Election board workers sort ballots at the Weld County Elections Office in Greeley, Colorado, June 2024. (Photo by Andrew Fraieli/Colorado Newsline)
President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting would undo decades of independence for the U.S. Postal Service that was intended to protect it from partisan politics, postal experts and lawyers say.
Postal experts said that ordering Trump, the postmaster general, to take any action — let alone on something as sensitive as an election — violates federal law barriers to presidential control of the mail. Many people with deep knowledge of the Postal Service’s history said they could not recall a similar order from the agency in state-of-the-art times.
“For the president to order the postmaster general to do anything, including handling ballots, is contrary to statute and law,” said James Campbell Jr., a Washington-area attorney who consults on postal law.
The order, signed on March 31drew swift condemnation as Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to control state elections. If passed, the directive would also mean a White House takeover of the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.
Trump’s executive order directs the postmaster general, who serves as the Postal Service’s chief executive, to set rules that require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to mail ballots during federal elections. States that wanted to utilize the mail would be required to provide mail-in voter lists to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to anyone not on the list.
The postal service is run by the Board of Governors, which can hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party.
Although presidents nominate governors and the Senate confirms them, their terms last seven years. The length theoretically insulates them from political pressure.
S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton, who served as chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or the president directing the postmaster general to take specific actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.
“The postmaster general is at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.
Board currently has only four membersall appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for nominees.
Cash-free service
Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the Postal Service.
Last year he presented this possibility connection of Poczta Polska with the Department of Commerce, which would require congressional approval. Washington Post. reported in February 2025, Trump was expected to attempt to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.
The Trump administration has been reluctant to evaluate independent agencies. Many of the president’s allies share the unitary executive theory, which is the view that the U.S. Constitution gives the president full authority over the entire executive branch, meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside the control of the White House.
Since taking office, Trump has begun to consolidate his authority over many independent and quasi-independent agencies, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project widely seen as an excuse to attack Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, whose interest rate policies angered Trump.
The Postal Service is under enormous financial pressure, potentially making it more susceptible to proposals by the White House to take control of it. The volume of postal items peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces. The Postal Service currently handles 109 billion pieces of mail annually.
The current postmaster general, David Steiner, he told a U.S. House of Representatives committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year if its prices and the way it operates do not change. Postal services are generally funded by stamps and other forms of user revenue, not taxes.
In his prepared testimony, Steiner emphasized the Postal Service’s independent nature. He outlined a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising the debt limit from $15 billion, a level unchanged since 1992.
“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-funded, independent executive branch,” Steiner wrote.
In 1970, Congress approved sweeping legislation reorganizing the United States Postal Service Department into the independent U.S. Postal Service corporation. Previously, postmaster general was a cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Trump’s order marks “a dramatic departure from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the mail from disruption,” said Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched the history of the postal service.
Election security
The White House did not directly respond to States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the Postal Service’s independence or the legal justification for the order.
“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
“The president will do everything in his power to legally defend the security of America’s elections and ensure that only American citizens vote.”
Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering.
The Postal Service did not respond to questions about how it planned to respond to the order. A USPS spokesman said only that the Postal Service was investigating.
Lawsuits
Steiner said he was waiting for the court’s decision regarding further proceedings.
“If the court finds that the law doesn’t mean that, we will follow it” – Steiner he told The New York Times. after signing the executive order. “So from our point of view, we don’t get involved in politics or the law, we just obey the law.”
The mail-in ballot order faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials filed the lawsuit. The legal challenges underscore the Postal Service’s independence under federal law.
The lawsuit, filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups, – assures Poczta Polska is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint called the Postal Service “essential” for mail-in voting, pointing out that it delivered more than 222 million ballots in 2024, including nearly 100 million ballots for the general election.
More than a dozen Republican state attorneys general filed court filings this week seeking to defend the executive order against Democratic legal challenges. The proposals call the regulation an example of collaborative federalism intended to provide states with optional resources to aid protect their elections.
GOP officials argue that Democrats do not have standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service has not finalized any up-to-date rules regarding mail-in ballots.
The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking – it does not directly regulate the States and does not directly limit anyone’s voting rights.” court application – says the state attorney general.
The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order are Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.
Vote by mail
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, postal voting increased in the 2020 general election, with 43% of voters casting their ballots by post. The percentage of voters who mailed their ballots is down from its peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast absentee ballots in 2024, according to data collected by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
During the 2024 election, election officials rejected 584,463 absentee ballots returned by voters, representing 1.2% of returned absentee ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they did not arrive on time.
Jonathan Smith, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said in a statement that the Postal Service does not block or refuse to deliver letters based on the sender’s identity. Postal workers are taking extraordinary measures to ensure that ballots reach recipients quickly and safely, he added.
“Postal workers take the integrity of the mail seriously, and every Postal Service process and policy ensures that mail is accepted, processed and delivered, regardless of who sent it or where it goes,” Smith said.
More than 100 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday sent a letter to Trump demanding that they refrain from future actions that undermine the independence of the Postal Service and calling for the repeal of the order. The letter said the order sets a “dangerous precedent for political interference” in the Postal Service’s operations.
Democrats in the Senate then he sent a letter on Tuesday to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors, urging the Postal Service not to comply with the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.
“The Postal Service doesn’t care what politicians you may support,” Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, – he said on the Senate floor last week. “His only priority is to deliver mail to every community in the country.”
“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” said Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the USPS. “If the president succeeds in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in the election, he will completely undermine confidence in this storied institution.”
