POLITICO (“Supreme Court blocks Trump mail-in ballot plan“):

The Supreme Court has rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to enforce new mail-in ballot delivery rules that threatened to severely disrupt the looming midterm elections.

In a ruling Monday, the justices left in place a lower-court decision that blocked the Postal Service from implementing the new requirements in the coming weeks due to the potential that millions of voters could be disenfranchised by not having their ballots delivered.

Most of the high court’s majority did not offer a detailed rationale for their decision, which took place on the court’s emergency docket, saying simply that the Trump administration’s position was unlikely to succeed and that the legal factors at issue did not favor lifting the lower-court ruling.

In a brief concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in his view that “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the election.”

Two members of the court dissented — Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

“Even assuming the rule here is a regulation of elections, Congress may create such rules under the Elections Clause. And, by statute, it may authorize the Postal Service to issue such rules,” Alito wrote, joined by Thomas.

It’s worth noting that Congress has passed no such law. Nor is it clear why Congress would direct the Postal Service, rather than—just spitballing here—the Federal Election Commission, to do so if it were so inclined.

In an eight-page dissent, Alito referred to the litigation three times as a “Hail Mary pass.”

Given how often litigants have prevailed in getting judges to block the order . . .

Trump’s order was quickly hit with lawsuits from voting rights advocates, Democratic Party groups and Democratic-led states. Two of those cases were assigned to U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, a Boston-based Obama appointee. In June, she blocked the administration from moving forward with key parts of Trump’s directive.

However, the justices voted last month, 6 to 3 along ideological lines, to lift Talwani’s injunction. The high court’s majority said her move was premature because it came before the administration took final action to implement the plan.

That action, the release of a final rule by the Postal Service, actually took place one business day before the Supreme Court issued its decision lifting Talwani’s initial ruling. The final rule triggered a new round of litigation, prompting the new injunction that the Supreme Court refused to lift Monday.

The final plan was similar to the Postal Service’s initial proposal, but dropped a provision that said postal workers would refuse to deliver voted ballots to election officials if the ballots didn’t match data in the service’s system.

On Sunday, a judge in Washington overseeing three lawsuits challenging the Postal Service’s actions issued his own preliminary injunction against enforcement of the mail-in ballot rule in the midterms.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said postal authorities lacked authorization from Congress to implement the plan.

“Nothing in the Postal Reorganization Act authorizes the Postal Service to impose new election procedures on state election officials, to create a data collection system for mail-in and absentee voters, or to refuse the transmission of lawful mail because it fails to meet these data collection requirements,” wrote Nichols, a Trump appointee.

. . . I’d say it’s more like a handoff.

The Trump administration said the new measures were needed to combat fraud, but many state and local election officials said the federal government was inviting chaos by trying to deploy a new ballot-matching system just as poll workers in many states began sending out ballots to voters in advance of the midterms.

I’m sure that was a totally unforeseen third-order effect, rather than the actual purpose of the order. Then again, it may be too late to stop that.

NYT (“Supreme Court Blocks Trump Administration Plan to Screen Mail-In Ballots“) notes:

The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.

The Trump administration’s efforts, they had said, would introduce chaos and confusion as early voting gears up in many states.

Still, the weekslong legal tussle over the issue may have sown its own kind of confusion, a victory of sorts for Mr. Trump as he seeks to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote in an election his party might lose.

Regardless, the Supreme Court ruling seems to put an end to the fight. Or, perhaps, not.

NYT (“Trump’s Effort to Assert Control Over Elections Continues, Despite Court Loss“):

The stymied attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections.

Just days before the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Trump’s mail ballot order, the Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records.

Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for noncitizens, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary recently pushed for an investigation into whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted, casting doubt on digital voting systems.

“This is far from over,” said Benjamin Hovland, who was ousted from the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission by the Trump administration this year.

Mr. Hovland acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision mitigated “real-world impact” on voters and election workers, particularly since voters in some states have already begun to mail in their ballots. But he said Mr. Trump’s actions were alarming.

“What you’re seeing is using the apparatus of government, using federal agencies, using taxpayer dollars, to push that narrative that only undermines confidence in our democracy and ultimately hurts voters and election officials,” Mr. Hovland said.

That sounds alarmist. Obviously, Hovland is a radical Democrat, if not an outright Communist, right?

Oh, wait. It says here he was appointed on October 5, 2018, and confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on January 2, 2019. If memory serves me right, Donald J. Trump was President at the time.

Hmm.