June 6, 2026
The United States Postal Service quietly rolled out its brand-new proposed rule that very well could determine whether you get to cast a mail-in or even an absentee ballot.
And yes, if this goes through, the USPS — which has had all kinds of staffing and financial struggles for years — may actually be the ones to determine whether your vote will be counted.
I’m going to explain this new proposed rule and why the USPS thinks it has the power to do this in a second. But first, I want to thank my paid FactsHQ subscribers for voting for this story as the bonus story this week.
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OK, so this new USPS rule comes from this executive order President Trump signed on March 31 called Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.
Trump signed this order after he started to realize that the Senate was not going to allow his Save America Act to pass. So he did this instead because he still believes that elections are “rigged” and there’s all kinds of “fraud,” even though there is no evidence to back that claim up in any widespread way. And he wanted to do something that would impact elections in the way he wants.
Before I explain what USPS wants to do, you need to understand the two main things Trump’s executive order does.
One: It directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to compile what Trump calls the State Citizenship List.
DHS will compile this list of eligible American citizens over the age of 18 based on federal citizenship and naturalization records, SSA (Social Security Administration) records, and other relevant federal databases. That list will be given to the states, and then the states can cross-reference that citizenship list with the voters they have on their voter rolls.
Just being on the citizenship list isn’t enough. Voters would still have to register.
And part two of this order is why the Postal Service believes it has any say over your mail-in or absentee ballots.
This Trump executive order gives USPS all kinds of new powers over which mail-in or absentee ballots can and cannot be delivered to you and to your elections office.
According to USPS’s new proposed rule, within 90 days of an election, the state has to notify the Post Office that it intends to allow its registered voters to vote by mail.
Then, within 30 days of the election, the state must provide USPS with a “state-specific participation list.”
That list will determine who is and is not eligible to have a mail-in or absentee ballot delivered to their home or delivered to the elections office once it’s completed.
The list will include names of eligible voters along with their addresses.
The rule says the states will retain full control over who is and is not included on this new list, and the Post Office says it won’t change the names on the list.
But the proposed rule says the Post Office will be responsible for adding a serialized Intelligent Mail barcode to every name on that list so that each voter’s specific ballot can be tracked directly back to them.
USPS says this rule would help determine how many ballots were mailed and would allow state officials to compare that figure with the number of ballots returned so they can detect potential fraud issues.
The rule says if your name isn’t on the list for whatever reason, even if you are a valid registered voter who is eligible to vote by mail or vote absentee, too bad — you’re not getting a ballot.
And if you somehow try to mail a completed ballot but your name is not on the list, then the Post Office will not deliver it, and your vote will not be counted.
These proposed rules will not apply to primary elections or military overseas ballots, but they will apply to all general, special, or runoff elections.
OK, so there are a bunch of issues here.
Let’s start with the constitutional one.
First of all, Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution clearly and unequivocally gives the states the power to control their elections how they see fit, and it gives Congress the power to create laws to govern those federal elections.
The Constitution gives the president zero power to do anything related to elections. Nothing. Including this.
The Constitution does not give the president the power to give the Post Office the power to do anything related to an election.
Second, Congress has not passed any federal law resembling what Trump ordered, so it falls to the states to govern until Congress makes it a federal issue.
Trump can’t force the states to comply with this, and he certainly can’t try to control elections by giving the Post Office these random new powers.
And third, the federal government, by way of the Post Office, does not get to determine which voters are eligible to vote by mail or vote absentee.
The states get to decide how that process works. Not the president, and certainly not the Postal Service.
And keep in mind, we’re talking about the same Postal Service that’s been in financial trouble for decades and has a staffing problem.
Our poor mail carriers are stretched so thin, and now they’re going to also be responsible for ballots?
And who is going to watch to make sure these postal employees actually follow these lists?
What if there’s something wrong with the list? Or a postal employee doesn’t like someone on the list?
There are a lot of questions here.
Look, I told you in this video last week that a group of voting rights advocates sued the Trump administration over this entire executive order because of all the things I just talked about.
They were trying to get a federal judge to block it from moving forward.
But last week, the judge refused to stop it — not because the judge said what President Trump was doing was completely legal, but because he said Homeland Security and USPS hadn’t acted on Trump’s order yet, so there was nothing to dispute yet.
Well, now that this USPS proposed rule is here, I fully expect those same plaintiffs to refile their lawsuit.
And they’ll probably do it again when Homeland Security issues its proposed rule about the citizenship list because, on top of the constitutional issues I just discussed, there are also a lot of privacy issues with that part of Trump’s order.
Now, if you have thoughts on this Post Office proposed rule, you can submit your public comments to the Federal Register within the next 30 days.
Read USPS proposed rule here.
Add your comment here.
