Judge blocks Trump plan for federal mail-ballot voter list

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked President Donald Trump’s plan to build a national list of voters eligible for mail-in ballots, stopping a Postal Service rule that would have tied ballot delivery to whether states turned over approved voter lists. The injunction, issued in Boston on June 25, applies to the 2026 midterm election cycle and lands just months before November 3.

Talwani said the Constitution leaves voter-eligibility decisions to the states and that neither the executive branch nor Congress can override that authority. She also said the president has no specific constitutional power over elections and no direct role in appointing electors. Her ruling blocks key pieces of Trump’s March 31 executive order, including the directive for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state lists of confirmed U.S. citizens and the Postal Service requirement that mail ballots be delivered only to states that supply lists of eligible voters.

The practical effect is immediate for state election officials and mail voters. States are not required, under this ruling, to hand over a federal-approved voter list before ballots can move through the mail system. The Postal Service had already posted a proposed rule earlier in June, and Postmaster General David Steiner told a Senate committee on Wednesday that the agency would refuse to deliver ballots unless states turned over voter lists. Talwani’s order stops that approach from taking hold for the midterm cycle.

The case was filed by a coalition of nearly two dozen states, including 23 states and Washington, D.C. The plaintiffs said Trump’s order was unconstitutional and unworkable.

Trump signed the order after a voting-overhaul bill he supported stalled in Congress, and he has long attacked mail voting while repeating unfounded claims of widespread fraud. The administration has not yet formally issued the federal lists.

On Wednesday, another federal judge permanently blocked a separate order requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and demanding that mail ballots be received by Election Day. On Monday, yet another judge blocked a voter-screening database the government had used in an effort to purge alleged noncitizens from voter rolls. In May, Judge Carl Nichols declined to stop Trump’s order immediately, saying the challenge was premature because the provisions had not yet been put into effect.

States already run multi-step systems to verify mail ballots and keep voter rolls current, and voting by noncitizens is rare. More than 10,000 local election jurisdictions operate under state rules, not under a single federal election authority, and all states now allow some form of early voting or mail voting. Roughly 85.1 million advance ballots were returned nationwide in the 2024 general election.