Too Big To Ignore: Will of the People Weekly

Summer may be ending, but the real fight over our ballots is just beginning. Trump’s anti-voter mail-ballot rule is still frozen after a federal judge extended her block on Friday, finding that rushing it out now could disenfranchise millions, and his Justice Department answered by running to the Supreme Court for the third time in six weeks. Meanwhile, ICE agents are hunting for voter fraud in nine states, North Carolina Republicans tightened the rules for throwing out mail ballots hours before sending them, and one of Texas’ largest counties cut 92 polling places. With ballots already in the mail and the justices set to weigh-in this week, what happens next is up to us, not them. When all of us show up, the will of the people wins. Try and stop us.

In the Administration

• Trump has ICE agents hunting for voter fraud in nine states, and they are barely finding any. The ICE division that normally handles drug smuggling and human trafficking launched a “coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative” on Sept. 1 that runs through mid-October in nine key states (Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York and Connecticut). Now, ICE agents are chasing leads, conducting field interviews and preparing voter fraud cases for prosecutors, even as one targeted state has said its findings so far are in the single digits.
• The USPS’ own watchdog is now looking into whether Trump’s mail-ballot rule can even work. The USPS inspector general has now opened a probe into whistleblower allegations about the agency’s ability to carry out Trump’s anti-voter mail-ballot rule in time for November, undermining the Trump administration’s core claim that the new system to review tens of millions of ballots is ready to run.

In the Courts

• State of California et al. v. United States Postal Service et al. (U.S. District Court, Massachusetts)
  • Twenty-four states and D.C. sued over Trump’s mail-ballot rule, arguing that only Congress can give the Postal Service power over ballots. On Friday, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking the envelope and portal requirements for as long as the case runs, replacing her two-week order. She wrote that USPS’ efforts to rush the rule out less than 70 days before the election “threatens disenfranchisement of millions” of citizens.
• U.S. Postal Service v. California (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • Two days after a federal judge blocked Trump’s anti-voter mail-ballot rules in District Court, Trump’s Justice Department went back to the Supreme Court for the third time in six weeks, asking the justices to lift the injunction. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency appeals from the District, ordered the states to respond by 4 p.m. Wednesday.
• Hoskins v. von Glahn (U.S. Supreme Court)
  • Earlier this year, Missouri Republicans redrew the state’s Congressional district maps at the urging of Trump, passing a new set of districts that would have skewed seven of the state’s eight House seats. On Thursday, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the map was invalid. Missouri Republicans immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which may take up the case this week.

In the States

North Carolina

• Hours before North Carolina mailed its first ballots on Friday, the state board of elections voted 3-2, along party lines, to tighten the rules for throwing ballots out. Counties told one board member that 3% to 20% of ballots arrive with the kinds of technical errors that will now be in effect in November. Gov. Josh Stein called the vote “a slap in the face to voters who stood up to these changes and a blatant circumvention of the law.”

Texas

• Texas’ third-largest county voted 3-2 last week to cut 92 Election Day polling places, dropping the county from the 316 sites it used in 2022 to 224 this November, after an eight-hour meeting in which more than 100 speakers mostly opposed the cuts. The approved list eliminates the University of Texas at Arlington entirely, leaving students a mile’s walk to the nearest site in a county that could decide the Senate race.

Missouri

• The state Supreme Court ruling throwing out the Republican-drawn map has thrown the states’ elections into chaos. Missouri ran its August primary under the maps, so some voters will find themselves in a different district than they were a month ago. Clerks were supposed to finalize ballots today.

Upcoming Elections & Deadlines

Wednesday, September 9

• Alabama begins mailing ballots
• Responses are due at 3pm in U.S. Postal Service v. California