California and other Democratic-led states sued again Wednesday to block the U.S. Postal Service from implementing new nationwide rules for mail ballots, arguing they usurp state authority over elections at President Trump’s behest, expose voter information unnecessarily and threaten chaos in the rapidly approaching November election.
The Postal Service formally issued a 95-page “final rule” on Friday asserting that it was amending its mailing standards for mail ballots in federal elections to comply with Trump’s March executive order.
Trump demanded the rule changes as part of a broader plan to combat what he alleges — without evidence — is widespread voter fraud in the U.S., including by noncitizens voting through the mail. Election experts say there is zero evidence of such problems existing in significant numbers.
“This mail-in voting rule is an unlawful overreach that shows just how far President Trump will go to control elections, but as I’ve said before, this fight is far from over and we are confident that the facts and the law are on our side,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said.
“Donald Trump does not run elections. States do. And his latest attack on democracy is proof of how weak he has become,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said. “California will continue to lead the way in defending democracy — using every tool at our disposal and every minute in our day. This perilous moment in history demands no less from us.”
The states’ lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts by 24 state attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania, asks for immediate court intervention to halt the Postal Service changes from being implemented while the litigation continues.
The new postal rules require states to submit lists of eligible voters — including their names and addresses — to the Postal Service, and to use new ballot envelopes with digital bar codes that would allow the Postal Service to identify and reject ballots that don’t match those lists.
The rules do not give the Postal Service authority to dictate which voters may appear on state lists. However, the rules acknowledge that the lists would provide state voter data to federal law enforcement for the first time, and would put those authorities in “a better position to identify any potential issues regarding compliance with federal law that may merit further investigation.”
Trump’s March executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security to use available federal data to compile its own state lists of eligible citizen voters, ostensibly to compare them with the mail voter lists provided by the states to the Postal Service, and identify and pursue any ineligible voters.
Trump administration officials have said they are pursuing fraudulent voters and have warned state election officials that they could face legal consequences personally if they don’t do everything in their power to prevent voter fraud, including by noncitizens.
Wednesday’s lawsuit follows a decision Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court that found an earlier challenge from the states was premature, in part because it sought court relief to a rule-making process that required nothing of the states and before the Postal Service had moved to implement any changes.
The high court’s ruling allowed the Postal Service to move forward with its work to comply with Trump’s order — lifting multiple lower court rulings blocking the process, including one early Wednesday — but explicitly noted that it had reached no conclusions as to the legality of the pending rules.
Bonta said Wednesday’s lawsuit calls on the courts to address that legality head on, as do other challenges filed since Monday by independent voting rights groups, Democratic Party organizations and leading Democrats in Congress. And he said he is confident the lower courts — and ultimately the Supreme Court if necessary — will agree that the finalized rules constitute federal overreach.
“President Trump doesn’t get to rewrite our voting system on a whim, and the United States Postal Service cannot sidestep the laws that govern the Postal Service just to carry out the president’s agenda,” Bonta said. “We’ll fight this every step of the way.”
In response, Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, said Wednesday that the Supreme Court’s ruling “was a major win for the security of American elections” and defended the Postal Service process as being in line with Trump’s campaign promises.
“Radical Democrats continue to oppose commonsense measures that protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans are electing American leaders,” Bis said. “The Trump administration will continue to lawfully enact the agenda President Trump was elected on — which includes the safety and security of our elections.”
Critics contend Trump’s executive order was devised as an end run around laws and a slew of recent court rulings blocking the administration’s outright demands for state voter rolls — which states, including California, have refused to provide.
States have argued the administration’s demands are in bad faith, intended to bolster Trump’s baseless claims that U.S. elections are compromised rather than enhance election security.
In issuing its new rules, the Postal Service rejected a slate of concerns from critics who submitted comments on the proposed rules, including that the changes are being proposed far too close to the November election and compliance will cost states and localities a huge amount of money.
It also rejected concerns that creating a single nationwide voter database — which has never existed before — will provide a massive new target for foreign adversaries and other bad actors interested in disrupting U.S. elections.
The Postal Service concluded that the cost to the states is outweighed by the benefits of the changes. It said it has sufficient staffing to implement the changes and is ready to safeguard the database it builds using “multi-layered security controls.”
Bonta said he shares many of those concerns but is confident the changes will be ruled unlawful and halted before such problems are realized.
“This is once more the president, and also this time the U.S. Postal Service, exerting authority they do not have, overreaching, interfering with our elections, undermining our elections integrity, trying to suppress the right to vote and disenfranchise voters,” Bonta said. “It is wrong. More importantly, it’s unlawful.”
