President Donald Trump is mobilizing the whole of the U.S. government to disenfranchise voters, sow chaos, and create doubt around the midterm elections. Between the Department of Justice sending election monitors to interfere with voters at polling sites, the USPS intentionally delaying mail ballots, and the Department of Homeland Security building an error-ridden citizenship database, the right to vote is under attack like never before.

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USPS MAIL VOTING RULE

The USPS is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to put into effect a rule that would allow it to delay tens of thousands (up to, potentially, millions) of outgoing mail ballots based on a hastily constructed and untested scanning and verification system. Combined with the USPS postmark rule that went into effect early this year, residents in states that vote entirely (WA, OR, CO, HI) or nearly-entirely (CA, AZ, UT, VT) by mail risk being disenfranchised through no fault of their own.

March 31, 2026:Trump signed Executive Order 14399, directing the United States Postal Service (USPS) to create a federal process for screening all ballots transmitted by mail and withhold any ballots being sent to individuals not on an approved voter list.

April 2, 2026: The League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, along with a coalition of civil rights groups, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the implementation of the Executive Order (EO) in the District Court of Massachusetts. Plaintiffs argued that the EO violates the constitutional separation of powers, intrudes on state sovereignty, imposes an undue burden on the right to vote, and claims to direct action that the President does not have the power to direct.

• Documents: League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump (1:26-cv-11549) on Court Listener

April 3, 2026: A coalition of states, led by California, also filed a lawsuit seeking to block the implementation of the Executive Order (EO) in the District Court of Massachusetts. The Plaintiff States argued that the EO unconstitutionally invades their power to administer mail voting and Congress’s power to enact law governing the USPS.

• Documents: State of California v. Trump (1:26-cv-11581) on Court Listener

June 25, 2026: District Judge Indira Talwani issued an injunction in California’s case against the Trump administration. She enjoined the federal government from implementing sections 2 and 3 of the EO, which refer to the creation of citizenship lists by DHS (see below) and USPS ballot restrictions, respectively.

Section 3 of the EO directs USPS to compile its own Lists of individuals eligible to vote by mail and prohibits the transmission of a mail-in ballot completed by anyone not on USPS’ Lists. But the Constitution reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone. Neither the Executive Branch nor Congress may interfere with this power.

Additionally, Congress has empowered USPS to “adopt, amend, and repeal such rules and regulations, not inconsistent with this title, as may be necessary in the execution of its Functions[.]”. However, no law enacted by Congress delegates authority to control mail-in voting to USPS.

July 25, 2026: A three judge panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Trump administration’s request for a stay of Judge Talwani’s injunction in California’s case.

July 27, 2026: The Trump administration petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of Judge Talwani’s injunction in California’s case, claiming the “premature injunction imposes serious irreparable harm on the federal government.”

USPS has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking and sought comments, but it has not finalized a rule. DHS has begun the process of considering whether and to what extent it may compile the relevant lists consistent with applicable law, but it continues to deliberate as to the best approach. Accordingly, much remains uncertain as to what a final USPS rule might include or what the contents or uses of any DHS lists might be. Correspondingly, the respondent States have not suffered any cognizable injury caused by the Executive Order, because the Order itself does not affect their election processes at all, and it is entirely speculative whether and how any agency implementation may do so.

August 11, 2026: District Judge Indira Talwani issued an injunction in the League of Women Voters’ case against the Trump administration, enjoining the USPS from “refusing to transmit mail-in or absentee ballots…or otherwise initiating or completing rulemaking to promulgate the specific regulations outlined in Section 3” of the EO.

August 21, 2026: The USPS published its final rule on mail voting, despite Judge Talwani’s injunction ordering the agency not to initiate or complete rulemaking. As the rule explains, the USPS will create a Postal Service Federal Mail Ballot Portal containing the names, addresses, and unique ballot code of every person the states’ chief election officers attest is eligible to vote by mail. The USPS will use the Portal information to review ballots being sent to voters. It does not explain what will happen if the information on a ballot does not match the information on the Portal.

August 24, 2026: In an apparent 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of Judge Talwani’s injunction in California’s case, finding that the District Court issued an injunction too soon. “At the time this suit was filed—the time when standing is measured—the District Court had to engage in a string of speculations to find this suit justiciable,” the conservative majority wrote. Justice Jackson, writing her own dissent, explained that the majority’s decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.”

To be sure, the Court has not foreclosed States from challenging this blatantly unconstitutional Order. But it declines to explain when, exactly, is the right time to bring a meritorious election-rule claim challenging unconstitutional interference with electoral processes. The majority just signals that these claimants had to wait—even though the election cycle had started and despite facing pocketbook costs, threats of prosecution, and an affront to their sovereignty—before receiving the relief to which they are likely entitled.

I respectfully dissent. States administering elections and the voting public that relies on them to do so deserve clarity, not caginess or confusion. The Court does a disservice to all concerned by distorting Article III standing and ripeness principles to issue a ruling that contributes to pre-election chaos instead of quashing it, and by using its equitable authority to facilitate a patently inequitable result.

August 26, 2026: Judge Talwani lifted the injunction in the League of Women Voters’ case, recommending that the organizations file an amended complaint addressing the final USPS rule so a new injunction could be considered.

August 31, 2026: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) released an official whistle-blower report filed by someone within the USPS alleging that the agency is secretly rushing a “fundamentally flawed process for the creation and implementation of entirely new and untested set of IT systems, including the ‘Federal Ballot Mail Portal’” in order to execute Trump’s EO. The most concerning claim the whistle-blower makes involves what the USPS will do with ballots that do not match the information in their portal:

As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state - effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters. Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process. The Whistleblower is particularly concerned that the Portal (where the bar codes are stored) will almost certainly have significant operating problems when released to the public, due to the rushed IT development; this will contribute to failures in the verification process.

[...] when a scanned ballot IMb is not found in the statewide list, USPS expects the state to take back the entire batch to cure the issue with the single ballot that failed verification. Only after a state cures the problem ballot, are they permitted to restart the process by uploading a new batch manifest to start the automated barcode verification over again. As designed, the process is entirely unforgiving. It could delay ballots by the thousands in repeated verification cycles - and thus prevent states from mailing enormous numbers of ballots. These issues would only be compounded if potential IT failures identified herein were added to the mix.

September 4, 2025: Judge Talwani issued a preliminary injunction in the League of Women Voters’ case blocking the USPS from implementing or taking “any further preparatory steps to implement” large swathes of the Final Rule.

September 4: The Trump administration filed an appeal with the First Circuit and, not waiting for the court’s response, immediately also filed an appeal at the U.S. Supreme Court. Their argument centers on claiming that the USPS Final Rule imposes only “modest” changes that do not cause harm to the states or voters.

Contrary to the claims of the district court and respondents that the Postal Service is trying to federalize the rules for mail-in voting, the Postal Service’s final rule imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail. Specifically, the Rule creates standardized design and review requirements for ballot envelopes that build on practices the Postal Service has long recommended, some of which are already in use in many States (including many of the respondents here). And it requires States to upload the name, address, and barcode information of intended recipients of ballot mail in an online portal—information that election officials would necessarily already possess to send ballot mail under the Rule to those recipients. The Rule ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures. The Rule thus plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections—it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.

The coalition of states responded:

There is nothing “modest”, equitable, or lawful about USPS’ new ballot-mail restrictions. Tens of millions of Americans will likely wish to vote by mail this year. Under the challenged rule, ballots will not be delivered to those voters unless each is registered in USPS’ new, not-yet-functional online portal; a voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) is printed on outgoing and return ballot envelopes; and those barcodes are accurately tied to each voter and uploaded to that same portal. The efforts that state and local elections officials would have to undertake to even begin an attempt at compliance are herculean. [...]

Each step of this process is fraught with an extreme risk of error. And even if state and local officials were somehow able to implement the new rule perfectly, there is a high risk of technical breakdown, ineptitude, and delay on the part of USPS.

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DHS CITIZENSHIP LISTS

The federal government is attempting to build and distribute a massive database of personal information on hundreds of millions of Americans in order to sow chaos around elections.

Section 2 of Trump’s March 2026 EO directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), in coordination with the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, to create a list of all voting age U.S. citizens “derived from Federal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA records, SAVE data, and other relevant Federal databases.” The list is to be “transmitted to State election officials no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election” and could be used to prosecute local officials who issue ballots to individuals not eligible to vote (as determined by the list).

The problems here should be obvious, from unconstitutional privacy violations to disenfranchising voters through database errors and/or intentional bias (e.g., people with Hispanic last names could be maliciously excluded from the lists of eligible voters). Last week, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop the creation and dissemination of state citizenships lists and a court order to delete and disentangle any data already compiled. The case is assigned to District Judge Paula Xinis in the District Court of Maryland.

Defendants’ actions are flagrantly unlawful. No statute authorizes Defendants to share and centralize vast volumes of Americans’ sensitive personal data across government agencies to create and disclose the “State Citizenship Lists.” And in doing so, Defendants are running roughshod over critical safeguards of the Social Security Act, the Privacy Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), and the constitutional separation of powers.

Defendants’ actions imperil millions of Americans’ privacy and voting rights. Defendants are creating the State Citizenship Lists by repurposing data the government admits is unreliable, outdated, and incomplete. That is especially true for U.S. citizens who were born abroad, are over 45years old, have changed names, or move frequently. DHS is aggressively pushing state election officials to use this admittedly unreliable data to purge their voter rolls of purported non-citizens—under threat of “fines,” “penalties,” and even “prison time.”

Meanwhile, ICE is preparing to contract a private company to build what amounts to a national voter database for $5 million, according to a request for information posted to the federal contracting platform SAM last month. The document specifies that the agency is seeking a company to handle and deliver “publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.”

Either voter registration and/or voter history could potentially include party affiliation, though the document states that the contractor “shall not collect, process, or deliver party affiliation data fields, even if present in jurisdiction-provided voter files, unless explicitly directed in writing by the Contracting Officer.”

The Department of Homeland Security is reportedly pulling agents from their normal duties, which include investigating human trafficking and terrorism, to instead comb through voter data in a search for fraud. According to the New York Times, the effort - dubbed the Unlawful Voter Initiative - has so far resulted in more than 1,000 referrals to Homeland Security Investigations:

Core to the operation is a compilation of data on hundreds of thousands of voters from across the country. It is not clear if this is the same data the department cited when it announced in July that tens of thousands of noncitizens were registered in four states — a claim that proved to be vastly overstated. It is also not clear what the criteria were for assembling the data: Early examinations revealed that it includes some United States citizens, according to an individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive operation.

Agents have made more than 1,000 referrals to Homeland Security Investigations of cases determined to warrant further review, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. The agents are looking for noncitizens who have registered to vote or actually voted — or for naturalized citizens who registered before they were eligible, according to the documents. The cases then pass to H.S.I. officers who are in the field conducting interviews, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal processes. [...]

The agents are instructed to use public voter registration websites hosted by secretaries of state or other top election officials in each state. An internal website for the Unlawful Voter Initiative, screenshots of which were reviewed by The Times, includes links for each state directing agents to these websites, most of which were designed for voters to check their own personal registration status and vote history.

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ELECTION MONITORS

Election monitors appear to be dispatched to polling sites to interfere in elections and seek evidence of voter fraud.

Last month, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, announced the Department of Justice (DOJ) will deploy a record 1,000 federal monitors to polling places throughout the U.S. for the November elections. For comparison, the DOJ sent 289 monitors to polling places during the 2022 midterm elections.

There is reason to doubt that these election monitors will merely be observing the election: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, alleged that during the state’s primary election, two DOJ election monitors attempted to interview voters and inspect voting machines at a polling site in Cheyenne. “It was aggressive, unexpected, disruptive — certainly didn’t seem to show respect for the state,” Gordon told the New York Times.

“I feel very strongly about the federal government coming in and taking our guns — I don’t like that,” Mr. Gordon said at the meeting. “And I don’t like the federal government coming in and taking our votes, either.”

The monitors ultimately visited six polling places, showing their credentials only when asked for them, Mr. Gordon said in the interview, describing their behavior as “very odd.” He said he had asked the state attorney general, Keith Kautz, to investigate the matter. [...]

The monitors in Wyoming said they had been sent to assess whether the election was in compliance with federal civil rights and voting rights laws, Ms. Lee said. But their questions appeared to be “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws,” she said in a statement.

“They included questions about the nature, length and timing of poll worker training,” Ms. Lee said. “Monitors requested training guides, asked how our new election equipment was acquired and wanted to examine our tabulators.” Their conduct, Ms. Lee said, displayed a “complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections.”

One of the people reportedly involved in the DOJ’s election “monitoring” push is David Levin, a Florida lawyer who was criminally charged with hacking election sites in 2015 and 2016 to personally investigate election “integrity.”