In just a matter of months before midterms and weeks before mail-in ballots are set to go out, a new federal rule is allowing the United States Postal Service to intercept and reject some mail-in ballots.<\/p>\n
Some voting rights groups in New York, including Common Cause New York and The League of Women Voters, are suing to keep it from being implemented.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeaders can\u2019t change the rules this close to an election, and they shouldn\u2019t be changing the rules simply to hold on to power,\u201d said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really seeing this ruling by the USPS really as an overstep,\u201d said Erica Smitka, executive director of The League of Women Voters. \u201cOur states run our elections.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state of New York is also suing.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Letitia James has joined a coalition of 23 other Democratic attorneys general and the governor of Pennsylvania in taking the U.S. Postal Service to court.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s to stop the rule, which was finalized at President Doanld Trump\u2019s direction and forces states to hand over lists of every eligible mail voter to the postal service and requires pre-approval of ballot envelope designs.<\/p>\n
Any voter missing from the federal list, or using an envelope the postal service hasn\u2019t approved, could be rejected and not delivered, even if that voter is fully eligible and registered to vote under state law.<\/p>\n
In a statement, James said in part: \u201cThe USPS has no authority to decide who can and cannot vote by mail. This new policy will just create confusion, unnecessary costs, and unacceptable risks for voters going into Election Day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The finalization of the new rule follows the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday staying a lower court\u2019s ruling which directed USPS to officially announce this rule.<\/p>\n
The Legal Defense Fund talks about the legality of this rule.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be absolutely clear that the president has very little power over elections,\u201d said John Cusick, assistant counsel with the Legal Defense Fund. \u201cHe simply cannot do this. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important for us to continue to push back to make sure the fight and the facts are right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spectrum News 1 reached out to USPS for comment and did not hear immediately back.<\/p>\n
Voting rights groups are encouraging voters to make a plan for Election Day, and to know voting deadlines. Also, if you\u2019re planning on voting by mail to request a ballot early from your board of elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In just a matter of months before midterms and weeks before mail-in ballots are set to go out,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[206,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,5304,112,108,87,200],"class_list":["post-331472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany-capital-region","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-nicole-neuman","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-politics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}