Today, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that could, in the short term, allow the implementation of President Donald Trump’s master plan to upend mail-in voting and delegitimize legitimate voting systems just in time for a midterm election where his approval rating is lower than it has ever been.
In March, Trump issued an executive order to restrict mail-in voting to only “eligible” voters—there would be a list of these adult US citizens—and would steer the totally not underfunded US Postal Service to only deliver ballots to those individuals.
Washington, alongside 22 other states plus Washington DC, sued over this order, calling it unconstitutional. The Constitution and Congress grant states the power to run their own elections. A US District Court judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction earlier this month that blocked the executive order from taking place in the plaintiff states and later issued a second order blocking it across the country.
In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the conservative losers on the US Supreme Court lifted the first injunction which barred the mail-in voting restrictions from taking place in those 23 states. According to NBC News, that Court’s ruling will likely apply to the nationwide injunction as well.
“A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court does not seem to recognize the grave threat the president’s actions pose for our democracy,” reads an emailed statement from Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown. “There is nothing hypothetical about his intent to illegally suppress legitimate votes.”
The Court has not issued a ruling on the legality of the executive order, or as Brown puts it, the ruling “does not bless the substance of the president’s actions.”
Brown’s office says it is coordinating with other states on how to respond to the Court’s ruling. “We stand ready to take action to protect the integrity of our elections and prevent this clearly unconstitutional overreach from taking effect,” Brown says.
Nothing has immediately changed for Washington state voters and for our upcoming election. Today’s ruling could allow implementation of the mail-in voting restrictions, but any future legal challenges could freeze it again. Those challenges are likely. “The president’s clear intent here is to suppress legitimate votes with powers he does not have even if his intentions were good,” says Mike Faulk, a spokesperson from Brown’s office.
