Trump Has Quietly Sought Control Over Postal Service to Transform U.S. Elections

Four weeks before President Trump signed an executive order seeking to restrict mail voting, he filed four nominations for vacancies on the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service.

All four were Republicans. Three have expressed doubts about who won the 2020 presidential election and the security of voting.

The selections broke with a longstanding practice of nominating board members in bipartisan pairs. Two of those nominees are on a fast track for approval, and could reach a full Senate vote when the chamber returns from recess in September. If confirmed, their appointments would effectively tip the board to a majority that is loyal to Mr. Trump.

The quiet attempt to restructure the leadership of the Postal Service comes as the president and his allies are trying to transform the 251-year-old agency into a central player in their quest to overhaul the nation’s elections. Last year, Mr. Trump took an unusually active role directing the board of governors to select the current postmaster general, David Steiner. And the president has imposed a highly partisan agenda on a historically apolitical institution: restricting mail voting, a practice more heavily used by Democrats than Republicans, which Mr. Trump has publicly acknowledged would benefit his party.

Control of the Postal Service grew even more critical on Monday, after the Supreme Court ruled to allow the administration to move forward with plans to restrict mail-in voting before the midterm elections.

The justices cautioned that the decision was preliminary and should not be construed as a final determination on the legality of the order. It also remains unclear whether the administration can implement the restrictions in time for mail voting this year.

“It is clear to me that the president is looking for people who will do exactly what he says and will carry out his order without respect for the U.S. Postal Service,” said Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who serves on the Senate Homeland Committee with oversight of the agency.

Jonathan Smith, the head of the American Workers Postal Union, said postal workers are worried about being ordered to implement policies that are legally questionable.

“They can direct the people I represent to follow procedures we perceive as possibly not constitutionally sound or legal or even ethical,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “Because the board of governors were put there for that purpose.”

Since he returned to power last year, Mr. Trump has recruited allies for key roles across his administration who are willing to act on his false claims that his defeat in 2020 was rigged and the country’s election systems are not secure. He has pressed for criminal investigations of election officials in states he lost in 2020. His top legislative priority is enacting a law that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. He has deployed the Department of Homeland Security to scour state voter rolls for noncitizens.

Few agencies are as central to this mission as the Postal Service. And few are as blatantly straining the boundaries of executive power. The Constitution grants the president no authority over elections, an area of governance that only Congress and the states may regulate. Yet Mr. Trump has instructed the Postal Service to effectively police mail voting and decide which ballots can be delivered.

The president turned to the Postal Service to pursue his agenda of curtailing mail voting as other efforts to do so faced defeat in the courts and in Congress. He has urgently stayed on the issue in the midst of a daunting midterm cycle for Republicans, stating publicly that his party could keep control of Congress if mail voting could be blocked.

In March, he signed an executive order that would grant the Postal Service the power to block mail ballots from being sent in states that do not comply. It called on the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state citizen lists to help determine eligibility, and instructed the Postal Service to verify voters based on rolls provided by states.

Roughly two months later, the Postal Service proposed a rule intended to implement a key piece of the executive order, authorizing the agency to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that failed to turn over those voter rolls.

The potential electoral consequences of such a policy could be enormous. A coalition of nearly two dozen states, almost all Democratic-controlled and representing more than half of the country’s population, sued to block the executive order and have not complied with any aspect of it.

When the proposed rule came out, Mr. Steiner also declared that the agency would follow any court orders governing voting by mail. But weeks later, after a federal judge struck down key provisions of the president’s executive order, not all the implementation stopped. Although the Postal Service circulated an email to all employees in early July declaring that Mr. Trump’s demands on the agency were “legally void,” a Postal Service executive said in a court filing that same week that work was proceeding to create the infrastructure to evaluate eligibility to vote by mail.

Regardless of the ultimate impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Mr. Trump has hinted that he is unlikely to drop the issue. In an interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a conservative TV and radio host, the president suggested that he might try to test unproven claims of executive authority.

“You have the right to declare a national security emergency for elections,” Mr. Root said, referring to a legally dubious theory popular among right-wing election activists that the president can use such a justification for extraordinary measures, despite no constitutional support for the theory. Mr. Root added: “If you do this in the next month, we will get photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a limit to mail ballots.

“Let me just say stranger things have happened, OK?” Mr. Trump responded. “I’ll leave it at that.”

A spokesman for the Postal Service declined to answer questions about the nominees or pending litigation. The White House declined to comment.

All four of Mr. Trump’s nominees drew skepticism from Democrats in their Senate hearings or as a result of their answers in prehearing questionnaires.

Ms. Slotkin said she was left frustrated by their testimonies, including that of William Gallo, a retired commodities broker and entrepreneur, who hesitated in his congressional hearing in June before answering her question on whether mail voting was safe.

Jeffrey Brodsky, a co-founder of a management consultant firm, expressed similar skepticism about American elections in his questionnaire. When asked who won the 2020 and 2024 presidential election and whether it was free and fair, Mr. Brodsky repeated a phrase that has become common among those seeking to please Mr. Trump and continue to spread doubt about the 2020 election: “Joe Biden was certified as the President of the 2020 election.”

“I have no information to reach a conclusion that it was free and fair,” Mr. Brodsky wrote. He gave the same answer for the 2024 election, subbing Donald Trump in for Mr. Biden.

Another nominee, Robert Steffens, a former top executive at Marvel, expressed doubts during his congressional vetting process about the integrity of mail voting in 2020, according to an official familiar with the process who spoke anonymously to describe internal conversations.

The fourth nominee, Anthony Lomangino, recently withdrew his nomination for personal reasons, according to a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, although it is unclear if Mr. Trump has officially withdrawn his name.

None of the four nominees have much experience in mail, logistics, postal operations or public administration.

Mr. Brodsky repeatedly referred to this shortcoming in his written responses to Congress. He cast himself as “not an expert” and only “generally aware” of issues facing the Postal Service. In answer to a question about the agency’s statutory obligation to deliver mail to every address six days a week, he said: “I would seek to understand the Postal Service’s operations at a more granular level, but today, I cannot offer specific suggestions.”

Mr. Gallo cited his experience leading a roughly 50-person grain brokerage firm as relevant experience to serving on the board. The Postal Service has over half a million employees.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to remake the Postal Service, and to replace its leadership, have prompted some public officials to urge Americans to rethink their use of the agency.

Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, said he has discussed with community leaders in his state the need to tell people not to rely on the mail. Instead, they should plan to vote early and in person, or drop their mail ballots at voting centers.

“I never want to be in the situation where I have to say, ‘You know, you can’t trust the U.S. Postal Service, we can’t trust the administration,’” Mr. Gallego said in an interview. But Mr. Trump is “willing to do anything. He doesn’t care how he gets there, he just cares about the outcome.”