Federal Judge Sides With NAACP In Mail-In Voting Lawsuit

Another day, another L for President Donald Trump in his campaign against mail-in voting. On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked the United States Postal Service (USPS) from implementing a new rule that would place limitations on mail-in voting.

The Hill reports that District Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with the NAACP in a lawsuit filed over a rule proposed by the Postmaster General David Steiner. In a Senate hearing last month, Steiner said the rule would require postal workers not to deliver mail-in ballots in states where governors haven’t sent sensitive voter data to the federal government. The NAACP argued that the rule violates a 2021 settlement where the USPS agreed to “prioritize monitoring and timely delivery of election mail” through the 2028 elections. 

Sullivan not only found that the proposed rule violates that settlement, but also wrote in his ruling that it was “designed to exert federal control over who in the United States may be sent a mail-in or absentee ballot in federal elections by the Postal Service.”

“The proposed USPS changes would have created unnecessary and unlawful barriers, in direct violation of the USPS’s mandate to prioritize election mail,” Anthony Ashton, senior associate general counsel at NAACP, said in a statement. “This decision makes clear that access to the ballot cannot be tied to arbitrary requirements.” 

Since taking office last year, Trump has focused an inordinate amount of energy on restricting mail-in voting. He’s tried and failed several times to pressure Congress into passing bills that would place restrictions on mail-in voting. Since that didn’t work, Trump issued the executive order earlier this year that placed restrictions on mail-in voting and ordered the USPS to implement the aforementioned rule. 

Unfortunately for Trump, that didn’t work either, as a separate lawsuit was filed against the executive order itself. In that case, a federal judge struck down the order on the basis that the Constitution states that election rules are dictated by the states, not the federal government. 

Trump has steadily been trying to federalize elections as a way to combat imaginary voter fraud. You’d think that having a bunch of weirdos literally storm the Capitol over lies about voter fraud would make Trump go “maybe I shouldn’t do that anymore,” but that would require a certain level of shame and self-awareness that our current president simply doesn’t have. 

Even attempts by the GOP to end grace periods for mail-in ballots have failed, as the Supreme Court ruled this week that a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted up to five days after an election can stay in place. 

What’s crazy about this proposed rule and Trump’s executive order is that it would have made postal workers responsible for enforcing election laws. I’m neither a constitutional nor legal scholar, but in my 33 years of being alive, I’ve never once thought, “You know who needs to have more say in our elections? The post office.” 

While one would hope that this series of defeats would encourage Trump to abandon the issues, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump tries yet again to limit mail-in voting ahead of this fall’s midterms. It’s not enough to rig the maps to his advantage; he also has to disenfranchise anyone who doesn’t agree with him. 

SEE ALSO:

New Postal Service Rule Would Withhold Mail-In Ballots

Supreme Court Upholds Mississippi Law Allowing Late Mail-In Ballots

Federal Judge Sides With NAACP In Mail-In Voting Lawsuit was originally published on newsone.com