The hidden force behind the Supreme Court’s high-stakes decision

Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, listen as US President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress REUTERS

Election officials exhaled when the Supreme Court recently ended months of uncertainty by blocking the Trump administration from restricting mail ballots this November.

The Supreme Court decision clears the way for millions of Americans to vote by mail, just as they have in previous elections, though availability ranges widely from state to state.

“It’s a relief and it’s palpable,” said Marybeth Kuznik, the elections director for Pennsylvania’s Fayette County. “I honestly don’t know how we could have complied with (the Postal Service’s restrictions) at this point in the election cycle.”

But the administration’s efforts to tighten access and the chaotic legal battle that ensued left voters worrying that voting by mail could be disrupted or unreliable.

Now election officials are working to reassure them.

For months, people across the political spectrum voiced concerns about the new proposed U.S. Postal Service rules pushed by President Donald Trump. Election officials from both major political parties played a central role in the Supreme Court debate. More than 80 of them, including Kuznik, signed onto a brief warning that they wouldn’t have time to meet the new requirements before the November election. Several Republican secretaries of state, including officials from Kentucky, Georgia, and Kansas, urged the court to freeze the plans because of the chaos they would create for an election now less than 50 days away.

Those pleas appear to have been decisive for at least one justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a concurring opinion saying he thought there was a fair chance the rules would hold up to legal scrutiny, but applying them in the 2026 elections would be “arbitrary and capricious” because “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule.”

Now, election officials who have been for months raising concerns about an entirely new vote by mail system have to communicate to voters that the old one is safe to use, even as Trump continues to denounce it. Despite voting by mail himself last month in Florida, Trump attacked the process on social media as a “disaster” and “Nation Destroying SCAM” that made America the “laughing stock all over the World.”

Some election officials and experts said they are seeing fewer absentee ballot requests than expected.

“It has already caused all sorts of voter confusion, and even though the rule is not in place for this election, that’s not to say that there won’t be some voters that think that it is,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief program officer at the Election Center, a national nonprofit association for election administrators. “So it’s going to be incumbent on all of us to make sure that we just keep up the mantra that nothing has changed as a result of the rule.”

Patrick, who filed an expert declaration in the court cases challenging the Postal Service rules, said the best thing voters can do is get their ballots in as early as possible.

Dana Lewis, the recorder who oversees elections in Arizona’s Pinal County, joked that she wears six-inch heels so she can pivot on a dime, something that gave her the dexterity to keep up with this topsy-turvy election season.

Lewis, a Republican, has invested heavily in her county’s drop box system, which includes 24/7 video monitoring and GPS-locked ballot boxes for tighter security, something she believes should give voters confidence that their ballots will be kept safe. Roughly three-quarters of Arizona’s voters cast mail ballots in 2024, federal data show.

“Trust the system,” Lewis said.

But not everyone does. The court ruling came in parallel with a new poll showing a precipitous decline in public confidence in the nation’s electoral system. The University of California, San Diego survey found that just 55% of respondents trust that the vote would be counted fairly, compared to 71% in 2024.

The poll also found just 49% of Americans expect the upcoming election to be free and fair.

That’s in line with other polling, including a recent Pew Research Center survey in which 55% of respondents said they thought the upcoming election would be free and fair, an historic low for the question they have asked over the past six years.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

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