A federal judge has warned that a Trump administration plan to restrict mail ballots could trigger “major disenfranchisement” if introduced just weeks before the November election.
During a two-hour hearing in Boston on Thursday, US District Judge Indira Talwani repeatedly questioned government lawyers and representatives of Republican-led states over how the United States Postal Service could introduce the system in time without wrongly preventing legitimate voters from receiving ballots.
Talwani did not immediately rule on whether to extend her temporary restraining order, which expires on September 10, but indicated that she intended to decide swiftly. The administration has appealed the order and the dispute is expected to reach the US Supreme Court.
The hearing took place one day before the first state is due to begin sending mail ballots to voters for the November 3 midterm elections. North Carolina is scheduled to start mailing ballots on Friday, while some municipalities in Wisconsin have already sent theirs.
Under the Postal Service’s new rules, states would have to use scannable ballot envelopes and submit details of voters receiving mail ballots through a new federal online portal. The agency could refuse to deliver ballots that failed to meet its requirements or were not linked to an approved voter record.
Talwani questioned why the changes could not be postponed until after the election, allowing officials more time to test the system and prepare state and local election offices.
“I think that’s what’s so puzzling to me about this case,” she said.
The judge also pressed Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer representing the Postal Service, over whether the Federal Ballot Mail Portal was ready to operate. When he was unable to provide a clear answer, she ordered the government to submit further details later on Thursday.
“We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” Talwani said.
The Postal Service later indicated that the portal was still being refined and might not be available to election officials until next week. The administration has argued that states would have the option of using the system, although no state has been identified as having joined it.
Voting groups and Democratic-led states say the changes would force election offices to redesign envelopes, alter internal systems and upload voter information at a point when many ballots have already been printed. They argue that the Postal Service is being given a new role in deciding which ballots can be sent, despite Congress not clearly authorising it.
Talwani previously ruled that the agency’s plans were likely to exceed the authority granted to it by Congress. On Thursday, she rejected the suggestion that the dispute was relatively minor, saying it involved voting rather than simply financial or administrative matters.
“We’re not playing an intellectual puzzle game,” she said. “We’re talking about people’s right to vote.”
A whistleblower disclosure made public this week has added to concerns about the system’s readiness. It alleges that the portal was being developed on an unusually compressed timetable, with insufficient testing and changing technical requirements.
The disclosure also raised concerns about a proposed zero-failure standard for ballot batches. If one ballot in a large consignment failed to match the information held by the Postal Service, the entire batch could be rejected until the problem was resolved.
In one example cited in the disclosure, a batch of 10,000 ballots could be returned because a single ballot could not be verified, leaving the remaining 9,999 unable to be mailed until the error was corrected.
Officials in Travis County, Texas, which includes Austin, have told the court they do not believe local authorities could implement the changes in time for the 2026 election. Texas is nevertheless part of a coalition of Republican-led states urging Talwani to lift the restraining order.
Louis J. Capozzi, Missouri’s solicitor general, said Texas believed the new requirements would provide an additional layer of election security and that any problems could be addressed on a state-by-state basis.
Talwani questioned why states would want the Postal Service to control whether batches of their voters’ ballots were mailed, rather than passing their own laws on ballot design and election procedures.
“I don’t understand — you come to me and say, ‘We really want to have election integrity in our state decided by U.S.P.S.’?” she said.
Lawyers for more than 20 Democratic-led states and voting organisations also argued that the executive order raised fundamental constitutional questions about the separation of powers. They said the President could not impose sweeping election requirements without clear authority from Congress.
The administration maintains that the Postal Service acted independently and that the measures are lawful. Talwani is now considering whether to replace her temporary order with a longer-lasting preliminary injunction blocking the new mail ballot rules for the November election.
