A federal appellate panel on Tuesday refused to block President Donald Trump’s seeking to restrict mail voting, a day after the administration to weigh in on the proposal in .
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld by U.S. District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols that said an injunction against the order was premature. Nichols ruled that the Democrats and voting rights groups who challenged the order couldn’t seek the injunction until the Trump administration issued formal regulations governing it. The administration started releasing those directives days later.
The circuit court panel, with two judges appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama and one by Trump, found that was proper and there were no noted dissents. But the unsigned decision noted that if the administration truly tried to force such changes in the few months remaining before November’s midterm election, it may well get halted by courts.
“The action the Order contemplates would involve the President, whom the Constitution vests with no express authority over the conduct of elections, undertaking a substantial and unfunded overhaul of election procedures 鈥� including the implementation of a nationwide reform to Postal Service mail-handling processes 鈥攐n the threshold of the November election. Put differently, the Order ‘may not prove feasible to implement in any manner whatsoever,'” said the ruling, quoting a prior legal opinion.
In a separate case filed by Democratic state officials, a federal judge in Massachusetts last month from taking effect for this year鈥檚 elections because it was already forcing states, which are granted the power under the U.S. Constitution to control their own elections, to revise their procedures on the fly. That ruling was upheld on Saturday by a Boston-based appeals court and then to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday by the Trump administration.
The Postal Service did not immediately respond to questions about what action it’s taking related to Trump’s executive order. But the union representing postal workers, which having its members implement the order, said Tuesday that its members are being directed to prepare an online portal through which voters will have to submit information to be eligible for mail ballots.
鈥淭he IT people in the background are moving forward with creating the portals to make sure that we can accomplish the task if given to us,鈥� American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a telephone interview.
Trump has repeatedly tried to unilaterally change voting procedures since he took office for the second time, only to be blocked by the courts. The push follows about vote fraud to try to explain away the president’s in 2020.
In his March executive order, Trump directed the federal government to create a list of eligible voters and the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those on that list. Lawsuits noted that the Constitution grants states control of their elections, not the president, and that Congress can pass laws changing procedures for federal elections but has not done so.
Trump signed last year, just months after taking office, that a nationwide voter ID requirement and force anyone registering to vote to provide documents proving they are U.S. citizens. Trump also is pushing Congress to pass that would impose the documentary proof of citizenship requirement, but it has stalled in the Senate as it faces opposition from Democrats and some lawmakers from his own party.
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Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
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