Trump Asks Supreme Court to Let USPS Withhold Ballots. California Mails Oct. 5.

The rule would let the Postal Service refuse ballots for voters missing from lists states upload to a federal portal.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to let the U.S. Postal Service refuse delivery of mail ballots for voters missing from state-submitted lists. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the emergency application on September 3, 2026, jumping over lower courts still working through the case, CNN reported. The justices asked for a response by Tuesday morning.

California's counties start mailing ballots on October 5 for the November 3, 2026 general election, and California is the largest mail-voting state in the country. Under the rule, the state would first have to upload its roster of eligible mail voters to a Postal Service portal before those envelopes could move.

The requirements come from an executive order President Donald Trump signed in March and a Postal Service regulation written to carry it out, CNN reported. States submit their mail-voter lists through an online portal; a name that isn't on the list doesn't get a ballot delivered; and election-mail envelopes have to carry a unique bar code for each voter. The administration told the justices the rule amounts to “only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements.”

A federal district court temporarily blocked the key provision in a case brought by voting-rights groups and a coalition of 23 Democratic-led states. A federal judge has since extended that block, the Associated Press reported. The existing restraining order runs to September 10, the outlet reported.

Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project and part of the legal team for the voting-rights groups, called the regulation “an unconstitutional attempt to upend mail voting on the eve of an election,” CNN reported. She said the only emergency is one the administration made itself.

The Justice Department's filing argues the block undercuts the Postal Service's effort to keep the federal mails from being used to commit voter fraud. Trump has repeatedly made false claims of widespread voter fraud, and the appeal echoes them, CNN reported.

A whistleblower report asserted that the Postal Service was preparing to reject entire batches of ballots when a single envelope in a batch didn't match the portal, according to CNN. In some places that would hold up tens of thousands of ballots.

North Carolina started mailing its ballots on September 5, 2026.

Democratic state officials told the court in a separate filing that the administration can't be entitled to emergency relief for a rule it lacks the technology to run, pointing to the government's own statement in the lower court that the upload portal wouldn't be working until the following week. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat among those suing, said granting the request would throw his state's election into chaos, CNN reported.

The Democratic attorneys general file their full response Tuesday morning. California's counties begin mailing October 5.

Source: cnn.com, retrieved September 5, 2026.