Seven Republicans who are the chief election officials of their states were among dozens of local and state election officials who filed a brief with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, advising justices of the knottiness of implementing the U.S. Postal Service’s August rule on mail voting in time for the upcoming Midterm elections.
The signatories of the brief did not take a side on the merits of the rule itself, and instead “suggest only this: that the November 3, 2026 general election be conducted under the rules that were in place when the election’s administration began” — in other words, prior to the USPS rule.
“That result can, and in [our] view should, be reached without deciding anything about the merits of the Rule.”
The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court in recent days to overturn a lower-court decision that put implementation of the rule on ice.
The USPS regulation instructs state and local election offices to undertake a variety of new administrative processes, the scope of which “cannot be responsibly accomplished in the time that remains” before Election Day, the officials wrote, “in a manner that ensures both that the Rule is implemented correctly and other crucial preparations do not fall by the wayside.”
Those processes might best be described in order of procedure. The rule mandates mail-ballot design standards that previously were recommended by the USPS and used to various extents by state; in a country with several thousand election jurisdictions, court filings and news reporting indicate that some areas would be closer to compliance already than others, but the need to design and print new ballots would be widespread, at least. The rule then makes states verify their designs with the Postal Service. Once verified, states are then allowed to satisfy a requirement of uploading lists of their eligible mail voters through a new Postal Service web “portal,” generally no later than 30 days prior to Election Day. Postal workers are then to use all this information to check individual mail ballots for design accuracy and list enrollment before clearing them for mailing to voters. (The Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress, has a rundown here.)
In short, the officials’ argument in their brief goes, the timeline of preparations for an election has long surpassed the moment at which these requirements could be executed according to the rule’s instructions. The Postal Service finalized the rule on August 21 — meaning any alleged “slow-walking” of it after President Trump’s executive order which directed its creation, dated March 31, would be attributable to the administration itself — leaving election offices just a couple of months and change to respond to it.
“By then,” the officials wrote, “budgets and staffing levels for the cycle had been set, in most places a year or more earlier; state training and certification programs were complete or well underway; procedures, manuals, and directives were finalized; and the Postal Service had already trained its own workforce on the pre-Rule protocols.”
The issues extend to mail ballot vendors and the federal government’s technology itself. Mail voting begins in 16 states prior to the end of September, with many more starting the week after. “Many [local election offices] have already designed, approved, ordered, and printed their 2026 general election envelopes,” the brief reads. “Envelope vendors quote four-to-eight-week turnarounds in ordinary times; if a substantial share of the nation’s jurisdictions reorders at once, that stretches to twelve-to-sixteen weeks.” As of this writing, Election Day is eight weeks from now.
Additionally, the officials attested that the USPS portal has not undergone the “rigorous end-to-end testing, including end-user testing,” which new election technology typically requires. (Readers of Declare might recall the federal government’s struggles with the rollout of the Obamacare website and the political fallout that ensued.)
The Postal Service rule has raced about the federal judiciary in recent weeks, with a district court in Massachusetts responsible for most of the activity. It blocked implementation of the Trump executive order but lifted its prohibition after the Supreme Court determined that the case was not yet ripe for judgment, since the USPS hadn’t finalized a rule. Once it did, the same plaintiffs that sued for a stoppage the first time updated their complaint, and the district court sided with them this past weekend. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene yet again.
The Republicans who signed the court brief include Kansas secretary of state Scott Schwab, who recently was president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, and the secretaries of state of North Dakota and South Dakota. By and large, the election officials represent rural or deeply red jurisdictions, whether at the local or state level; in fact, the entire Missouri county clerks association was a signatory.
“It is not for [us] to opine on whether the Rule itself is good or bad,” they concluded. “What [we] can say is that neither election officials across the country nor USPS are equipped to successfully implement this Rule for the 2026 midterms.”