With less than two months before the Nov. 3 Election Day, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that the U.S. Postal Service may not determine who can vote by mail.
It’s a defeat for President Donald Trump, who in March issued an executive order essentially hamstringing the process that about one-third of U.S. voters use.
Among his directives, the president declared individual states must provide the Postal Service with lists of all the names of voters qualified to vote by mail or absentee.
If a mail-in ballot didn’t comply with the Postal Service’s newly devised requirements, or was sent by somebody not on a state-provided list, the order instructed the USPS not to deliver the ballot, effectively canceling that vote.
If the high court had given President Trump a pass, the measure would have posed insurmountable hurdles for both states and the USPS with the biggest being that the federal portal to receive the states’ voter information is not yet operational.
Oops.
Early voting has already begun in Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin. In Kansas, advanced voting begins Oct. 14.
The measure was also a civil rights terror, requiring states to provide sensitive data, including voters’ driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers, or else be denied mail-in ballots wholesale, disenfranchising millions of voters.
THANKS TO the country’s 3,000-plus county clerks and its state attorneys general, voting — by mail or in-person — has been a smooth and safe process ever since the Civil War when large-scale absentee voting for soldiers posted far away from their homes was ordered by President Abraham Lincoln.
Today’s president has argued changes to the process are necessary to prevent voter fraud, an unfounded bandwagon fueled by conspiracy theorists bent on undermining democracy.
Those persistent lies, unfortunately, are something the Supreme Court has no power over. And though Trump was defeated this week, he still succeeded in sewing ever more distrust in our elections.
It’s likely a safe bet that if the midterm elections are not to his liking, he’ll claim voter fraud, just as he did after the 2020 election, inciting his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. A memory that should haunt us all.
THE JUSTICES did not explain their decision, as is typical for cases on its emergency docket.
But the U.S. Constitution tells us why. A president does not possess unilateral authority to change how the U.S. holds elections. Where, when and how is the purview of states and Congress.
We’re relieved the high court ruled as it did. It’s a start.
— Susan Lynn
