President Trump's March executive order told USPS to build a new system before ballots go out. Election officials would have to upload every mail-voter's name and address to a postal portal, and get ballot envelope designs approved by USPS. A 24-state coalition led by California sued, and a Boston judge blocked those two USPS requirements on August 27. On September 3, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to lift that block while the case continues. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson gave the challengers until 10 a.m. ET on September 8 to respond. The Court hasn't ruled yet. North Carolina started mailing the first 2026 general-election ballots on September 4 — the same week as the emergency filing. Federal law requires every state to get ballots to military and overseas voters by mid-September.

1. The Rule Stops Fraud, Not Voters (Solicitor General D. John Sauer)

The administration says the rule protects the integrity of the count, and the lower court acted too early.

The rule targets a specific kind of fraud. Sauer told the Supreme Court the judge's order "partially nullifies the Postal Service's efforts to address the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud" — fraud he calls the kind that "dilutes the votes of lawful voters" and undermines "public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process."

The lower court got ahead of itself. Sauer argues the district court's "continued prejudgment of the rule is baseless."

Leaving the rule optional creates its own mess. Making the envelope and data-sharing steps voluntary instead of mandatory, Sauer wrote, "risks sowing confusion and chaos" for states trying to figure out what's actually required. The Supreme Court already sided with the administration once, pausing a broader injunction against the order on August 24.

2. But States Say Washington Doesn't Get to Run Elections (CA AG Rob Bonta, Brennan Center)

A 24-state coalition and voting-rights lawyers call the order an unconstitutional federal takeover of a state job.

This is a straight-up power grab. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who's co-leading the 24-state coalition suing over the rule, said: "This mail-in voting rule is an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections... the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to regulate elections — not the President and not USPS."

The order breaks two legal rules at once. Wendy Weiser, the Brennan Center's vice president for democracy, and Sean Morales-Doyle, senior counsel in its Democracy Program, argue the order violates the Constitution's Elections Clause, which reserves election rulemaking to states and Congress. They also argue the president has no authority to direct USPS, since it's an independent agency.

The rule exposes election workers to prosecution. Weiser and Morales-Doyle warn that officials who issue ballots to voters missing from DHS's citizenship lists could face criminal liability even if they had no idea the list was wrong.

3. Either Way, the People Building the System Say It Isn't Ready (USPS whistleblower, Sen. Richard Blumenthal)

Set the politics aside — the engineers say the rollout is too rushed to work.

A USPS employee filed a whistleblower complaint calling the whole rollout broken. Represented by the nonprofit Whistleblower Aid, the employee told Sen. Richard Blumenthal the process was "secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed," and said the new verification system "deviates dangerously" from how USPS normally operates.

One bad ballot could jam an entire batch. The whistleblower said proper testing would take "nine months to a year." The system checks ballots by random sample, in batches of 10,000 or more. That means a single bad ballot in the sample could delay or block the whole batch — risking what they called "catastrophic failure" for millions of voters this November.

The administration built this to fail, Blumenthal says. Blumenthal received the whistleblower's disclosure. He said: "This is not just incompetence, it is designed malfunction," calling it a "deliberate attempt by the Trump administration to suppress the vote."

The rollout raised alarms inside USPS itself. ProPublica reported that top USPS officials voiced the same disenfranchisement concerns in internal meetings before the rules moved forward anyway. In North Carolina, Democratic Governor Josh Stein publicly grilled his own state election board for voluntarily submitting its envelope design to USPS before it was required to: "What is going on at the State Board of Elections? No one should have to ask these questions less than 48 hours before absentee ballots are mailed out."

Where This Lands

The Trump administration says the rule stops fraud and that a lower court is standing in the way. States and voting-rights groups say the Constitution puts election rules in state hands, not the president's or USPS's. A USPS whistleblower and Sen. Blumenthal say the bigger problem is simpler: the system isn't built, isn't tested, and could jam ballots for reasons that have nothing to do with the law. North Carolina is already mailing ballots. The Supreme Court has until at least September 8 to decide whose rules apply to the rest.

Sources