This week at Democracy Docket: Trump’s mail-voting crackdown advances — but there are setbacks for his gerrymandering push
We got some ominous news this week about President Donald Trump’s dangerous bid to crack down on mail voting ahead of the midterm elections.
First, a federal court ruled that it would be premature to block Trump’s March executive order directing the United States Postal Service (USPS) to send mail ballots only to voters on a pre-approved list created by the federal government. The administration hasn’t started implementing the order yet, the judge, a Trump appointee, reasoned.
The next day, Democracy Docket was among the first to report on a new draft rule posted by USPS, aimed at — you guessed it — implementing the order. It would require states to send USPS a list of voters who have requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are sent out under state law. Voters not on the list won’t receive a ballot.
Oh, and while we’re on the subject: Wisconsin election officials warned USPS this week that changes to postal service policies are already causing mail ballot delays.
Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP’s gerrymandering war hit a few hurdles.
Alabama has been hoping to exploit the Supreme Court’s Callais ruling by re-adopting a congressional map that eliminates a majority-Black district, and was previously found to be a racial gerrymander. But, as Democracy Docket reported this week, a federal court again blocked the map, noting that the map-drawers were found to have intentionally discriminated against Black voters — which remains unconstitutional even after Callais.
Alabama has appealed to the Supreme Court — which means we’ll now get a good test of whether, post Callais, the justices plan to enforce any real protections against racism in voting, even in extreme cases.
Another setback for Republicans on redistricting: South Carolina lawmakers declined to scrap their state’s one majority-Black congressional seat, at least ahead of the midterms, we reported. It appears that Republicans got cold feet about adding Democratic voters to the state’s existing GOP-leaning districts — afraid that, in a strongly Democratic year, it could put those seats in jeopardy and cause the whole plan to backfire.
Things are going better for the GOP in Florida. As expected, a state judge appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declined a request by pro-voting groups to block the state’s recently passed congressional map, for violating a ban on partisan gerrymandering in the state constitution. The ruling means the map will be in effect at least for 2026.
Finally, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the GOP nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate race, beating incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. So we dug into Paxton’s role in bringing a lawsuit, authored by the Trump campaign, seeking to overturn the 2020 election, which came after other Republican AGs had been approached about bringing it and declined. If successful, one critic warned, the suit could have led to the “end of democracy in the United States.”
And you can bet that, if he wins in November, Paxton will be ready to undermine fair elections from his new perch in the Senate.
