Overview
- The Supreme Court on Monday declined the administration’s emergency request to lift lower‑court injunctions, so the USPS rule requiring state voter lists, USPS‑approved envelopes and barcode scanning will not apply for the 2026 midterms.
- Two federal judges — Indira Talwani in Boston and Carl J. Nichols in Washington, D.C. — had already issued preliminary injunctions finding the rule likely exceeded the Postal Service’s authority and posed a risk to timely ballot delivery.
- Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurrence saying the rule should be blocked this year because states lack time to implement it, while Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, signaling the dispute could return to the high court.
- A reported USPS whistleblower warned the agency’s online portal and barcode system were not ready and that a single error could cause batches of ballots to be rejected, and several states had already begun mailing ballots, making rapid change impractical.
- Mail voting accounts for roughly one‑third of recent ballots, so the court’s decision preserves current state procedures for the midterms but leaves an ongoing legal fight that could reshape federal versus state control of elections after November.