A federal judge has declined to block an executive order signed by Donald Trump that targets his longtime enemy, mail-in ballots.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Federalist Society member who was nominated to the bench by Trump in June 2018, ruled that Democrats’ hopes to block the plan—which would create a federal list of citizens eligible to vote and ask the U.S. Postal Service to only mail ballots to those people—were premature.
“Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present,” wrote Nichols.
Democrats had argued that the order was unconstitutional as it infringed on individual states’ rights to regulate elections.
Trump has long waged a war against mail-in ballots, including pushing the debunked claim that they were the cause of widespread voter fraud at the 2020 election.
Despite this, Trump himself used mail-in voting to cast his ballot in a March Florida special election for a district that encompasses his Mar-a-Lago resort. Democrat Emily Gregory won the race over Republican candidate Jon Maples in a shock victory.
Judge Nichols said the Democrats who filed their original legal challenge, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, could file a fresh injunction once federal agencies begin implementing the executive order.
The move from Trump came as the president and the GOP seek any advantage they can ahead of November’s midterm elections, where Republicans are expected to suffer major losses.
Historically, Democratic voters favor mail-in ballots, whereas Republicans tend to vote on the day of an election.
On May 31, Trump signed an executive order, which he claimed would “enhance election integrity” via the U.S. Mail.
This includes asking the Department of Homeland Security to create “state citizenship lists” from federal citizenship and naturalization records, Social Security records, and other federal databases.
This list would then be used to help state election officials verify their voter rolls and determine who is eligible to vote, with the U.S. Postal Service only allowed to deliver ballots to these approved voters.
Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams suggested the move from Trump amounted to “voter suppression” and a “desperate move by Trump to steal the next election.”
“This is a blatant attempt by the president to undermine states’ control over election administration for his own benefit—which is a direct attack on the Constitution and our democracy,” she said.
Nichols previously asked those challenging the order how he could block it before he even knew “how DHS is going to compile the list.”
“We don’t know, sitting here today, whether any of these steps are going to take place,” Nichols said during a May 14 hearing, via Roll Call.
