Postal Service publishes mail-in voting rule despite court injunctions

Aug. 22 (UPI) — The United States Postal Service has prepared a final rule changing how mail voting is administered under an executive order issued by President Donald Trump despite a pair of court injunctions against it, do***ents show.

An unpublished version of the rule was entered into the Federal Register late on Friday, indicating the USPS intends to press ahead with implementation of a measure the administration says is necessary to prevent fraud in mail-in voting — a popular method of casting ballots that Trump has called “inherently corrupt.”

But critics contend actual fraud in mail-in voting is exceedingly rare and have denounced the measure as one of the most serious attempts by the administration to federalize control of elections in violation of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves such power for the states.

A federal judge 10 days ago expanded an earlier injunction against Trump’s executive order, under which the USPS would be required to decide who will get mail-in ballots.

The injunction blocked it from implementing Section 3 of the order for this year’s midterm elections, which most polls shows will likely favor Democratic congressional candidates.

Despite the court rulings, USPS promulgated the final rule with Friday’s filing, thus making it available to be officially published in the Federal Register on Wednesday. After that it would theoretically take effect immediately, even though it will be blocked for this year’s midterm elections unless a court decides otherwise.

The current filing is an amended version of the initial proposal which received more than 200,000 comments during its review phase.

Trump signed the order on March 31 directing the Department of Homeland Security to build a list of citizens from federal data, which would then be sent to state election officials.

The USPS would then only send absentee or mail-in ballots to people it has determined are eligible to vote, and the U.S. Attorney General would investigate and prosecute election officials who issue federal ballots to those ineligible to vote.

Twenty-three mostly Democratic-led states sued to block the order and U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani agreed with the plaintiffs.

The administration appealed the decision and failed. It appealed again on July 27 to the Supreme Court, which has yet to make a ruling.

“Yesterday’s new mail-in voting rule is an attempt to weaponize USPS as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to take over elections,” Michael McNulty of the bipartisan political reform group Issue One said in a statement issued Saturday.

“If it holds up in court, it would mean postal workers shift from neutral transporters of a state-led process to a federal gatekeeper of states’ outbound mail ballots — requiring states to provide USPS with voter-level ballot information and giving USPS authority to reject ballots that do not meet the new federal requirements.”

He dismissed Trump’s oft-stated concerns about voter fraud as “tired, debunked conspiracy theories to justify gaining control over secure, verified, and effective methods of voting, including mail-in voting, to tilt the playing field” in favor of Republican candidates.