Trump wants to restrict mail voting — but it’s getting more popular

Seventy Days Before the Midterms, Mail-Ballot Rules Remain in Legal Limbo

Earthguardiansonline.com – North Carolina opens its mail-in voting window for the 2026 midterm elections this Friday, yet the very rules that will govern how those ballots are processed hang in uncertainty. A federal judge has issued a temporary order halting the US Postal Service from carrying out new mail-ballot verification requirements tied to a sweeping executive order President Donald Trump signed in March. The injunction landed just days after the Supreme Court signaled that the administration could move forward with portions of that order, leaving election administrators and voters alike caught between two contradictory signals from the federal bench.

A Whistleblower Adds Pressure Inside USPS

The legal standoff is compounded by internal friction within the Postal Service itself. A whistleblower filing alleges that USPS personnel have raised substantial information-technology concerns about a newly designed system meant to authenticate incoming mail ballots. If the verification infrastructure proves unreliable or untested, the practical consequences for tens of millions of voters who depend on postal delivery to cast their ballots could be severe.

Two Decades of Expansion, Now Under Threat

Mail voting has transformed from a niche option into a mainstream pillar of American elections over roughly twenty years. States retain primary authority over who may request a ballot by post, producing a complex patchwork of eligibility rules that has evolved considerably since the turn of the millennium. In 2000, only 21 states permitted any registered voter to receive a ballot through the mail. By today’s count, 37 states plus the District of Columbia grant that universal access, while an additional 13 states extend mail voting under narrower conditions, per data maintained by the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

The pandemic-era 2020 contest accelerated the trend dramatically. Millions of Americans who had never previously voted by post did so that year, and subsequent federal elections have seen sustained, multi-million-ballot mail participation. Shifting the mechanics of how those ballots are received, verified, and counted therefore carries implications not confined to a single state or party but to the entire administrative apparatus preparing to run November’s contests.

Who Votes by Mail — and How Their Preferences Differ

A 2024 post-election survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that voters reporting use of a mail-in ballot in that cycle tended to skew older and more likely to reside in urban or suburban neighborhoods relative to the broader electorate. Eligibility thresholds vary widely: in states such as Mississippi, reaching age 65 alone qualifies a voter for a mailed ballot without any additional justification.

Political alignment also diverges between the two voting channels. Among respondents who said they cast a mail-in ballot in 2024, 61 percent reported supporting Vice President Kamala Harris for president — a share exceeding her overall popular-vote percentage and higher than the support level among voters who turned out in person, whether during early voting or on Election Day itself. That gap underscores why any federal restructuring of mail-ballot handling would touch not merely procedural logistics but the effective weight of a large bloc of voters.

The Executive Order and Its Legal Obstacles

Trump’s March directive, aimed at tightening federal oversight of mail-ballot processing, follows years of public assertions — largely unsubstantiated by court findings — that postal voting harbors widespread fraud. With roughly seventy days separating the present moment from the November ballot deadline, the ongoing litigation could block some or all of the intended changes before they take effect.

David Becker, a former Justice Department attorney who now directs the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, offered a blunt assessment of the timeline problem:

“There’s no way to implement (the executive order). This would be a sweeping seizure of election power from the states under any circumstances. It would be hard to do this with two or four years of advance notice. It is impossible to do that with about 70 days.”

What Comes Next

Election officials across multiple states have indicated they cannot comply with the proposed federal mail-ballot rules as written, citing conflicts with state constitutions and statutes that have governed postal voting for decades. The temporary judicial pause gives administrators a narrow window to continue operating under existing state frameworks, but it does not resolve the underlying question of whether the executive branch may impose uniform verification protocols on a function long administered at the state level. As North Carolina’s ballot envelopes go out this week and similar mailings follow in other states, voters will cast their ballots under rules that may change — or may not — depending on how quickly the courts resolve the next round of challenges.