The Supreme Court’s ruling blocking Donald Trump’s attempt to alter the US mail-ballot system has been welcomed by election officials, voting rights groups and non-partisan watchdogs just weeks before the midterm elections.
Democratic and Republican officials said the decision had removed a major source of uncertainty, with ballots already printed and being sent through the post in several states. More than a dozen states are due to mail ballots by the end of the week.
Ricky Hatch, the Republican clerk in Weber County, Utah, said he had prepared contingency plans to abandon mail voting if the United States Postal Service had been allowed to restrict the practice.
“We do have to walk back some of the contingencies that we’ve put together, but we’re grateful that at least one uncertainty has been eliminated,” Mr Hatch said.
Stuart Holmes, Washington State’s elections director, said officials there had also drawn up alternative plans, but warned that changing course would have been expensive because ballots had already been printed.
“Ballots were already printed, and it would have been very costly to shift,” Mr Holmes said.
States warned of election disruption
Secretaries of state from both parties, including seven from Republican-controlled states, had urged the Supreme Court to prevent the executive order from applying to the 2026 election.
They argued that there was not enough time to introduce the changes without causing widespread confusion and disruption. Justice Brett M Kavanaugh said the states “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections”.
Democratic officials who oversee elections or govern states that depend heavily on mail ballots praised the Supreme Court mail voting ruling. California governor Gavin Newsom said the court had rejected what he described as the president’s plan to “rig the elections”, which he had previously called criminal election interference.
Cisco Aguilar, Nevada’s secretary of state and chairman of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said: “Today, Donald Trump lost another battle in his unconstitutional war to choose his own voters.”
He added that Democratic secretaries of state welcomed the court’s decision to uphold what he called a fundamental principle and would oppose any attempt to create “chaos, fear and intimidation” in elections.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, said mail ballots had been protected for voters in the state, which votes largely by post.
“Trump’s attempt to sabotage the 2026 elections has failed,” Ms Griswold said. “Courts have blocked Trump from using the Postal Service to choose which voters could receive a mail ballot. Trump will continue to fail in his efforts to take control of the 2026 midterms. We will fight every attempt to suppress the vote or unlawfully federalize elections.”
Norman L Eisen, a lawyer and prominent critic of Mr Trump, said the decision could have implications for other efforts by the administration, describing it as “a VERY important signal of how Trump’s other election sabotage efforts will be treated.”
