Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mail-in ballot restrictions to move forward for a third time

The Trump administration on Sunday asked the Supreme Court to temporarily allow the U.S. Postal Service to exert some control over mail-in voting in the upcoming midterm elections, just two days after a federal judge blocked the USPS from doing so.

It’s the third time the Trump administration has escalated this matter to the Supreme Court, as North Carolina last week became the first state to begin sending mail-in ballots to voters less than 60 days before the midterm elections.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued an order preventing the administration from carrying out the Trump-directed USPS regulation on mail-in ballots .

The directive is the president’s latest attempt to impose new forms of federal control over elections, which are typically run by states.

It would allow the USPS to track mail-in ballots and potentially reject ballots that are sent to and from voters not included in a federal database.

This application to the court comes after Talwani issued a preliminary block on enforcing the USPS rule, saying it’s likely unlawful and unconstitutional for the federal government to dictate how mail-in ballots are handled.

In her order Friday, Talwani also cited the rushed nature of the rule, writing that the “immediate implementation of the Final Rule issued less than seventy days before the November 2026 election threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail.”

In Sunday’s filing to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued: “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 filing argues, the rule “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 filing adds.

Sunday’s application to the Supreme Court comes after the Trump administration already twice asked the highest court to intervene in this case. The Justice Department withdrew its previous pending request after submitting this morning’s application related to Talwani’s most recent order.

The rule stems from a March executive order signed by President Donald Trump.

It came just weeks after the president suggested that Republicans should “nationalize” elections , a comment that drew criticism from local election officials and lawmakers from Trump’s own party .