Who Gets to Make the Rules of an American Election?

Most Americans probably do not think much about what happens before a ballot arrives in their mailbox.

Election officials verify voter registration records. Ballots are designed and printed. Envelopes are prepared. Postal procedures are established. Election workers are trained. Computers are programmed. Deadlines are published.

When everything works, the process is almost invisible.

But President Donald Trump’s effort to impose new federal requirements on voting by mail has exposed a much larger question lurking behind that familiar envelope:

Who has the constitutional authority to make the rules of an American election?

That question deserves more attention than the familiar political argument about whether voting by mail benefits Democrats or Republicans.

Election integrity matters.

Only eligible citizens should vote. Ballots should be protected against fraud, manipulation, and mishandling. Government has a responsibility to investigate credible evidence of illegal voting.

But another principle matters just as much.

Government must follow the Constitution while protecting elections.

And the constitutional question surrounding the president’s actions remains unsettled.

What the President Ordered

On March 31, Trump signed an executive order directing several federal agencies to strengthen citizenship verification and to impose new safeguards for mail ballots.

The order directed the Department of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Social Security Administration, to help states verify citizenship information. It also directed the Justice Department to prioritize investigations and prosecutions involving ballots issued to ineligible voters.

Most significantly for millions of voters, it directed the U.S. Postal Service to establish new requirements for ballots sent by mail.

The administration says the measures are necessary to prevent unlawful voting and to increase public confidence in elections. The White House argues that ballot identifiers, citizenship verification and additional safeguards can improve election security.

Those are legitimate objectives.

The harder question is whether the president has the authority to pursue them this way.

The Constitution does not make the president the nation’s election administrator.

Article I gives state legislatures authority to determine the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections while specifically allowing Congress to alter those regulations.

That distinction matters.

American elections have traditionally been decentralized. Thousands of state and local officials administer them rather than one president or federal agency controlling the system.

That can make elections complicated.

It can also serve as a safeguard against concentrated power.

What the Supreme Court Actually Decided

The distinction became particularly important after the Supreme Court’s Aug. 24 decision in Trump v. California.

The ruling was widely viewed as a victory for Trump.

Procedurally, it was.

But the Supreme Court did not rule that Trump’s mail-voting restrictions are constitutional.

California and other states had challenged the executive order, arguing that it intruded on their constitutional authority to administer elections. A federal district court blocked parts of the order.

The Supreme Court lifted the injunction while the case continues.

The majority concluded that the states had filed suit too soon.

When the states filed their original lawsuit, the Postal Service had not yet issued a final rule implementing the president’s directive. The court concluded that the states had not shown the kind of concrete and imminent injury necessary to challenge those provisions at that stage.

But the court was also clear about what it was not deciding.

Its decision did not mean that any future action taken to implement the order would necessarily be lawful.

In other words, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to proceed.

It did not give the president a constitutional blank check.

That distinction is important because headlines describing a Supreme Court “victory” can easily leave voters with the impression that the Court decided the underlying constitutional question.

It did not.

Then the hypothetical Became Real

Only days later, the legal argument changed.

The Postal Service issued its final rule.

The regulations require election officials who use the Postal Service for federal ballot mailings to comply with additional envelope, barcode, and data-reporting requirements before outgoing federal ballot mail enters the postal system.

The Postal Service says states will continue to decide who is eligible to vote, who receives a ballot, and whether a completed ballot can be counted.

The Postal Service will not maintain state voter rolls or determine individual voter eligibility.

But under the new rule, the agency would generally not accept outgoing federal ballot mailings unless the new requirements were met.

That shifted the controversy from a presidential directive to an actual federal regulation.

The states returned to court.

On Aug. 27, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani temporarily blocked key portions of the Postal Service rule while she considered issuing a longer injunction.

At a Sept. 3 hearing, Talwani questioned whether the new system could realistically be implemented before voting had already begun.

The next day, she issued a preliminary injunction that blocked the rule’s mandatory provisions for the Nov. 3 election.

Her ruling went directly to the constitutional issue the Supreme Court had not decided.

Talwani found the challengers were substantially likely to succeed on their claim that the Postal Service rule is unconstitutional because the Elections Clause gives election-administration authority to the states, subject to laws enacted by Congress. She wrote that Congress has never delegated that authority to the Postal Service.

She also concluded that forcing roughly 10,000 election jurisdictions to redesign ballot materials, obtain Postal Service approval, and submit voter data through a new federal portal so close to the election made disenfranchisement “practically inevitable.”

The administration disagrees and has returned to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the Postal Service rule to take effect as the case proceeds.

The Justice Department filed an emergency application on Sept. 3. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who handles emergency matters for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, requested responses by Sept. 8.

For now, the mandatory portions of the rule remain blocked.

Meanwhile, voting has begun.

North Carolina began widely distributing absentee ballots on Sept. 4, becoming the first state to do so for the 2026 midterms. Other states will follow throughout September.

The legal fight is continuing even as ballots enter the mail.

California has a Particular Stake

For Californians, this is not an abstract dispute about an obscure absentee-voting program.

Mail voting has become the primary way Californians participate in elections.

In the 2024 general election, more than 13 million of California’s roughly 16.1 million ballots were mailed.

That accounted for 80.76% of all ballots cast statewide.

Changing federal procedures surrounding ballot mail could therefore affect the method used by roughly four out of every five California voters in the last presidential election.

And election administration requires preparation.

Envelopes must be ordered.

Computer systems must be tested.

Election workers must be trained.

Voters must receive accurate instructions.

Postal employees must understand what procedures to follow.

Changing those systems shortly before an election carries risks, even if the underlying policy ultimately proves legal and effective. Those operational concerns intensified on Sept. 1, when an anonymous Postal Service whistleblower alleged that the new portal and screening system had been rushed and insufficiently tested. Postmaster General David Steiner later said the agency’s standards were not being compromised and defended the rigor of its process.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised that concern in her dissent to the Supreme Court’s Aug. 24 ruling.

Election cases, she noted, can be dismissed when they are brought too close to Election Day. Yet in this case, the states were effectively being told that their challenge had come too soon.

That creates a difficult problem.

Wait too long, and courts may refuse to intervene because an election is approaching.

Act too early, and courts may conclude that the threatened harm has not yet become concrete.

Meanwhile, election officials must prepare for an election whether or not the courts have resolved the legal dispute.

The Larger Issue is Presidential Power

There is a temptation to evaluate this controversy based on our feelings about Trump.

That would miss the larger issue.

Imagine a future Democratic president who determines that certain state election procedures threaten voting rights.

That president directs federal agencies to establish new nationwide requirements for how ballots are distributed or processed.

Republican-led states object.

Would conservatives be comfortable hearing that the president was merely protecting election integrity?

Probably not.

And they should not be.

The constitutional limits we defend cannot depend on which political party occupies the White House.

Presidential power has a way of becoming precedent.

Authority exercised by one president does not disappear when that president leaves office. It becomes another example future presidents can cite to expand their own authority.

That is why disputes over executive power deserve scrutiny even when we support the policy being pursued.

The question cannot simply be:

Do I like this rule?

It must also be:

Who has the lawful authority to make it?

Congress can pass federal election laws.

States administer elections subject to those laws and the Constitution.

Federal courts determine whether government actions comply with the Constitution.

The president executes the laws.

Those distinctions may sound technical until they begin to blur.

Then they become very important.

Election Integrity Requires More Than Preventing Fraud

None of this means concerns about election security should be dismissed.

Noncitizen voting is illegal.

Election fraud should be investigated.

Ballots should be securely handled.

If new technology can improve ballot tracking without imposing unnecessary burdens on voters or election officials, it deserves consideration.

But legitimate goals do not automatically create unlimited governmental authority.

There is also a question of proportionality.

Trump has repeatedly described noncitizen voting as a significant threat to American elections. Yet a Reuters examination of federal records found only 129 federal prosecutions for noncitizen voting since 1996 and no evidence of a coordinated national scheme.

That does not mean illegal voting never occurs.

It means public policy should distinguish between the possibility of wrongdoing and its documented prevalence.

Good government should be able to do two things at once:

Protect elections from legitimate threats and protect eligible voters from unnecessary obstacles.

Those goals should reinforce one another rather than compete.

Why This Matters Today

Democracy is not protected simply because our preferred candidate wins.

Rules, institutions, and constitutional boundaries protect it regardless of who holds power.

That is why the controversy over voting by mail matters beyond Donald Trump, California, or the 2026 midterm election.

The Supreme Court has not ruled that the president has constitutional authority to impose these mail-in voting requirements.

It ruled Aug. 24 that the states’ first challenge came before they had demonstrated sufficient injury.

Since then, the Postal Service has issued a final rule, and Talwani has blocked its mandatory provisions for the Nov. 3 election after finding that the challengers are substantially likely to succeed on their constitutional claim.

The administration is back before the Supreme Court, seeking to lift the injunction. Jackson has asked the challengers to respond by Sept. 8. For now, the rule remains blocked.

The question the Supreme Court said could be litigated later is now back before the Court. And “later” arrived almost immediately.

What happens next will determine more than whether ballot envelopes contain the correct barcode. It may help define the extent of presidents' authority to influence election administration through executive action.

That precedent should concern us regardless of party.

Constitutional guardrails are most meaningful when they restrain those we support, not simply people we oppose.

We should expect our elections to be secure.

We should expect every legally cast ballot to be counted accurately.

And we should expect presidents to operate within the constitutional boundaries of their office while pursuing those goals.

The integrity of an election depends on all three.