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In a significant ruling ahead of the November midterm elections, US District Judge Indira Talwani on Friday (local time) issued a preliminary injunction preventing the U.S. Postal Service from implementing its controversial new mail-in voting rules, CBS reported.
The 49-page decision extends an earlier emergency temporary order issued on August 26, effectively freezing the Trump administration's postal mandates for the duration of the 2026 midterm election cycle. Judge Talwani ruled that the Postal Service exceeded its constitutional authority by trying to impose administrative requirements on state election programs, reported CBS. The court stressed that the Constitution assigns election administration to Congress and the states, not to federal agencies. The judge noted that enforcing complex new mandates while ballots are already being sent out would "nearly guarantee significant disenfranchisement" for eligible voters who depend on mail-in voting. Local election officials are already overwhelmed with voter registration, early voting, and ballot processing, making compliance with new rules practically impossible on such a short timeline. "Unauthorised by the Elections Clause, the Final Rule clashes with Congress's statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress's Elections Clause powers but also that power left to the States," said Talwani. The challenged Postal Service regulations stemmed from a March executive order signed by President Trump. The final rule called for sweeping changes to how election mail is processed. The new USPS mandates would have overhauled how mail-in ballots are handled. At the centre of the plan was a mandatory envelope redesign, requiring every mail-in ballot envelope to carry a unique, trackable barcode. The problem is that most states have already printed millions of standard envelopes for the midterms. The second provision called for a recipient tracking portal, which would have forced election offices to upload voter names, addresses, and barcode data into a central USPS database to create "Mail-In and Absentee Participation Lists." An internal whistleblower warned Congress that the system is "untested" and "rushed," raising fears of catastrophic delivery failures. Finally, under the verification and rejection rule, postal workers were instructed to inspect ballot mail and send any non-compliant packages back to election offices. Voting rights groups cautioned that this could lead to entire batches of valid votes being turned away and stranded, reported CBS. The ruling comes at a critical moment, just as states have begun sending mail-in ballots to voters. North Carolina started mailing ballots to military and overseas voters on Friday, and several municipalities in Wisconsin have already dispatched mail ballots. Anticipating the preliminary injunction, Justice Department lawyers on Thursday bypassed standard appellate procedures to seek urgent intervention from the Supreme Court to reinstate the mail-ballot restrictions. With the election two months away, the dispute is now set for a rapid showdown at the nation's highest court. (ANI)
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