Dem
47
GOP
53
You have to hand it to Donald Trump. No matter how many times he loses, he keeps going until he gets to someone who will give him his way. And that has worked remarkably well for him, in many cases.
Trump is determined to create chaos and confusion for the mid-term elections, and after a district court and a court of appeal enjoined his anti-mail-in voting XO, he has gone begging to the one body that will often give him what he wants regardless of the law or the consequences to democracy: the U.S. Supreme Court.
In yet another shadow docket filing, Trump has applied for an emergency stay of a lower court's order blocking his executive order from taking effect.
Back in March, Trump signed an executive order to control how states conduct mail-in voting, despite his having no authority to do so. The XO directs the federal and state governments to do several things: (1) expand an existing DHS database (SAVE database) that is used to determine eligibility for benefits and turn it into a massive voter database that includes partial SSNs to ostensibly check each voter's eligibility; (2) prohibit the USPS from sending a mail-in ballot to anyone not on the list; (3) require states to adopt federally-designed envelopes with a unique bar code; and (4) states that don't comply can be denied federal funding.
There are a number of problems with the order even before we get to the pending court case. Last month, in a separate case, a judge blocked DHS from expanding the SAVE database to use it as a universal voter verification tool, and it appears that DHS has complied. So, even if SCOTUS overturns the injunction regarding the XO, it won't affect the judge's order prohibiting the use of SAVE.
A second problem is that even the White House admits that nothing has been done to actually implement the XO, but it nonetheless argues that there's still time to do so before the November elections. And a third problem is that it's unclear if the USPS will even agree to do Trump's bidding since the Board of Governors is not under Trump's control—at least, not yet.
With this Supreme Court, especially when it can hide behind the shadow docket and issue a ruling with little to no explanation, the Republican majority has had no qualms about violating even its own rules (such as altering election rules too close to the election) in order to maximize Republicans' chances of staying in power. But here, this XO is so problematic and confusing that it's likely to hurt Republican voters as much as Democratic ones if it goes into effect.
Most states with Democratic secretaries of state, and even some Republican-led states, have told Trump to pound sand or, in the case of Republicans, politely declined to take any action to comply with the XO. So, it could very well be that even if SCOTUS gives Trump a victory, the only states that will be impacted will be Republican-controlled states. Of course, Texas and Ohio have critical Senate races, and if mail-in voting is made close to impossible, that could impact Democrats who have recently been voting by mail in greater numbers. But Texas already has strict eligibility requirements for voting by mail, and, in both states, voters are required to include an ID number on the outside of the ballot envelope (the carrier envelope). So, in those states it's not clear that this effort will benefit Republicans.
The one major question is the USPS. If the Board of Governors or the Postmaster General agrees to refuse to deliver certain vote-by-mail ballots based on an error-riddled database, they'll be looking at a major lawsuit. And who exactly is going to be qualified to make those determinations for each city or county? Are they going to train postal workers to sift through mail ballots and compare them to some list that has yet to be created? What could possibly go wrong? But of course, the chaos is the point. If millions of ballots conveniently go missing, Trump has won again. And amid all this chaos, if Democrats somehow still manage to win, Trump will have created the grounds to contest those outcomes in court.
A response from the plaintiff states to the emergency application is due by August 3. Presumably, the Court will issue a ruling shortly after that. (L)