Election campaign in the USA: US court rejects Trump's postal voting restrictions

afp | Less than two months before the congressional elections in the USA, President Donald Trump suffered a legal defeat in the dispute over postal voting. By a clear majority, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's urgent request to restrict it on Monday. The civil rights group ACLU hailed the decision as a “major victory for voting rights, election integrity and democracy.”

The court based its decision on difficulties in implementing the regulation ordered by Trump by decree. Several states, including North Carolina, have already begun mailing ballots to voters.

The conservative judge Brett Kavanaugh said that Trump's plan may be legal in the long term, but that "state and local election authorities" do not have "enough time" to "adequately implement" the regulation before the election. Only two judges on the nine-judge panel dissented.

Six of the nine Supreme Court justices are conservatives, three of whom Trump himself nominated. Nevertheless, the Court has already dealt Trump a series of defeats in his second term.

“This administration continues to test the limits of its power as if the rules governing our elections are mere recommendations that can be ignored if they don’t fit the president’s agenda,” said ACLU representative Sophia Lin Lakin.

She added: “The president doesn’t run our elections, the postal service doesn’t decide whose ballot counts.” It is “the voters – not the White House – who will decide the November elections.”

Just a few days ago, Trump suffered another legal defeat in the dispute over postal voting. An appeals court last Thursday blocked a Trump executive order that would make voting by mail more difficult. The Court of Appeals for the District of Massachusetts affirmed a previous court decision that the government had appealed. Now the decision on the question rested with the Supreme Court in Washington.

The US President had repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that postal voting led to fraud. He wants to limit it to people who are on “state citizenship lists.” Specifically, the US Postal Service should only deliver voting materials to people who are on lists previously created by the immigration and social security authorities. The opposition Democrats had sued.

The elections halfway through Trump's second term in office are seen as the most important mood test for the 80-year-old to date. His Republicans are threatened with defeat in the House of Representatives and there could be a stalemate in the Senate. If the Democrats win, they want to block many of the president's plans. They could also initiate further impeachment proceedings.