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Midterm mail ballots start to go to voters as litigation creates uncertainty
Statewide mail voting for this year’s midterm elections is kicking off amid a churning legal battle over President Donald Trump’s attempts to limit the practice
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Source context: While the Trump administration's bid to overhaul mail-in voting remains blocked by the lower courts, North Carolina will be the first state to send ballots on Friday.
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Coverage window: 9/4/2026, 6:47:04 AM UTC to 9/4/2026, 11:27:18 PM UTC. Last successful site ingestion: 9/8/2026, 5:37:20 AM UTC. A missing source may reflect feed or matching limitations.
Report a mismatch or correction6 outlets in our monitored sample covered this story, with reporting from the left, center, and right.
Across these headlines, common terms include mail, ballots, trump, voting, judge, again.
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You’re reading The TNR Blue Book. Get daily scoops, strategy, and developments inside the liberal ideas factory delivered right to your inbox. Sign up for free.Inside Washington President Donald Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting have grabbed news headlines in recent days, as the Postal Service builds an involved screening system that would require states to submit voter information before sending out absentee ballots. But one potential consequence has not received the same level of attention: the implications for Indigenous voters across the country. In addition to throwing up more roadblocks for a population that has historically faced significant obstacles to voting, these moves by the USPS could have an impact in key elections in states such as Alaska and Arizona. Tribal voters living at remote addresses on reservations may need to travel for hours to reach their nearest polling place, meaning that absentee voting is the best method for having their voices heard. “Often, vote by mail is the only option that is made available to Native communities. And so, when you disrupt that process or start creating lists that are imperfect and keep people off [of voting rolls], then Native voters are going to be inevitably cut out and disenfranchised,” said Jacqueline De León, a senior staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund. A federal whistleblower has alleged that the development and deployment of the USPS system has been rushed and haphazard, and could result in voter disenfranchisement ahead of the general election. Despite a court order barring the Postal Service from continuing to develop the portal, the agency said this week that it is moving forward with its plans.Native voters already face difficulties in having their vote counted. Some states with photo ID requirements for voting do not accept tribal identification. Because many Native Americans living on tribal lands do not have traditional addresses, they may need to pay for a P.O. box if they want to receive any kind of mail—including absentee ballots. The new policy would present yet another barrier.“I know tons of Native people who all have their mail delivered to one family member’s house because it’s the only house that USPS reliably can find. These are things that could easily trigger false red flags in a system that’s not carefully designed around the realities of Native voters,” Elizabeth Reese, an associate professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in tribal law, told The New Republic in an email.The lack of traditional addresses also presents challenges to registering to vote and staying on voter rolls. A new report by the Native American Rights Fund, or NARF, and Blackwell Consulting found that rejections of voter registration applications via mail and the Department of Motor Vehicles spiked dramatically in counties where Native Americans account for at least 25 percent of the population between 2020 and 2024. The report analyzed data from the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections.“Native voters do not receive equitable services, and often receive inadequate services, which result in Native voters having to navigate really unreasonable barriers in order to cast a ballot,” said De León. “I think that it would shock the conscience of the everyday American if they knew how difficult it can be to vote in Indian country.”Native voters may be particularly susceptible to being purged from the rolls because notices sent by election officials to confirm voter information go unanswered, and that in turn could be because the mail is undeliverable.When voters are removed from the rolls—sometimes without their knowledge—they can submit provisional ballots, but these can also end up being rejected. Provisional ballot voting more than doubled between 2020 and 2024 in counties with a significant Native population, according to the NARF report, but the provisional ballot rejection rate in counties with significant Native populations is higher than the national rate. The rate of rejection for mail-in ballots also increased in these counties between 2020 and 2024, even as the actual number of mail-in ballots cast declined.These challenges may have significant repercussions for critical swing elections this year, which could determine control of Congress and of governors’ mansions across the country. Alaska has a large Native population, a significant portion of whom live in rural areas that may not reliably receive mail—a factor that could affect the outcome of the competitive Senate race between Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan.
While the Trump administration's bid to overhaul mail-in voting remains blocked by the lower courts, North Carolina will be the first state to send ballots on Friday.
The ruling arrived before the Supreme Court could decide whether to intervene but appeared certain to set off yet another round of appeals.
The move comes as the Trump administration is appealing a related order to the Supreme Court.
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Statewide mail voting for this year’s midterm elections is kicking off amid a churning legal battle over President Donald Trump’s attempts to limit the practice
1 publisher
