effect.

“Imagine someone on a submarine,” Streyder said. “It might be that they only get a port call with maybe days before the election happens. If a USPS list lags at all and doesn’t have that person’s name on the list at the moment in which they’re casting their ballot, and it’s their one chance to do so because they’re going back underwater after that, that person won’t have a voice.”

In states that can offer alternatives to mail voting, many eligible voters may still be unable to cast a ballot in person — including disabled voters, out-of-state college students, voters who need language assistance that is not available at polling places, and some poll workers who will be too busy to vote on Election Day, according to NPR.

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer for the National Association of Election Officials, said she is concerned about the extra strain on local officials who have spent months preparing for the election. “Whenever we have change in the system close to an election, it has the potential to create confusion and chaos,” Patrick said. “And let’s be honest: There are some people that want nothing more than for our elections to be perceived as chaotic or for voters to not understand what their rights are and what the rules of engagement are in order for them to effectively participate.”

In North Carolina, which began mailing out absentee ballots on Sept. 4, local election officials are working through the uncertainty. Corinne Duncan, elections director for Buncombe County, has been fielding more questions from voters at outreach events and urging them to mail their ballots early. “We’re always working on contingency planning and making our system as adjustable as possible because it is truly non-negotiable. We will make that election happen,” Duncan said. Derek Bowens, elections director for Durham County, said his office is also “pressure tested” but is committed to delivering ballots on time.

Editor’s note: USPS is a financial supporter of NPR. This report was written by NPR’s Hansi Lo Wang and edited by Megan Pratz.