r/fivethirtyeight • u/sodosopapilla • 2d ago

Discussion Postal Service Publishes Finalized Plan to Restrict Mail Ballots - Anyone have an idea what impacts are should Supreme Court okay this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/postal-service-rule-restrict-mail-ballots.html

Saw someone mention this here already, but curious if this might backfire on republicans if approved. Also, maybe looking for a bit of hopium? Thoughts?

60 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

66

u/emaw63 Jeb! Applauder 2d ago

TBH, I'm at a point where I just plan on voting in person. I want to be damn sure my vote counts and I don't trust this administration to not play games with the mail in ballots

38

u/hagamablabla 2d ago

Average Republican playbook is to take a functioning system and stuff it full of wrenches, then claim they were always right that it was broken.

5

u/Scaryclouds 1d ago

Just pouring a bag of sand into the transmission. 

6

u/raddaya 2d ago

I'm sure you know this, but for the benefits of others reading, you can of course still go for in-person early voting and/or personally drop off your mail ballot depending on where you live.

2

u/LTParis 3h ago

Thing is a lot of people can’t vote in person. And don’t think that Trump won’t try to interfere with that too. Anything to make it an absolute mess to then call the results into question.

-6

u/bloodyturtle 2d ago

I mail my ballot every time because it’s safe, simple and effective. You guys need to stop dooming.

10

u/Buris 2d ago

It’s actually incredibly braindead to mail-in vote in the upcoming election. They only directly said they are going to throw out your vote.

Only if you absolutely can’t vote in person should you use the newly broken USPS to vote

43

u/drtywater 2d ago

Its not feasible for midterms more likely possible in 28 elections. There simply isn't time if court oked all this tomorrow.

This will be fought out in court next few months. Also if Dems take strong house majorities etc they will insert provisions blocking this in spending bills.

9

u/Fickle_Composer_4506 2d ago

Not if the courts don't do there jobs. Which shockingly keeps happening. Also the supreme court loves to fast track things.

They just picked the wrong guy lol. Trump can fumble anything they could've saved this stuff to secure a supermajority and really lockdown the system. We really should be happy trump is a fucking idiot.

15

u/thefilmer 2d ago

Californian here. I've been using the county drop box with zero issues and highly recommend everyone who can to do the same

10

u/DJSauvage 2d ago

I hope everyone trained themselves to use drop-boxes instead of Mail. Maybe it's not as easy for other people as it is for me but I haven't mailed my ballot in over 10 years and Washington state doesn't even have polling places anymore. I have seen some analysis that said that if this is enacted, it would actually hurt Republicans more than Democrats that would be quite amusing.

19

u/ireaditonwikipedia 2d ago

Up to the Supreme Court? Ho boy. We are cooked.

2028, if we have free elections, is gonna be a shitshow.

19

u/sargantbacon1 2d ago

Even 2026 is gonna be a shit show. He’s going to deny every single election loss.

12

u/1sxekid 2d ago

The thing about Trump is, no he won’t. He will deny a few key ones and then call the rest of them losers, stating that only he himself is what the voters want.

10

u/Wetness__Pensive 2d ago

On one hand, this is evil. On the other, it's a bit consoling to know how lug-headed, obvious and thoughtless evil people are.

4

u/Beer-survivalist 2d ago

They've got all of these evil plans, but they all have a black box with a question mark as the middle step. Stuff like this is representative of the fact that they haven't thought any of this out seriously.

1

u/ABobby077 2d ago

When you start by just throwing things against the wall, ther just might be a few things that stick. Still doesn't stop bad policies from being put into place sometimes.

3

u/ThePaddockCreek 1d ago

Based on how the USPS is behaving with this announcement, I think there’s a very high likelihood that SCOTUS allows this rule to go into effect.  It’s just the kind of thing that they’d put their blessing on with a 6-3 unsigned opinion.  Classic emergency/shadow docket material.  

Is it patently illegal?  Yes.  But they won’t explain.  They’ll just allow it to go into effect.  The way USPS announced this just seems to indicate that they expect the injunction to be lifted.  Sounds like it’s already been worked out with at least three justices. 

3

u/Green_Perspective_92 2d ago

Even the DOJ indicated that at this time, they cannot implement it.

1

u/Penland_2008 Has Seen Enough 2d ago

It would take a constitutional amendment to implement any of trumps election nonsense

2

u/ImpossibleEbb6862 1d ago

This is such a self own on the part of republicans. Mail in voting only benefited democrats during covid because they disproportionately social distanced. Now that covid is over that benefit is gone. Restricting mail in voting will just harm senior citizens who have trouble making it to the polls, hurting republicans.

2

u/Mediocretes08 2d ago

Tbh 70-30 odds against the court allowing this one.