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🇰🇷 South Korea /Crime & Justice

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to let Postal Service restrict mail voting

From Dong-A Ilbo · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources In the courts
  • The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual appeals process and allow the U.S. Postal Service to enforce a mail-voting restriction before the midterm elections.
  • The request followed a Massachusetts federal court order blocking key parts of the Postal Service plan, which the administration says federal law permits.
  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson set a deadline for responses rather than immediately suspending the lower-court ruling, suggesting the court may not act at once.

The Trump administration has made an unusual emergency appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court after a Massachusetts federal court blocked a key part of its plan to limit mail voting ahead of the midterm elections.

The administration wants the court to let the Postal Service stop delivering ballots to voters in states that do not share voter information with federal agencies. It filed the request within hours of the lower-court ruling, skipping the normal appeals process.

improve

· Postal Service officialThe official described the agency’s continued work on its new ballot-screening system.

The case is the second recent request asking the Supreme Court to review President Donald Trump’s effort to restrict mail voting. The court previously sided with the administration on Aug. 24, finding that an earlier challenge was premature because the administration had not yet finalized its plan. That ruling did not address a Postal Service plan released three days earlier, allowing a new lawsuit to proceed in Massachusetts.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency applications from the Massachusetts region, did not suspend the lower-court decision. She ordered opponents to respond by 10 a.m. on Sept. 8, indicating that the court would consider the matter but would not necessarily resolve it immediately.

at some point next week

· Postal Service officialThe official estimated when states might receive the system for voluntary use.

The delay could leave the Postal Service less time to overcome the legal and practical obstacles involved in introducing changes for the November election. In a sworn statement filed in Massachusetts, a Postal Service official said the agency was preparing in case the court allowed the plan to proceed. The official said the agency was continuing to “improve” a new ballot-screening system and expected to make it available for voluntary use by states “at some point next week.”

time will tell

· Supreme Court majorityThe majority declined to decide whether the administration’s order would ultimately be lawful.

Democratic state attorneys general, voting-rights groups and civil-rights organizations argue that the plan violates the Constitution by intruding on the states’ authority over election regulation. The administration says federal law gives the Postal Service power to make the changes.

The broader dispute began in March, when Trump signed an executive order seeking to limit mail voting and create state citizenship lists for voter-eligibility checks. A federal district court blocked the order in June, ruling that it violated the Constitution, and an appeals court upheld that decision. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority later declined to rule on the order’s legality, writing that “time will tell” whether it would be lawful once implemented. Jackson, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s other liberal justices, wrote that the decision would “unnecessarily inject confusion and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

unnecessarily inject confusion and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections

· Justice Ketanji Brown JacksonJackson criticized the majority’s decision in her dissent.
About this summary

Originally published by Dong-A Ilbo in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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