The US Supreme Court has rejected an eleventh-hour request from President Donald Trump to enforce a crackdown on mail-in ballots, dealing him a defeat just weeks before the November midterm elections.
Lawyers for Trump had asked the court to let his executive order take effect, which would allow the US Postal Service to check mail-in ballots against a central repository of registered voters in each state and reject ballots from voters not listed in the database. The midterm elections, held roughly halfway through a president's term, will decide control of Congress.
Third Supreme Court appeal
The request marked the third time the Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, a sign of how much weight the White House placed on the matter. Just two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, dissented from the decision to reject Trump's plea.
Split among Trump appointees
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump appointed to the court during his first term, wrote a short concurrence with the majority suggesting the Postal Service might ultimately have the authority to implement such rules. But he added that election officials "do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before" the midterm elections.
Two other Trump-appointed conservatives, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, voted with the court's liberal justices against the president's request, a move sure to anger him. Chief Justice John Roberts also joined the majority.
Warnings of chaos before Election Day
Critics warned that the new Postal Service rules ordered by Trump, and the rushed timeline for putting them in place, risked creating widespread chaos ahead of Election Day and could disenfranchise millions of voters who cast their ballots by mail, including roughly one-third of all US voters who rely on the method.
Solicitor General John Sauer, representing the administration, had criticized the lower court judge who blocked Trump's order as "baseless" and said it threatened further confusion for voters. "Each day the injunction is in place risks sowing confusion and chaos because the injunction makes those preparatory steps voluntary, rather than mandatory," Sauer told the Supreme Court.
States already mailing ballots
Many states are preparing to send mail-in ballots to voters this month. North Carolina sent its ballots out on Friday, and six more states are due to follow suit by next week.
Despite his objections to the process, Trump himself voted by mail in the Florida Republican primary last month.
