Nine Democratic governors have asked the U.S. Postal Service to withdraw a proposed rule implementing President Donald Trump's executive order on voter eligibility and mail-in ballots. They cited a federal judge's ruling that the order was unconstitutional and argued it would undermine election trust and disenfranchise voters.
The governors' action highlights a significant political and legal battle over election integrity and voting access, with potential implications for voter disenfranchisement and public trust in the electoral process.
Nine Democratic governors have urged the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to withdraw a proposed rule that would implement an executive order from President Donald Trump concerning voter eligibility and mail-in ballots. The governors, led by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, sent a six-page letter on Thursday, arguing that the proposed rule would undermine trust in elections and disenfranchise millions of eligible voters.
President Trump signed the executive order in March, directing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create a "citizenship list" for each state, with the Postal Service tasked to limit mailed ballots to individuals on these lists. However, a federal judge has since blocked the executive order, ruling it unconstitutional as election rules are the purview of states and Congress, not the president.
The governors' letter cited this judicial ruling, emphasizing that the proposed rule would grant the USPS "unilateral power to refuse to deliver their ballots if a state refuses to collaborate with President Trump’s unlawful directives." The USPS had filed the proposed rule in late May, after a judge in a separate lawsuit declined to block the executive order itself because it had not yet been implemented.
This initiative follows previous pushback against Trump's election-related executive orders. The president of the American Postal Workers union, Jonathan Smith, previously stated that the union's role is to deliver mail, not verify voter eligibility. Trump has previously focused on non-citizen voting and voting by mail, despite studies indicating that mail voting fraud is rare and that he himself uses mail-in voting.
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