--- title: "The Postal Service publishes mail-ballot rules a judge has twice blocked" description: "A 95-page final draft released on Friday would withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not hand over voter records, require states to identify who asked for a ballot, and force a redesign of ballot envelopes to carry postal barcodes. A federal judge blocked the rules in June and again on August 11." category: "Politics" category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/politics author: "Jasmine Howard" published: 2026-08-22T18:44:40-04:00 updated: 2026-08-22T18:44:40-04:00 canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/the-postal-service-publishes-mail-ballot-rules-a-judge-has-twice-blocked tags: ["united-states", "elections", "usps", "courts", "mail-in-voting"] --- # The Postal Service publishes mail-ballot rules a judge has twice blocked A 95-page final draft released on Friday would withhold mail-in ballots from states that do not hand over voter records, require states to identify who asked for a ballot, and force a redesign of ballot envelopes to carry postal barcodes. A federal judge blocked the rules in June and again on August 11. The United States Postal Service published a 95-page final draft of proposed rules restricting the use of mail-in ballots on Friday, [according to Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/us-postal-service-shares-mail-in-ballot-restrictions-despite-court-ruling). A federal judge has blocked the rules twice. ## What the rules would do Three requirements sit at the center of the document. States would have to identify to the Postal Service which voters had requested mail-in ballots. Ballot envelopes would have to be redesigned to carry barcodes allowing the Postal Service to track and identify voting materials. And the Postal Service would not distribute mail-in ballots in states that did not comply with federal demands for voter records. They stem from an executive order President Donald Trump issued in March directing the Postal Service to write new rules on mail-in ballots. ## What the court has said Judge Indira Talwani blocked the rules in June, holding that states could opt in voluntarily but that the federal government could not impose measures such as the barcoding requirement. She issued a second preliminary injunction on August 11, in a case brought by voting rights groups. The reporting carries a fragment of her reasoning, on the executive order: "Where [Trump's executive order] is presently causing confusion and threatening both increasing chaos and erosion of trust..." The remainder of the sentence is not given in the account we read, and we are not going to complete it. Leaders of 23 states and the District of Columbia have challenged the administration over the plans. Voting rights organizations brought a separate suit. ## The two readings of Friday night The disagreement is about what publishing a blocked rule amounts to, and there are two honest positions. The Postal Service's is that this is not election administration at all. Its document argues: "These requirements do not amount to election administration, nor do they usurp state resources. Rather, they regulate the use of the mail to improve operational efficiency and support the faithful execution of federal law." Postmaster General David Steiner defended the plan in June, saying the rules would let officials "match the ballots that a state believes they're sending out to what actually gets sent out." On that reading, an injunction stops enforcement, not drafting, and issuing a final text of a rule is an administrative step an agency may take while litigation continues. The critics' reading is that publishing on a Friday night, with an injunction in force and a midterm election approaching, is defiance in substance if not in form. Marc Elias, a voting rights advocate and critic of the president, posted: "Late tonight, USPS caved [in] to Trump." ## What is actually settled Two things, and it is worth separating them from the argument. The injunction stands. Whatever the document says, the rules cannot be enforced while it is in place. Publishing a text does not change its legal status. And the underlying dispute is jurisdictional rather than partisan in its legal form. The judge's objection, as reported, is that the executive branch has inserted itself into the regulation of elections, which the American constitutional structure assigns primarily to the states. The Postal Service's answer is that it is regulating mail, not elections. A court will decide which characterization is right, and that question is genuinely arguable in a way that the political framing on either side is not. We verified this account from a single publication. The 23 states are not named in it, nor are the voting rights organizations, and the full text of the judge's ruling was not available to us. ## Sources - [US Postal Service shares mail-in ballot restrictions despite court ruling](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/22/us-postal-service-shares-mail-in-ballot-restrictions-despite-court-ruling)