Supreme Court blocks Trump's bid to restrict mail-in voting

The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected President Donald Trump's March executive order that sought to bar the Postal Service from delivering mailed ballots to voters the administration deemed ineligible. Under the plan, the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, would have compiled a list of supposedly ineligible, noncitizen voters.

Legal experts had already called the order plainly unconstitutional, since only states — not the federal government — can set election rules. The plan also faced serious logistical hurdles: a whistleblower told Congress this month that the Postal Service lacked the capacity to implement such a system safely, with Senator Richard Blumenthal describing it as rushed and potentially unlawful. State election officials warned they could not implement the restrictions so close to an election, and several states — including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin — had already begun mailing ballots before the ruling.

Only justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the ruling; Trump appointees Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch did not side with the president. In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump called mail-in ballots "corrupt and out of control" and attacked the conservative justices who ruled against him, both on this case and an earlier ruling on tariffs.

According to the Brookings Institution, mail voting fraud is exceedingly rare — roughly four cases per 10 million mail ballots cast across the 2016 through 2022 general elections. Trump has focused on the issue since 2020, when late-counted mailed ballots eroded his election-night leads in several key states, even though he himself has voted by mail multiple times since then. Because more Democrats than Republicans tend to vote by mail, restricting the practice would tend to benefit Republicans. State election officials are now working to reassure voters that mail voting will proceed safely this year.