{"id":70140,"date":"2026-08-25T13:09:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T13:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/70140\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:09:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T13:09:43","slug":"supreme-courts-order-doesnt-change-elections-yet-but-it-could-bring-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/70140\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court’s order doesn’t change elections yet. But it could bring ‘chaos’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court\u2019s decision<\/a> giving preliminary approval for President Donald Trump\u2019s order restricting mail voting<\/a> may not lead to a single election procedure changing during the November midterms, but it has already thrown into uncertainty the method that nearly one-third of the country uses to vote.<\/p>\n

Rather than saying that Trump\u2019s order is legal, the high court said Monday it was too early for Democratic-run states to challenge it in June, when they convinced a federal judge in Boston<\/a> to freeze the order for November\u2019s election. That effectively restarts the legal fight over the order in an incredibly compressed timeline, with initial ballots scheduled to be sent to North Carolina\u2019s overseas and military voters in just over a week, on Sept. 4.<\/p>\n

A second injunction<\/a> barring the U.S. Postal Service from making changes to comply with Trump\u2019s directive remains in effect. Still, the administration late Monday filed a motion asking that the second hold be removed, and has posted new regulations<\/a> from the Postal Service that would go into effect Tuesday if the legal pathway is fully cleared. <\/p>\n

That new rule requires specific formatting for envelopes containing mail ballots \u2014 which may force some jurisdictions to completely revise theirs \u2014 and makes states use an electronic system to identify to the Postal Service who is voting by mail. If states don\u2019t comply with the rule, their mail ballots won\u2019t get sent.<\/p>\n

The prospect of such a potential sweeping overhaul in mere days boggled critics\u2019 minds. In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the decision \u201cneedlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.\u201d <\/p>\n

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, agreed, saying the majority \u201cseemed to create complete chaos leading up to the midterm elections\u201d and it\u2019d be \u201cimpossible\u201d for states to comply with the new rules at this late date.<\/p>\n

Some ballots for the November election are set to go out within days<\/p>\n

Jesse Salinas, the registrar of Yolo County in California and president of that state\u2019s association of election officers, noted that ballots in his state start going out in 11 days and his county already printed its envelopes. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at the timeline, and it\u2019s a bit chaotic,\u201d Salinas said, noting he doesn\u2019t know precisely which envelope designs comply with the new rules. <\/p>\n

He dismissed the idea of a last-minute revision in procedures. \u201cThe capacity to do that, I just don\u2019t see it,\u201d Salinas said. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n Sign up for the Ground Game Newsletter:
\n Your guide to the biggest stories in politics, policy and U.S. elections.\n <\/p>\n

Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Elections Center, an association of 2,500 election officers, warned that it\u2019s impossible for any state to comply with the rule and that no one she talked to has tried.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a single state that does their elections in a way that this postal rule lays out,\u201d Patrick said in an interview. \u201cThere has been this assumption that this is not going to happen because it could not happen the way it\u2019s laid out, because no one does it this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cisco Aguilar, the Democratic Secretary of State in Nevada, where every registered voter gets a mail ballot, noted the post office had already misdelivered three dozen mail ballots from his state\u2019s June primary. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to come in within seven days and build a massive database that has 100% accuracy?\u201d Aguilar said in disbelief. \u201cIt is impossible to implement this system in that time frame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump votes by mail, but has sought to curb it for others<\/p>\n

Trump has long sought to make voting by mail largely impossible, though he himself has repeatedly cast his ballots by mail<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on mail voting<\/a> and spun up baroque conspiracy theories that he\u2019s tried to prove while back in office<\/a>. Judges blocked him from creating new voting restrictions by executive order last year<\/a>, and he only issued his latest order after his bill to revamp voting procedures stalled in the Senate<\/a> amidst Democratic opposition.<\/p>\n

The Election Assistance Commission found that 29% of voters in 2024 cast their ballots through the mail. Democrats are more likely to use mail voting than Republicans, a reflection of how the process has become polarized since Trump began attacking it in 2020. Still, the president has to date been unable to make the sweeping changes he\u2019s sought because the Constitution grants control of voting rules to states, and in federal elections, to Congress \u2014 not the president.<\/p>\n

Legal experts stressed that\u2019s why they view it as unlikely Trump\u2019s order will actually be implemented. Not only did the majority in the Supreme Court\u2019s unsigned order note that it hasn\u2019t determined whether the measure is constitutional, but every victory the administration has won so far has only been because it\u2019s argued that it\u2019s premature to talk about its constitutionality. Opponents are already weighing new lawsuits since the final rule was published Friday night.<\/p>\n

More litigation is expected<\/p>\n

Becker, a former Department of Justice lawyer who co-wrote a book debunking Trump\u2019s 2020 election lies, added that he expects the next round of litigation to keep the order from being implemented in November. Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor, said after the ruling: \u201cThis doesn\u2019t necessarily mean anything in terms of November.\u201d<\/p>\n

Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, said the Supreme Court still ensured a fraught court battle in the coming days. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt puts courts in a terrible place, because whatever happens is super close to the election,\u201d Muller said. \u201cIf it permits it, it creates super disruption for the states. If it suspends it, it visibly angers the administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hasen said it\u2019s inconceivable that the regulation will impact voters in November. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth legal and practical reasons make this practically impossible to enforce,\u201d he said of Trump\u2019s mail voting order.<\/p>\n

Elections are run by local officials in thousands of scattered offices, many of which don\u2019t even have a full-time employee. Patrick said that those who work in the field have been left reeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cElection officials just feel like punching bags at this moment because they plan one way of conducting their elections, and have contingency plans if a fire breaks out, or one location loses power,\u201d Patrick said. \u201cBut how do you plan for something that affects one-third, one half, or all of your voters?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court\u2019s decision giving preliminary approval for President Donald Trump\u2019s order restricting mail voting may not lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70141,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[362,61,55,56,8346,36317,38,286,50,8,21830,6787,880,762,5558,9,735,5745,67,21629,60,7,54,69],"class_list":["post-70140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-stories","tag-2026-elections","tag-ap-top-news","tag-california","tag-courts","tag-david-becker","tag-derek-muller","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-headlines","tag-jesse-salinas","tag-ketanji-brown-jackson","tag-midterm-elections","tag-nc-state-wire","tag-nevada","tag-news","tag-north-carolina","tag-nv-state-wire","tag-politics","tag-rick-hasen","tag-supreme-court-of-the-united-states","tag-top-stories","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/117156312678857011","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}