Supreme Court blocks Trump Administration's newly proposed vote-by-mail restrictions

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the Trump Administration's newly proposed vote-by-mail restrictions in a ruling on Monday, reports Hansi Lo Wang for NPR. Such restrictions would have hit rural voters hard because they rely on early voting and vote by mail, according to a report from the nonpartisan policy group Secure Democracy USA.

The proposed rules would have required states to "turn over lists of voters' names and addresses and have certain specific barcodes on ballot envelopes in order to have them delivered" by the USPS. 

The measure had been blocked already by two federal judges, and now "a majority of the Supreme Court decided to keep that injunction in place," ruling that "the Trump administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge," Wang reports. "Several Republican state election officials," also "signed on to a Supreme Court brief, warning that any attempt to carry out the USPS plan now 'will almost certainly lead to mistakes, delays, and confusion for both voters and election officials.'"

"Voting by mail has already begun in states including Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin, with more soon to follow — including Western states such as Hawaii, Oregon and Washington, where elections are held primarily or fully with mail ballots," Wang reports. The USPS plan is paused for the midterms, but  Wang writes that "the legal fight will likely continue over how the agency may try to implement it for future federal elections."