A federal judge on Thursday halted—at least for now—attempts to implement President Trump's executive order limiting mail voting, the AP reports. The move stalled the directive for a second time only about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. US District Court Judge Indira Talwani blocked the government from implementing the order for two weeks. The case could soon be appealed back to the Supreme Court, days after the justices handed down a procedural decision that allowed the the administration to move ahead.
The ruling Thursday came after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision. The high court's conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump's executive order, instead saying Talwani had acted too soon. Now the administration has issued a formal rule governing whether the US Postal Service will deliver states' mail ballots, effectively restarting the legal fight. The whipsawing legal battle has major ramifications for the midterms. Nearly one-third of Americans vote by mail and election officials contend there isn't enough time to revise their systems to comply with the new Postal Service directives.
The Postal Service says it won't deliver mail ballots unless states provide a list of voters who should receive them and format the envelopes in a certain way. "Plaintiff states have neither time nor funds to design new mail ballots, seek approval of the new designs, order production of mail ballots, update their own election management systems, train election officials to use the USPS portal and upload citizen data to the portal, all before the midterms," Talwani wrote Thursday. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. A hearing in the case is set for Sept. 3.
Trump issued the executive order targeting mail voting, his second one related to elections since he returned from office, in March. Opponents quickly sued, but the administration argued the claims were premature because it hadn't issued rules outlining how it would implement the order. The administration won an initial case in Washington, DC, with that reasoning, but Talwani placed injunctions against implementing the order for the November midterms in two separate cases she heard in Boston. The Supreme Court's conservative majority on Monday struck down one of those holds. Talwani, nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, reluctantly removed the second injunction shortly after. The plaintiffs then moved to refile their cases, citing the Postal Service's publishing of its final rule, in hopes of winning a more durable victory.
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