{"id":562229,"date":"2026-04-03T13:26:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/562229\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T13:26:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T13:26:15","slug":"trumps-new-role-for-usps-in-mail-balloting-is-unconstitutional-three-lawsuits-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/562229\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s new role for USPS in mail balloting is unconstitutional, three lawsuits say"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Democrats compared President Donald Trump\u2019s latest attempt to overhaul elections to George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984,\u201d in one of three lawsuits now challenging Tuesday\u2019s executive order<\/a>, which instructs the US Postal Service to determine who does and doesn\u2019t receive a mail ballot.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democratic congressional leaders and organizations, as well as two separate coalitions of voter advocacy groups, each filed lawsuits \u2013 prompting a sense of deja vu, as those Trump opponents previously brought successful legal challenges that halted parts of a March 2025 Trump executive order<\/a> that sought to boost proof of citizenship requirements.\n <\/p>\n

\n The challengers say Trump is again violating the Constitution and several laws by imposing new hurdles to vote by mail in his latest executive order, and by unliterally taking over election decisions that are handled by states.\n <\/p>\n

\n Additionally, Trump\u2019s order calls for federal agencies to use internal databases to create a \u201ccitizen\u201d list to share with states. While the directive doesn\u2019t lay out explicitly how that list would then be used, the challengers argue that it would violate privacy laws intended to protect against the federal government assembling a \u201cpersonal dossier\u201d on citizens in the vein of the dystopian novel. Further, they warn, the federal databases in question have shown themselves to be a flawed way of determining who is eligible to vote.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe Executive Order\u2019s provisions are convoluted and confusing,\u201d said the Democrats\u2019 lawsuit<\/a>, which was filed Wednesday in Washington, DC\u2019s federal court. \u201cWhat is clear is that it dramatically restricts the ability of Americans to vote by mail, impinging on traditional state authority.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and the party\u2019s congressional campaign arms all signed onto the lawsuit.\n <\/p>\n

\"Mail-in<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn effect, the Order seeks to interpose a federal screening regime between voters and the ballot box by empowering a federal mail carrier to withhold certain voters\u2019 ballots,\u201d a collection of voter advocacy groups said in a case filed Thursday <\/a>in Massachusetts. \u201cIn doing so, the Order displaces the roles that the Constitution and federal law assign to the states and Congress to regulate elections and to USPS as a neutral, nondiscriminatory carrier of the mail.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Tuesday\u2019s executive order is Trump\u2019s latest attempt to unilaterally insert the federal government in the administration of elections, a job the Constitution largely gives to the states. The order comes as his legislative effort to add restrictions <\/a>to voting has floundered in Congress.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOnly Democrat politicians and operatives would be upset about lawful efforts to secure American elections and ensure only eligible American citizens are casting ballots,\u201d White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. \u201cPresident Trump campaigned on securing our elections and the American people sent him back to the White House to get the job done.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But the challengers argue the order will disenfranchise eligible voters, because it requires that states seeking to use USPS to deliver ballots submit lists of their mail voters 60 days before an election. That process would leave out people who move or become naturalized citizens within 60 days of an election, Democrats note. The order also requires USPS to only deliver mail ballots in states that meet certain ballot design and other requirements, which would \u201cgrant the Postal Service unilateral authority to determine who is eligible to vote by mail based on the criteria specified in the Order,\u201d the Democrats said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The order violates the law governing the Postal Service, the Voting Rights Act, and other statutes, the challengers allege, in addition to being unconstitutional.\n <\/p>\n

\n The data collection part of the order, according to the challengers, runs afoul of the Privacy Act, which sets requirements for how the government goes about collecting and using sensitive information from Americans.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIndeed, in enacting amendments that tightened restrictions specifically on \u2018computerized matching programs,\u2019 Congress underscored that its purpose was to ensure that it would be \u2018legally impossible for the Federal Government \u2026 to put together anything resembling a \u20181984\u2019 personal dossier on a citizen,\u2019 and that \u2018proper regard for privacy of the individual, confidentiality of data, and security of the system\u2019 would be respected,\u201d the Democrats\u2019 lawsuit said.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the executive order, the lawsuit continues, directs federal agencies \u201cto make good on President Trump\u2019s repeated claims that the federal government should take charge of who is \u201celigibl[e]\u201d to vote precisely by amassing such a database.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n While the order does not explicitly state the purpose for the \u201ccitizen\u201d list, the voting advocates in the Massachusetts lawsuit say that the \u201cmost reasonable inference\u201d is that Trump intended it be used to screen mail ballots.\n <\/p>\n

\n That further risks disenfranchisement of eligible voters, Trump\u2019s opponents warn, arguing that the existing databases and programs he is instructing the federal government to use are riddled with errors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Voting officials already have access to one of the federal citizenship data programs \u2013 known as SAVE \u2013 to review their registration lists, and because of the errors produced, \u201cnumerous election administrators have expressed their frustration and mistrust in the system,\u201d a second coalition of voter advocacy groups said in a lawsuit <\/a>filed in DC Thursday.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrats compared President Donald Trump\u2019s latest attempt to overhaul elections to George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984,\u201d in one of three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-562229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}