A federal judge ruled that the United States Postal Service cannot implement a proposal to support election integrity, concluding that it conflicts with a previous settlement requiring that the agency deliver election mail in a timely manner.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in the decision, “The Proposed Rule violates paragraph 2 of the Agreement because the Postal Service cannot post documents reflecting ‘practices and policies for prioritizing the monitoring and timely delivery of Election Mail’ if its policies provide that it will not accept ‘noncompliant mailing’ and therefore will not deliver mail-in or absentee ballots to some voters, and if it will not mail ballots to any voters in a state where the state ‘declines or fails to certify a list.’”
The proposal sought to “apply uniform standards for the mailing of absentee ballots to and from voters, which the Postal Service understands will facilitate the faithful execution of federal law.”
Under the rule, states would “notify the Postal Service of the individuals to whom they are mailing a mail-in or absentee ballot, along with the unique barcode applied to the outbound and return ballot mail envelope for such individuals such that the name and barcode of the voter will be included on a Mail-In and Absentee Participation List.” States may “add to or modify the list of enrollees until the last day that ballots may be mailed out to individuals under state law.”
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) challenged the proposal. The Department of Justice argued against the NAACP, explaining that “while the Postal Service has proposed requiring state and local election officials to identify the names and addresses of the persons to whom they send ballots and to provide the barcodes for the ballot envelopes, requiring this information—which officials already, by definition, have—would not compromise the lawful delivery of any mail.”
