The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from former President Donald Trump's legal team that sought to implement new rules restricting the use of mail-in ballots. The decision comes just weeks before the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump's lawyers had petitioned the court to allow new U.S. Postal Service rules that would have enabled the government to cross-reference mail-in ballots against a central voter registry in each state, potentially rejecting ballots from voters not found in the database. This marks the third time the former president's administration had requested the Supreme Court's intervention on this matter.
Critics of the proposed USPS rules warned that their last-minute implementation could lead to widespread confusion and disenfranchise millions of American voters who cast their ballots by mail. Several states are already in the process of sending out mail-in ballots, with North Carolina having done so on Friday. Six additional states are expected to follow suit by the end of next week.
Solicitor General John Sauer had argued that a lower court's injunction blocking Trump's order was "baseless" and risked exacerbating voter confusion. However, opponents countered that the rules would disproportionately affect voters who utilize mail-in ballots, which account for roughly one-third of all votes cast.
Despite his administration's push to tighten restrictions on mail-in voting, Trump himself cast his ballot by mail in the Florida Republican primary last month.