The Supreme Court just gave Trump another weapon to suppress the vote
The SCOTUS decision did not conclude that the president possesses the power to dictate state voting by mail-in ballot, but that distinction may not matter to a lawful voter whose ballot never arrives.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has once again handed Donald Trump something the Constitution does not give him: an opportunity to interfere with how states administer elections.
In an unsigned 6-3 order, the court temporarily cleared the way for the Trump administration to pursue portions of an executive order that could radically disrupt voting by mail immediately before the 2026 midterm elections. The decision did not declare Trump’s order constitutional. It did not conclude that the president possesses the power to dictate state voting procedures. Instead, the majority decided that the states challenging the order had gone to court too soon, because some of the threatened injuries had not yet occurred.
That procedural distinction may matter inside a courtroom. It will mean very little to a lawful voter whose ballot never arrives.
Trump’s order directs the federal government to compile state-by-state citizenship lists and encourages the investigation — and potentially the prosecution — of election officials involved in issuing ballots to people the administration considers ineligible. It also prompted the U.S. Postal Service to devise new national requirements governing ballot envelopes, barcodes, and voter information.
Under the resulting postal rule, states could be required to submit information about mail-ballot voters through a federal portal and use federally approved envelopes with unique tracking identifiers. Ballots that fail to satisfy the requirements could be denied transmission through the mail.
These changes are being contemplated when some jurisdictions are already preparing to send ballots for the November election.
This is not ordinary election administration. It is a presidential takeover attempt masquerading as “election integrity.”
A constitutional end run
The Constitution assigns the initial responsibility for establishing the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections to state legislatures, subject to regulation by Congress. It does not place that authority in the hands of the president.
Trump could ask Congress to enact legislation. He could attempt to persuade state legislatures to change their election laws. What he should not be permitted to do is use executive agencies — and especially the Postal Service — to accomplish by decree what he has not obtained through the democratic process.
Yet, the Supreme Court’s majority has allowed the administration to continue moving forward without first requiring it to establish that the president possesses this extraordinary authority.
A wrongly denied vote cannot be restored after an election has been decided.
The court insists it has not decided whether future implementation will be lawful. In effect, its message is: Let the administration proceed, allow the disruption to begin, and then see whether someone can return to court at precisely the right moment.
That is a dangerous approach when dealing with voting rights. A mishandled regulation can be corrected later. A wrongly denied vote cannot be restored after an election has been decided.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson identified the trap created by the majority. Election challenges can be rejected when filed too close to an election — but now they can also be dismissed for being filed too early. She wrote that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty” into the midterms, and observed that no judge or justice had held Trump’s order constitutional.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor similarly exposed the administration’s contradictory argument: It claimed the order was too preliminary to harm the states while simultaneously claiming that preventing its immediate implementation would irreparably harm the federal government.
The administration cannot credibly have it both ways.
The burden will not fall equally
Voting by mail is not merely a convenience. For millions of Americans, it is the only practical way to participate.
These restrictions are especially likely to burden:
Seniors and people with disabilities who may have difficulty traveling to polling places or waiting in long lines.
Military personnel and Americans living overseas, whose ballots must travel long distances within strictly enforced deadlines.
Rural voters who live far from polling locations and may have limited transportation.
Low-income workers who cannot afford to lose wages or leave work during polling hours.
Caregivers and parents whose responsibilities make an extended trip to a polling place difficult.
College students and other voters temporarily living away from their permanent addresses.
Voters in states such as Oregon, Washington, and California, where voting by mail is deeply integrated into the election system.
Naturalized citizens whose lawful eligibility could be questioned because of incomplete, outdated, or mismatched federal records.
The 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey confirms that mail voting is a major part of American elections — not an obscure exception. A last-minute federal overhaul therefore creates risks on a national scale.
A database is not infallible. Names change. Addresses change. Government records contain spelling differences, missing information, and outdated citizenship data. When access to a ballot depends upon several federal and state databases matching correctly, eligible citizens inevitably will be omitted.
And those errors will not affect voters equally.
People with recent naturalizations, hyphenated names, inconsistent transliterations, frequent address changes, or limited ability to navigate a correction process will face greater danger. That means the practical burdens are likely to fall disproportionately on immigrant communities, racial and ethnic minorities, younger voters, lower-income citizens, and people with limited English proficiency.
Part of an organized Republican strategy
It would be naive to view this order in isolation.
Trump has spent years attacking mail voting, spreading unsupported claims about widespread fraud and attempting to undermine confidence in elections he fears Republicans might lose. Republican lawmakers and allied organizations have pursued tighter identification rules, shortened ballot deadlines, voter-roll purges, restrictions on ballot assistance, and reductions in ballot access.
The cumulative effect is unmistakable: Make voting more complicated, create more opportunities for ballots to be rejected, and place the greatest obstacles before populations perceived as less likely to support Republican candidates.
Whether every participant uses the same language or attends the same meetings is beside the point. The policies fit together as an organized political strategy. The objective, in my view, is not simply to prevent illegal voting — which is already prohibited — but to reduce lawful participation among groups Republicans fear at the ballot box.
That is voter disenfranchisement dressed up as administration.
The order’s threat of federal investigations and prosecutions is also calculated to intimidate election officials. Local administrators should be concentrating on accurately processing ballots. Instead, they may be forced to wonder whether following their own state’s laws could make them targets of Trump’s Justice Department.
That is not election security. It is political coercion.
The court cannot wash its hands of the consequences
A separate injunction may still prevent portions of the policy from taking effect, and additional lawsuits are certain. The Supreme Court also expressly left open future challenges to particular implementation measures. The legal battle is therefore not over.
But the conservative majority cannot hide behind the preliminary nature of its decision. It knew an election was approaching. It knew states were finalizing procedures. It knew that changing ballot systems requires months of preparation. And it knew that confusion itself can suppress participation.
The court nevertheless removed a legal barrier and invited the administration to push forward until the damage becomes sufficiently “concrete.”
Voting rights should not depend on citizens successfully navigating a bureaucratic obstacle course designed in Washington. Nor should a president be able to manipulate the Postal Service to decide which properly registered Americans receive ballots.
If Trump and his Republican allies believe their policies deserve public support, they should win elections by persuading voters — not by making it harder for those voters to participate.
Democracy is not protected by choosing the electorate most favorable to the party in power. Democracy is protected by ensuring every eligible citizen can cast a ballot and have it counted.
The court’s conservative majority has placed that principle in jeopardy. And if lawful voters are disenfranchised in November, the justices will not be able to claim that no one warned them.
Michael A. Gottesman is the founder of the New Jersey Public Education Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates for secular public education.