Secretary of State says N.H. won’t follow Trump’s order on mail-in voting

Red states might, and then rural voters won't vote. I can only see it hurting Republicans.

the legal gymnastics of trying to override state-level sovereignty through an executive memo is getting old. New Hampshire’s Secretary of State is just doing their actual job: following the 10th Amendment. In the U.S., the federal government doesn't just get to "order" how a state runs its local elections, regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office. This isn't a suggestion; it’s a jurisdictional wall that exists for a reason.

The problem is that red states might use it as a justification to break their own laws and interfere in races with democrats. Additionally, will the post office listen to Donald? There's major risk of election interference by the post office. Finally, he threatened legal action against election workers, which can alter behavior and lead to issues.

Can't the USPS then refuse to deliver any ballots in the state?

And even then, they have limitations. You cannot legislate with an EO.

Like telling the Postal Service to chuck ballots in the trash.

Yeah, but trump doesn’t know how government works and thinks they are the same as a royal decree.

“Legally.”

USPS is a federal agency.

NH‘s state legislature is controlled by MAGA

The order only stops ballots from people not on the list.  Guarantee that Republican voters will be on it.

Selective enforcement. Trump says the DHS is going to come up with a list of approved voters that the states will have to follow. They're going to come up with a list that OK's anyone living in majority Republican areas and kicks anyone in mostly Democratic areas off the voting rolls. If you got teleported back to right after the Civil War, would you be saying "Literacy tests? Surely conservatives know this will prevent their own people from voting just as much as it will the freed slaves!"

If those states got nuked, I wouldn’t care. I’d pull out a lawn chair and beer and watch.

> They have to know that restricting mail in voting will hurt the GOP just as much if not more than the democrats That's if you make the assumption that the voting machines are not rigged. If we assume the opposite - that the machines are compromised, then it doesn't matter if the restrictions will hurt the GOP, because they'll fudge the in-person votes with a less clear paper trail than mail-in ballots allow for.

But immigrants who became citizens and first generation born citizens with foreign last names might think twice about voting, especially if they live in a swing state.

The trouble is that it doesn't blanket stop mail-in voting, it mandates that the USPS toss out any mailed ballots that don't meet the new requirements. If the compliance is not uniform, then the impact won't be either and that gives room to selectively target voters. In states that might go along it gives the USPS the ability to track who sent any given ballot and then if ballots belonging to certain people just disappear and aren't properly delivered then there's no real recourse thanks to the *United States Postal Service v. Konan* decision back in February. Also, yes, obviously an insane EO that can't possibly be constitutional. With Oregon having their primary in a month and a half though, there's a frustratingly short time limit on fighting it before damage might be done.

Pssst.... they never cared about states' rights. They used that as an excuse to legislate the only thing they do care about: enforcing an ethno-religious hierarchy.

From my understanding, Congress has a bit of Constitutional authority to set some nation-wide regulations for House or Senate elections; I'm less clear about the president. But since applying different standards for different races (Congress vs. president vs. state/local office) is logistically difficult, that could still impact how states administer things across all races. Congress could also use federal grants as a "carrot" to incentivize states to do things a certain way as a condition to get those dollars. But any state could choose to opt-out of that money and then wouldn't be required to follow Congress's suggestion. An executive order is neither of those things, so can f*** all the way off.

Not up to them. It's an order to the USPS, which will follow the order.

That's the fun part. They won't. They want the USPS to fail.  Also remember the Supreme Court has ruled that the USPS can freely choose not to deliver mail. So they can take all the time they want.

That's the trick. States have near zero say. It's an order to the USPS, and they will follow it unless a court stops them.

It already does!