USPS seeks mail-in voter lists from states after Trump order

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Postal Service proposed to require states to provide the names of voters who received mail-in ballots with the associated barcodes, as part of President Donald Trump’s contentious strategy to increase election security that Democrats say aims to discourage voting.

The proposal May 29 came a day after U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, DC, refused to block Trump's executive order tightening rules on mail-in voting. Another judge in Boston set a hearing for June 2 on another lawsuit seeking to block the executive order.

The Postal Service said the policy would ensure that people who receive absentee ballots are registered and are the intended recipients of the ballots. The barcodes help track ballots through the mail. The agency is seeking public comments on the proposal for 30 days.

“This provision will help determine adherence to federal law and facilitate law enforcement efforts,” said the proposal to be published in the Federal Register on June 2. "For example, the provided lists will evidence how many ballots have been mailed, and allow law enforcement officials to compare the total number of mailed ballots to the total number of received ballots to detect potential issues meriting further investigation.”

Trump, who has voted by mail himself, contends absentee ballots are often fraudulent. He signed an executive order March 31 directing the Postal Service to propose its new rules within 60 days, aiming to confirm that voters are U.S. citizens and registered.

But Alexandra Chandler, director of impact programs at the advocacy group Project Democracy, called the policy a "data grab and a set-up for post-election disruption." She said the administration is building a centralized repository so that partisans can mount "frivolous, hyper-targeted" challenges after the election.

"The proposed USPS rule is a clear attempt to disrupt election processes and to sow distrust in elections among the public," Chandler said in a statement. "The administration is trying to turn postal workers into de facto election auditors with the power to decide whether people's votes get counted while at the same time building an entire federal voter data and technical infrastructure it has no legal authority to create."

Trump has also proposed legislation to require voters to provide identification at polling places and proof of citizenship when registering as part of a broader bill, but it has stalled in Congress.

Congressional Democrats and some state attorneys general filed lawsuits against Trump's order by saying the Constitution gives the executive branch no role in managing elections.

But Nichols, a Trump appointee, refused to block the policy because the government had not yet produced any flawed citizenship lists and the Postal Service had not yet implemented any new rules.

"Given that the Executive Order does not command Plaintiffs to do anything, and that ​no agency has yet acted pursuant to the Order in a way that could harm Plaintiffs, they have not suffered any harm at present," Nichols wrote.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, said after the ruling that Trump was trying to silence voters he couldn't win over. Schumer, a participant in the DC lawsuit with Democratic Party groups and advocacy groups such as League of United Latin American Citizens and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said "mail-in voting is safe and secure" and that Trump is trying to suppress voting.

"The Constitution is clear: Presidents do not get to rewrite election law by decree. Congress sets the rules for federal elections − not Donald Trump, not his political allies, and not his radical judges rubber-stamping his power grabs."