The United States Postal Service (USPS) said Friday in a yet-to-be-released proposed rule that it is drawing up plans to radically end mail-in voting by sending ballots only to voters who are registered with the federal government.
The proposed rule, to be formally released next week, is an alarming step toward implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping attack on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. And it would represent a massive expansion of federal control over voting, without authorization from Congress.
Trump signed a sweeping executive order in March that, in part, directed the Postal Service to send mail-in ballots only to voters on lists created and controlled by the federal government.
The order is currently the subject of multiple lawsuits. The USPS proposed rule came a day after a federal judge overseeing one of the lawsuits refused to block the order. The judge concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the order since federal agencies had not yet taken steps to implement it.
Now, that seems to have changed.
The USPS is moving forward with the order even though legal experts and voting rights organizations have warned that it is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to restrict the right to vote and usurp states’ authority over elections.
Under the Constitution, states hold elections and only Congress can set national standards.
The proposed rule would require state election officials to send the USPS a list of voters who requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are mailed under state law. If voters are not on the list, they will not receive a ballot.
It also allows state officials to make “supplemental filings to register additional people or modify previous filings until the last day that ballots can be mailed to people under state law.”
In this way, that provision tacitly admits that it will give rise to errors that must be corrected, either through “supplementary presentations” or by modifying “previous presentations.”
Those errors, caused by a new federal government program that is not explicitly authorized by Congress, are precisely the type of harm that plaintiffs challenging the executive order seek to avoid.
In their lawsuits, Democrats and voting rights advocates argued that use of the USPS list, as well as other federal registration lists included in Trump’s order, would lead to eligible voters being unable to cast their ballots. In part, that’s because the lists would be based on Department of Homeland Security databases that have been shown to be seriously flawed.
USPS also said mail-in voters’ names would be associated with a “unique barcode” that is assigned to their ballot. He stated that the barcode would “help determine compliance with federal law and facilitate law enforcement efforts.”
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University and former deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ), said in a social media post on Friday that the proposed rule was a step toward Trump’s order being ruled unconstitutional.
“One step closer to standing firm, which means one step closer to ending this charade,” Levitt said, referring to U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols’ ruling Thursday.
While Nichols did not necessarily disagree with Democrats and pro-voting groups that Trump’s order could be illegal, he said they could not prove that they had been harmed because federal agencies had not acted in accordance with the directives.
In fact, while rejecting the plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction against the order, Nichols specified that his decision was actually a message for the Trump administration to act to give the plaintiffs standing to sue.
“It is not directed at [the plaintiffs] but it just tells the agencies to do something,” Nichols, a Trump appointee, said of his decision.
The Postal Service did not immediately respond to Democracy Docket’s request for comment.
Friday was the deadline Trump included in his order for Postmaster General David Steiner to begin a rule-making process to formally implement the president’s restrictions on mail-in voting.
In recent weeks, Steiner, who also serves as USPS CEO, met with other top Trump administration and Justice Department officials to discuss ways to implement the order.
This story has been updated with new details throughout.
