Montana joins fight to defend Trump mail-in voting restrictions
Kelsey Reichmann
WASHINGTON (CN) — A dozen Republican-led states joined the Supreme Court fight over restrictions for mail-in voting on Wednesday, asking the justices to fully enforce an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
The states, which include Montana, intervened in ongoing litigation over the “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections” order, which would create lists of U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state and instruct the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.
A Massachusetts court blocked key sections of the order at the behest of Democratic officials in 23 states and the District of Columbia, who claimed the proposed changes were unlawful and could lead to chaos ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Republican states filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court Wednesday seeking to block the lower court ruling, arguing states have a concrete interest in ensuring the mail-in ballots cast by their voters are securely delivered and counted.
“Allowing the federal government to promulgate final rules advancing election integrity reforms enhances the ability of states to ensure the security of mail voting within their jurisdictions,” the Republican states, led by Missouri, wrote. “And state defendants cannot themselves implement some of these commonsense proposed reforms — such as improved USPS delivery systems for election mail.”
The states’ request comes just days after Trump asked the justices to intervene in the same case, and as congressional Republicans struggle to meet the president’s demands to pass legislation clamping down on U.S. elections.
Trump has repeatedly elevated concerns about the legitimacy of elections in recent weeks, including a primetime address from the Oval Office. Noncitizen voting is rare, but the president continues to cite the issue as justification for voting changes ahead of the November elections.
Democratic states sued the administration in April, arguing the Constitution gives states and Congress authority to set election rules.
Under Trump’s executive order, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the commissioner of the Social Security Administration would create and send state officials federal citizenship lists to determine eligible voters. And the USPS would be restricted to mailing ballots only to people on those lists.
The order also calls for ballots to have secure envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking. Federal funding could be withheld from states and localities that don’t comply.
Similar to arguments made by the Justice Department in a Monday filing, Republican states claim that Trump’s order lays out “general policy guidance” and doesn’t directly dictate how states run their elections.
As such, the Republican states say the challenge to Trump’s executive order relies on speculative harm and not an actual conflict. And they called for the Supreme Court to rein in lower courts entertaining non-final executive policies.
“More broadly, this case would merit certiorari because it underscores the need to police a growing trend of courts granting injunctions against non-self-executing executive orders instead of waiting for federal agencies to issue final polices,” the states argue.
Last month, the Supreme Court shot down a different Republican-led challenge to state mail-in ballot laws that allow for post-Election Day ballot counting.
The Supreme Court set an Aug. 3 deadline for Democratic states to respond to Trump’s emergency application. The justices have not yet asked for a response to the filing from Republican states.