HSGAC Democrats Demand Postal Service Immediately Halt Implementation of Unconstitutional Vote-by-Mail Restrictions
WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led Committee Democrats in demanding that the United States Postal Service (USPS) immediately halt implementation of President Trump’s unlawful vote-by-mail executive order and rescind its recently finalized rule on federal ballot mail. In a letter to Postmaster General David Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors, the senators warned that the Postal Service’s efforts to fundamentally change how absentee ballots are processed and delivered just weeks before the 2026 midterm elections risks disenfranchising millions of eligible voters and disrupting the smooth administration of the elections.
The lawmakers are also demanding the Postal Service provide overdue answers about what legal authority permits it to regulate federal election mail, its new ballot verification processes, and the operation of its Federal Ballot Mail Portal, as well as its efforts to comply with federal court orders.
“Despite repeated warnings from Congress and court orders not to implement the President’s unlawful directives to regulate mail-in voting, the Postal Service continues to carry out these actions, which will undermine peoples’ faith in the upcoming elections,” the senators wrote. “If the Postal Service does not immediately reverse its current course, it will inflict lasting harm to our democracy and permanently damage a storied American institution.”
On August 21, USPS finalized a rule to implement President Trump’s vote-by-mail executive order that would require states to provide absentee voter rolls to the federal government and comply with new ballot standards, while giving USPS the authority to verify and refuse to deliver ballots that do not meet its requirements. The senators argue that neither the President nor USPS has the legal authority to regulate absentee voting and noted that despite previous commitments to Congress that it would abide by judicial injunctions, the Postal Service finalized the rule while subject to a federal court order prohibiting it from doing so. The lawmakers also raised a recent whistleblower disclosure alleging that USPS is rushing to build and deploy a new IT system to support these ballot verification processes without adequate testing or normal system standards, creating multiple points of failure that could result in ballots being rejected and eligible voters being disenfranchised.
“Notwithstanding the major legal deficiencies with the final rule, the Postal Service’s continued insistence that it can successfully build, test, train, and deploy an entirely new system for processing millions of absentee ballots – just weeks prior to the November general election – risks disrupting the smooth administration of the midterms and disenfranchising voters,” the senators wrote.
The Postal Service’s rule is also being challenged in several ongoing federal lawsuits, where the legality of the Administration’s vote-by-mail directives remains under review.
“We reiterate our call to halt your breakneck implementation of the President’s unlawful order and rescind the final rule on federal ballot mail, especially as states are finalizing their absentee ballots and are just weeks or days away from mailing them to voters,” the senators wrote.
Joining Peters in sending the letter were Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Andy Kim (D-NJ), and John Fetterman (D-PA).
Read the letter here.
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