North Carolina becomes first state to send out mail-in ballots for US midterms

State decides to proceed hours after Trump administration asks supreme court to let it carry out proposed crackdown

North Carolina became the first state to start sending out mail-in ballots for November’s US midterm elections on Friday, as Donald Trump’s administration fights to impose sweeping restrictions on the practice before millions of Americans cast their votes.

The state’s decision to proceed – hours after Trump’s officials asked the supreme court to let the administration press ahead with its proposed crackdown – comes amid deep uncertainty over whether new federal rules governing mail ballots will be allowed to take effect, and whether the US Postal Service can implement the changes in time.

North Carolina is first out of the gate because its state statute requires county boards to begin sending absentee ballots 60 days before a general election – one of the earliest start dates in the country. Other states set their own timelines, ranging from a few weeks before election day to, in a handful of cases, similarly early starts, meaning most will follow in the coming days and weeks.

The Trump administration asked the supreme court on Thursday to let it revive a rule barring the postal service from delivering ballots in states that don’t share voter data with the federal government, and requiring ballot envelopes to be screened against new standards before delivery.

D John Sauer, the US solicitor general, told the justices that a lower court’s freeze on the plan was causing “serious irreparable harm” to the government, states and voters.

It is the second time in weeks the administration has turned to the court over the plan, part of an executive order Trump signed in March directing agencies to compile citizen lists for use in screening mail ballots.

A federal judge in Massachusetts, Indira Talwani, blocked the plan in June, ruling that it encroached on states’ constitutional authority over elections. The supreme court’s conservative majority sided with Trump in August but called the challenge premature, leaving the door open for further litigation once the plan was finalized. Talwani froze key parts of it again on 27 August.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who oversees emergency applications from the region, has not granted the administration’s request for an immediate stay. Instead, she has given challengers until Tuesday to respond, a timeline that leaves little room for the postal service to act before ballots need to be in voters’ hands nationwide.

Underscoring how tight the window has become with barely two months left before polls open, a postal service official told the Massachusetts court this week that the agency was still refining its screening system and expected to make it available to states on a voluntary basis “sometime next week”.