The Ballot Rule Is Back at the Supreme Court, and the First Ballots Are Already in the Mail

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on September 3 to lift a federal judge's order blocking the U.S. Postal Service's new mail-ballot rule, filing an emergency application docketed as U.S. Postal Service v. California, No. 26A297, per SCOTUSblog. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the restrictions address "the risk that the federal mails will be used to perpetrate voter fraud." The court set responses for September 8 at 10 a.m. EDT.

The application targets the fourteen-day temporary restraining order U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued August 27, which blocked the rule's ballot-envelope design requirements and its demand that states submit voter data to a USPS portal. The 901 Report covered that order when the Postal Service finalized the rule: The Judge the Supreme Court Said Moved Too Early Has Moved Again, and This Time the Postal Rule Is Final.

The same day the government went to the Supreme Court, Talwani held a hearing in Boston on whether to convert her block into a longer preliminary injunction. She did not rule from the bench, but pressed the Justice Department on implementation, saying, per CBS News, "I'm here 70 days before the election and I have nothing from USPS telling me how this will happen," and gave the government until 3 p.m. that day to file specifics on how the Postal Service would execute the rule before the November 3 midterms. She said she would issue her order promptly. Justice Department lawyers indicated at the hearing's start that they would ask the Supreme Court to intervene rather than wait, per CBS.

The calendar is the pressure. North Carolina and Alabama began sending mail ballots September 4, and roughly a third of American voters cast ballots by mail. Talwani's August 27 order runs out around September 10 on its own terms if nothing replaces it.

Why It Matters for Memphis

If the rule takes effect, every Tennessee county election commission, Shelby County's included, would need envelope designs meeting Postal Service specifications and a data pipeline to a federal portal, on a timeline Judge Talwani has said states do not have. Shelby County's absentee ballot operation for November 3 is downstream of what the Supreme Court does with 26A297.

The Oversight Question

A rule that decides whose ballot gets delivered is being litigated on emergency timelines while ballots are already moving. Can the Postal Service show any court, before November 3, exactly how it would implement the rule it is asking to enforce?

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