Major developments are happening on the 2026 election front today, and one of them could hold major consequences for mail-in ballots.
In South Carolina, Republicans are voting to choose their candidate to fill the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s U.S. Senate seat. His sister, Sen. Darline Graham, is in a runoff against Rep. Ralph Norman.
And in national election news, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a temporary win for President Trump’s plan to add security to the mail-in voting process. The court’s three liberal justices dissented.
The decision pauses a lower court’s decision that had blocked parts of Trump’s executive order that was issued in March.
The executive order requires states to follow uniform standards in formatting mail ballots and to share information with the federal government about who is sending the ballots. If states don’t comply with the rule, their mail ballots won’t get sent.
It’s unclear whether any changes could be implemented for November’s midterm elections. For example, Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Elections Center, an association of 2,500 election officers, told AP that she believes it’s impossible for any state to comply with the rule and that no one she talked to has even tried.
“There isn’t a single state that does their elections in a way that this postal rule lays out,” Patrick said. “There has been this assumption that this is not going to happen.”
The administration is challenging a district court ruling that blocks the postal service from enforcing directives from the executive order.
