Sadiq S BhatWashington, DC — The Trump administration has marched back to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to let it do something a federal appeals court had just told it, weeks earlier, it could not.
At issue is an executive order that would hand the US Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security new authority over mail ballots — screening voter rolls, tracking envelopes with individualised barcodes, and prioritising prosecution of election officials who send ballots to people deemed ineligible.
A federal judge recently blocked it in 23 states. The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that block over the weekend.
So, the administration went to the nation's highest court, asking it to intervene before the midterms.
It is the latest major move in a fight the Supreme Court had, just last month, appeared to settle in the other direction.
A pattern, not an isolated fight
Late June, the Court ruled that Mississippi, and by extension, states with similar laws, may count mail-in ballots received up to five days after Election Day, so long as they were postmarked on time.
The decision rejected an effort by Trump and Republican allies to limit that grace period, upholding a law that mirrors statutes already on the books in dozens of states.
Legal scholars say that ruling and the administration’s emergency appeal are two chapters of the same story: courts declining, thus far, to embrace Trump’s core premise that mail voting poses a fraud risk serious enough to justify federal intervention.
"Unless new legislation passes in Congress or state legislatures, it looks like states will be allowed to count mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day," said Paul Collins, a political science professor and legal studies scholar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
"The Court's decisions will likely take many legal challenges to this practice off the table."
David Levine, a professor at the University of California's College of the Law, sees the June ruling as narrowing the battlefield rather than closing it, which may be exactly why the administration shifted its fight to a different front.
"There will be other challenges in the tight races, but not on the basis of challenging mail-in ballots which are postmarked in time but arrive a few days after election day," Levine said.
The fraud question
Central to the dissent in the Mississippi case — and to the administration's broader argument, including in Supreme Court filing — is the claim that mail voting invites abuse.
Both experts said evidence needs to support it.
"As far as I can tell, the concerns of the Court's dissenting justices are based mainly on anecdotes and speculation, rather than any systematic evidence that mail-in voting leads to voter fraud," Collins said.
Levine went further. "There is no proven basis for the charge — whether it comes from the dissent or the President or his allies — that the count of mail-in ballots is somehow fraudulent," he said.
Amid a recent controversy in New Jersey, where thousands of noncitizens were mistakenly registered through DMV paperwork errors, state officials confirmed fewer than 400 of them actually cast a ballot.
What the grace period produces, Levine said, isn't fraud — it's a lag. "States like California count mail-in ballots carefully, but signature verification does take some time," he said.
That lag now carries a partisan signature of its own. "Because of Trump's claims, in some states, Republican voters now tend to vote in person and Democratic voters use mail-in opportunities," Levine said.
"The quick results from voters who used machines in polling places come in first and then the mail-in ballots are counted more slowly."
Trump administration’s position
The administration and its allies offer a different assessment.
They maintain that the executive order is limited to directing federal agencies: DHS, the Social Security Administration, and the Postal Service to verify citizenship using existing databases and to restrict ballot delivery to confirmed eligible voters, while prioritising prosecution of officials who knowingly send ballots to ineligible recipients.
Officials argue this does not rewrite state election laws but simply enforces longstanding federal prohibitions on noncitizen voting.
In his dissent in the Mississippi case, Justice Samuel Alito cautioned that allowing ballots to arrive and be counted days after Election Day can produce apparent late shifts in results, opens additional avenues for fraud once preliminary tallies are public, and risks further damaging public confidence in the electoral system.
Trump’s July 16, 2026 primetime address to the nation focused heavily on alleged vulnerabilities in the US election system, including claims about mail-in ballots enabling fraud, noncitizen voting, and the need for stricter federal oversight.
He used the speech to push the SAVE Act and highlight the risks of unrestricted mail voting, precisely the concerns that underpin the executive order now before the top Court.
What comes next
The Supreme Court has asked the Democratic states challenging Trump’s appeal to respond by August 3, teeing up a decision that could arrive just months before voters head to the polls.
Neither expert expects Trump’s Supreme Court appeal, or the fight behind it, to end soon.
Collins predicted the setbacks would harden support among Trump's allies in Congress for the SAVE Act, legislation that would impose new documentary requirements on voters.
"I think this will further motivate Trump's strongest supporters in Congress to pass the SAVE Act, or similar legislation," he said. "But it does not appear that they have the votes to pass that Act, absent getting rid of the filibuster in the Senate, which seems unlikely.
Levine expects the rhetoric to outlast the legislation. "Trump will still push for his SAVE Act, even though it does not have the votes to pass in the US Senate," he said.
"The rhetoric about mail-in balloting will continue."
