The U.S. Postal Service’s controversial new rule governing mail-in voting will stay blocked in court, a federal judge ruled Thursday, extending a previous order against the rule days after an anonymous whistleblower warned the policy could “derail the midterm elections.”
Judge Indira Talwani issued a preliminary injunction against the U.S. Postal Service’s mail-in voting rule, after previously ruling last week to temporarily block the rule for 14 days while she mulled issuing a lengthier ruling.
USPS’ new rule would require election officials to submit voter information to a federal database and use special barcodes in order to have ballots sent out to voters through the Postal Service, with postal officials being directed to reject and send back any ballots that weren’t properly approved.
Voting rights advocates have long warned the rule could disenfranchise voters by adding additional hurdles to mail-in voting, but those fears ramped up earlier this week, when an anonymous USPS whistleblower told Congress the new system was being hastily implemented and risked “catastrophic failure which could derail the midterm elections.”
Talwani said in her decision the implementation of the USPS rule “threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail,” noting the short time between its potential enforcement and midterm elections in November.
The judge’s ruling came after a testy hearing Thursday, in which Talwani repeatedly...
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