The Supreme Court ruled on Monday, siding with the Trump Administration and paving the way for an order to limit mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections.
Debate over the issue has been contentious across the aisle, and leaders across Washington issued statements Monday expressing their opinion on the result.
Governor Bob Ferguson
“While today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is terrible, it’s only the beginning of the legal challenge. If these rules are allowed to stand, they will disenfranchise Washingtonians and lead to federal interference in our state elections,” Ferguson said in a post to X.com.
Senator Maria Cantwell
“Today’s Supreme Court decision gets the Trump Administration one step closer to implementing its voter suppression order and forcing states to hand over personal voter data to the federal government. This is wrong. The Constitution clearly says the States should administer elections. The federal government should not weaponize the US Postal Service to decide who will receive a mail-in ballot and whose vote will be counted. The Administration must not be allowed to take the right of Washingtonians to vote by mail or interfere with our free and fair elections.”
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs
Today, the United States Supreme Court stayed one of two injunctions that prevented the federal government from implementing new regulations on mail-in voting ahead of the November General Election.
The Court did not rule on the merits or constitutionality of the President’s actions. Instead, it determined that the states’ injunction was premature because the final rule had not yet been published.
“The Office of the Secretary of State remains committed to defending Washington’s constitutional authority to administer our elections,” said Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs. “These actions are an unconstitutional intrusion into state-run elections, and we will continue to fight them.”
The U.S. Postal Service is set to publish its final rule on Wednesday. The full text is available now for public review. A separate injunction currently prevents USPS from implementing the rule for the November election, but if that injunction is also removed, it will go into effect immediately. The final rule would place significant burdens on county election offices and the Office of the Secretary of State ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.
The Nov. 3 General Election is less than three months away.
“These last-minute requirements would place significant burdens on state and county election officials at a time when our resources are already strained,” said Hobbs. “Our focus should be on administering a secure, accurate, and accessible election for Washington voters, not implementing unnecessary federal requirements just weeks before ballots are mailed. We will continue to fight these unconstitutional actions to ensure that elections in Washington are free and fair.”
State Attorney General Nick Brown
Attorney General Nick Brown released the following statement in response to today’s U.S. Supreme Court action allowing the president’s unconstitutional executive order attacking mail-in voting to proceed for now. The court’s order puts on hold an injunction granted in June in a lawsuit brought by Washington as part of a multistate coalition opposed to the president’s extraordinary overreach:
“A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court does not seem to recognize the grave threat the president’s actions pose for our democracy. There is nothing hypothetical about his intent to illegally suppress legitimate votes.
“Fortunately, today’s decision does not bless the substance of the president’s actions; it simply says states must wait slightly longer to challenge them. We stand ready to take action to protect the integrity of our elections and prevent this clearly unconstitutional overreach from taking effect.
“States control elections, not the president.”
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