United States Postal Service v. California

Public Rights Project and the Center for Election Innovation & Research filed an amicus brief on behalf of 19 local governments and 81 election officials, urging the U.S. Supreme Court to keep a new U.S. Postal Service rule from taking effect before the November 2026 elections. 

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court order blocking the rule. USPS finalized the rule on August 26 — just over two months before Election Day. Election preparations were already well underway, and some states were preparing to send mail ballots to voters in the weeks just after the rule was finalized. 

The rule would force state and local election officials nationwide to make sweeping changes to how they administer voting by mail. Among other things, jurisdictions would have to redesign and potentially reprint ballot envelopes to meet new barcode requirements, submit voter information through a new and untested USPS portal, and complete new verification steps before ballot mail could enter the mail system. Election officials haven’t been trained on the portal, which wasn’t yet operational when the rule was finalized (and still is not). 

Our brief explains why these changes come too late and put both election administration and voters at risk: 

• Election officials are already administering the 2026 election. Ballots, envelopes, staffing plans, and other critical preparations have already been developed or purchased. Changing the rules now would force officials to redo months of work on an impossible timeline.
• The rule would impose high new costs and demands. Jurisdictions would have to redesign and reprint ballot materials, buy new technology, retrain staff, and divert resources away from other essential election work.
• Election officials would be forced to rely on a new, untested federal system. The rule requires officials to upload voter information to a new USPS portal and build new procedures around it, despite having little time to test the system or train staff on it.
• Errors could prevent eligible voters from receiving or returning their ballots. Each added step creates another opportunity for delay, confusion, or mistakes — with voters’ ability to cast a ballot by mail at stake.

Why it matters now 

Running an election takes months, often years, of planning. The federal government shouldn’t be allowed to overhaul the mechanics of voting by mail in the final weeks before a national election. Keeping the rule blocked would preserve the systems that election officials and voters already rely on for November. 

This case is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to expand federal control over elections. Earlier this year, Public Rights Project, CEIR, and election officials from across the country challenged the administration’s election executive order, including provisions targeting mail voting and threatening election officials with federal prosecution. The new USPS rule seeks to put key parts of that executive order into practice. Read more about our work challenging the executive order. 

Read the amicus brief.