Try and Stop Us Digest — August 27, 2026

Must Read

The Last Court Order Blocking Trump’s Mail Voting Rule Is Gone

The judge who issued the nationwide injunction vacated it Wednesday afternoon, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling compelled her to. The New York Times / Spectrum News: The order she lifted was the one barring the Postal Service from carrying out the executive order for November, and it was the last thing standing between the agency and its new rule. She left open the possibility of revisiting the question as the litigation moves, and within hours the voting rights groups who had won that injunction asked her to step back in and stop the Postal Service from putting the rule into effect.

Hours earlier, two dozen attorneys general sued the Postal Service in Boston over the rule itself. PBS NewsHour/ Axios: The attorneys general of 23 states and Washington, D.C., joined by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, argue the rule “violates the Constitution and federal statutes many times over” and would force states to redesign ballot envelopes and build new systems for transmitting voter lists with only weeks to comply. The rule landed in the Federal Register the same day, and voting rights groups amended their own complaint to target it, making three separate challenges now aimed at the final rule.

Postal Officials Say Trump’s Mail Ballot Push Will Create Widespread Errors

A 35-year Postal Service executive who helped build the agency’s network technology expects a 20% to 30% error rate. NOTUS: Tom Day, now a member of the Postal Regulatory Commission, said the agency would normally spend a year rolling out a system like this, hold a conference for every affected jurisdiction and train 8,000 election boards, and that “to do it in three weeks, my God, there’s no way.” Madison, Wisconsin, and Travis County, Texas, told a federal court Tuesday that the Postal Service has just 40 specialized analysts to field questions from jurisdictions nationwide, and the agency’s own filing likens ballot screening to its rules for mailing cremated remains and replica explosives.

Americans Oppose Trump On Elections By 20 Points

A new poll gives him a net -20 on elections and democracy, with 49% strongly disapproving against 17% strongly approving. Democracy Docket: The Strength in Numbers/Verasight survey, conducted Aug. 14 to 19, found 37% of adults approve of his overall performance while 60% disapprove, and Democrats leading Republicans by 10 points on which party voters trust on elections and democracy, a margin that has held steady since the spring. Earlier polling from the same outfit found that the more voters learned about the SAVE America Act the less they liked it, which cuts against the administration’s claim that adding restrictions to voting is popular.

In The States

GEORGIA — A federal appeals court wiped out Black voters’ 2023 redistricting win and sent the case back to be decided again under the Supreme Court’s new framework. Democracy Docket: The 11th Circuit vacated a ruling that had found Georgia violated the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state to draw a second majority-Black congressional district, holding that the district court must reconsider it in light of Callais, which requires minority voters to show that maps eliminating majority-minority districts were racially motivated rather than merely partisan. Georgia’s own brief called that decision a watershed that “takes a sledgehammer” to the voters’ victory, and this is the second such reversal in a month, after the 8th Circuit did the same to Native voters in North Dakota.

MINNESOTA — There will be no recount. Mike Lindell refused to wire the $825,000 and sued the officials who set the terms instead. NOTUS / Star Tribune: The Secretary of State’s office says it received neither payment nor a formal request by Monday’s deadline and has no plans to recount the Aug. 11 primary, which Lindell lost by about 45,000 votes. His campaign says the state’s plan would have recounted only his votes and Lisa Demuth’s while leaving every other candidate’s ballots in a single unexamined pile, putting him in what it called an “untenable position,” and he asked the Minnesota Supreme Court for a restraining order; the state says the plan was approved by the Canvassing Board and follows two decades of practice.

What Experts Are Saying

A Denver clerk says his office is mailing ballots regardless of what the Postal Service does. “...we’re going to proceed as normal because the Constitution is the Constitution.” — Paul López, Clerk and Recorder, City and County of Denver, Spectrum News

New York’s attorney general, one of the two dozen who sued Wednesday, drew the line at what the Postal Service gets to decide. “USPS has no authority to decide who can and cannot vote by mail.” — Letitia James, Attorney General, New York, PBS NewsHour

Headlines

Trump’s Attacks on Voting

The New York Times: Where Does Trump’s Effort to Restrict Mail Voting Stand?

SCOTUSblog: The ripple effects of SCOTUS’ mail-in voting decision

Democracy Docket: Trump administration seeks private contractor to collect voter files nationwide for “fraud detection”

At The Polls

Human Rights Watch: Federal Presence at US Polls Could Intimidate Voters