Millions of Americans will soon open their mailboxes and find one of the most consequential pieces of government mail they will receive this year: a ballot for the November 3 midterm election. Before many of those envelopes are even printed, however, the federal system responsible for carrying them has become part of a complicated dispute involving the White House, the U.S. Postal Service, state election authorities and federal courts.
New Postal Service requirements governing federal election mail could change what information states must provide before ballots travel through the mail, how ballot envelopes are identified and tracked, and whether USPS will transport election mail from jurisdictions that fail to satisfy the federal standards. The regulations arrive only weeks before voting begins in portions of the country, creating an unusually compressed timetable for election administrators whose ballot designs, mailing schedules, voter databases and postal arrangements are normally established months in advance.
The regulations developed from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March directing federal agencies to impose additional requirements on mail voting and election administration. USPS subsequently proposed regulations establishing federal standards for ballot mail, including procedures intended to identify voters authorized to receive mail ballots and technical requirements governing the envelopes used to send and return them.
Under the framework, state and local election jurisdictions using USPS to distribute federal election ballots would be required to provide information identifying eligible mail-ballot voters through a federal verification process. Ballot envelopes would also have to satisfy new identification and tracking specifications designed to allow election mail to be recognized as it travels through the postal network.
The enforcement provisions carry considerably greater consequences than an ordinary change in mailing specifications. USPS could refuse to transport federal election ballot mail connected to jurisdictions that do not comply with the required standards. Because election administration varies dramatically among the states, implementation could require some jurisdictions to reconcile established state procedures with a newly imposed federal postal system shortly before voting begins.
Nothing in the rule itself abolishes voting by mail. It does not automatically invalidate ballots already being prepared by election offices, and it has not suspended Oregon’s vote-by-mail system. Its significance lies instead in the conditions the federal government is attempting to place on election mail moving through USPS and the unresolved question of whether those conditions can legally be enforced.
That question is being fought in federal court.
States challenging the administration’s election order contend that the president cannot independently rewrite election procedures assigned by the Constitution to states and Congress. The administration has defended the measures as lawful exercises of federal authority involving election safeguards and operation of the national postal system.
A federal judge in Boston blocked portions of the executive order, and an appeals court subsequently declined to permit implementation of disputed provisions while the litigation continued. The U.S. Supreme Court altered part of that equation Monday, August 24, when a 6-3 majority removed one judicial obstacle involving portions of the president’s order after determining that the states had brought that particular challenge prematurely.
The ruling was important, but its boundaries are equally important to understanding what happened. The Supreme Court did not issue a final decision declaring the disputed mail-ballot requirements constitutional. It did not settle the broader disagreement over presidential power to impose election procedures on states, and it did not immediately activate every contested Postal Service requirement. Separate litigation affecting implementation of the USPS provisions remains unresolved.
Courts can deliberate over constitutional authority for months. Election calendars cannot.
Federal requirements governing ballots for military personnel and Americans living overseas are already pushing election offices toward their first major mailing deadlines. Some jurisdictions begin transmitting those ballots in early September. North Carolina is scheduled to begin sending ballots to military and overseas voters September 4, leaving election officials with days rather than months between the latest court action and the beginning of actual ballot distribution.
Changing election mail at this stage involves considerably more than replacing an envelope.
States and counties purchase ballot stock, contract with printing and mailing companies, prepare voter databases, test election-management software, establish barcode and tracking systems and coordinate delivery procedures with postal officials well before Election Day. A new identification requirement can affect voter records. A new barcode specification can affect printing and tracking equipment. A new postal eligibility requirement can reach into databases containing millions of voter records. Altering one portion of that chain can require corresponding changes elsewhere.
Those complications become particularly pronounced in states where mail ballots are not a secondary voting option but the foundation of the election system.
Oregon has conducted statewide elections primarily by mail for decades. Registered voters receive ballots before Election Day and return them through official drop sites or the Postal Service. County election offices across Oregon have built their procedures, equipment and schedules around that system, making the federal dispute more than an abstract disagreement over Washington policy.
Oregon’s vote-by-mail system remains intact. No federal ruling has canceled it, Oregon voters have not been instructed to abandon mail voting, and the current dispute does not mean USPS is presently refusing Oregon ballots.
A final ruling permitting the federal requirements to take effect could nevertheless force Oregon officials to determine whether existing ballot envelopes, voter-information systems and mailing procedures satisfy the new USPS standards. Depending upon the scope and timing of any decision, election administrators could face federal postal requirements imposed after much of the state’s election preparation has already been completed.
Oregon is also among the states challenging the administration’s effort, placing the state on both sides of the practical equation: Oregon officials must prepare an election under existing state law while simultaneously contesting federal requirements that could affect the postal machinery supporting that election.
Another USPS issue has added complexity to the national conversation over mailed ballots, although it is separate from the new federal rule.
Changes in postal processing have raised questions about when certain pieces of mail receive their postmarks. Mail deposited with USPS on a particular day may receive a postmark later in the processing chain rather than at the precise moment or location where a voter placed the envelope into the postal system. In states where ballot eligibility depends partly upon the postmark date, that difference can become legally significant.
The postmark question and the new ballot-mail regulations should not be treated as a single policy. One concerns the date associated with a piece of mail as it passes through postal processing. The other establishes conditions governing the information, identification and procedures associated with federal election ballots traveling through USPS. Their common denominator is the Postal Service, but the rules operate differently and can produce different consequences under state election laws.
The dispute also illustrates an unusual characteristic of American elections. There is no single national election office administering every ballot. States establish election systems under state and federal law, thousands of county and municipal offices perform much of the administrative work, federal statutes govern particular aspects of voting, and USPS becomes an essential transportation network whenever ballots travel through the mail.
The November 3 midterms will place that interconnected system under enormous demand. Congressional seats, governorships, state legislative races and thousands of local offices will appear on ballots across the country. Millions of those ballots will pass through postal facilities before returning to election offices for verification and counting.
Whether the newly established USPS requirements become part of that process depends increasingly on decisions made inside federal courthouses while election workers outside them continue preparing ballots.
The Supreme Court’s August 24 action settled one procedural dispute without settling the larger legal confrontation. The administration gained the removal of one judicial barrier, states retained unresolved challenges to the Postal Service provisions, and election administrators moved another day closer to deadlines that cannot be postponed simply because the litigation remains unfinished.
For Oregon, the immediate election procedure remains familiar: registered voters will receive their ballots through the state’s established vote-by-mail system and may return them through authorized methods under Oregon law. The unresolved federal case concerns what USPS may eventually require from the government agencies placing those ballots into the nation’s mail network.
That answer could arrive before November. The more difficult question is how much time election offices will have to act on it once it does.