Supreme Court lets Trump's mail-voting order advance, but Alaska's rules are unchanged for now

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed President Donald Trump's executive order on mail voting to move forward while lawsuits over it continue, lifting a lower-court injunction that had blocked the order in 23 states and the District of Columbia. For Alaska, where more than 51,000 people voted by mail in 2024, the ruling changes nothing yet: the state's absentee rules and deadlines stand, and a separate court order still blocks the provision that would reach mail ballots.

The Court did not decide whether the order is legal. In an unsigned order, the justices found that the states challenging it had not shown the concrete injury needed to sue, describing the order as an internal directive to federal agencies that "neither requires nor forbids anything of anyone outside the Executive Branch." The decision, the Court wrote, "does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell."

The Court's three liberal justices dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, wrote that the states' challenges should be heard now and that the decision "merely postpones adjudication of those challenges." In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that the ruling "needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections."

The stay lets the administration move ahead with two parts of the order: compiling lists of U.S. citizens for each state, and directing the attorney general to prioritize prosecuting officials who issue ballots to ineligible voters. But the part that would reach mail ballots — a Postal Service rule — remains blocked by a separate nationwide injunction issued Aug. 11 in a case brought by voting-rights groups. The Postal Service finalized that rule Friday but said it will not apply it for November unless it wins relief from both injunctions. The case now returns to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

That Postal Service rule is the one that matters most in rural Alaska. Under it, states would have to register ballot-mailing data through a federal portal and meet new envelope and barcode standards before the Postal Service accepts outbound ballots. The administration says the order is meant to verify citizenship and protect election integrity; the states that sued call it an unconstitutional intrusion on their authority to run elections.

Dozens of Alaska communities have no road access and depend on the mail to send and return ballots. In 2024, 51,212 Alaskans returned ballots by mail, out of roughly 361,000 votes cast. In villages like Savoonga, a Bering Sea community reachable only by air, mail delays already narrow the window to return a ballot, and state rules require a handwritten signature and do not allow ballots to be returned by email.

Alaska was not among the states that sued; Gov. Mike Dunleavy's administration did not join the lawsuit. The state Division of Elections answered a legislative inquiry about the order on Aug. 6 but has not commented on Monday's ruling. For now, the state's rules stand: absentee-by-mail applications for the Nov. 3 general election are due Oct. 24, and a ballot mailed from within the United States counts if it is postmarked by Election Day and received within 10 days.

What happens next turns on the remaining injunction. If it is lifted and the Postal Service rule takes effect, the system rural Alaska relies on to vote would depend on a federal citizenship list and enrollment process that does not yet fully exist.