The Supreme Court stops Donald Trump changing voting rules... for now

Justin Webb (0:00)

Hello, it's Justin here, and hello to all the new listeners to Americast. There are quite a few of you at the moment. So if you do enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way you will never miss an episode. Now, on with this one.

Sarah Smith (0:14)

Donald Trump is not having a good time with the Supreme Court this year. And the latest blow is their decision to block his restrictions on mail-in ballots ahead of November's midterm elections, something Donald Trump has been trying to do since the start of his second term.

The Supreme Court has an in-built conservative majority. Donald Trump appointed three of the justices, but now he is furious with his very own appointees because they won't bend to his wishes. This won't be the end, though, of his attempts to change the way Americans vote in elections. And that effort could still have a big impact on the results in November. Welcome to Americast.

Anthony Zurcher (0:54)

Americast from BBC News.

SPEAKER_4 (0:56)

Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

SPEAKER_5 (1:02)

The tide is coming. And this time, we intend to win it all.

SPEAKER_6 (1:09)

See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.

Donald Trump (1:20)

When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

Sarah Smith (1:32)

Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Washington Bureau.

Anthony Zurcher (1:35)

And it's Anthony here with Sarah in Washington, DC.

Sarah Smith (1:37)

Anthony, we've talked quite a few times on the podcast already, not just about the midterm elections, but the way Donald Trump's been trying to change the rules around them and doing all sorts of things that might he thinks benefit his Republican candidates. And there was a big blow to one of his efforts this week.

Anthony Zurcher (1:52)

Yeah, it was the Supreme Court.

Again, this is what's called the Shadow Dock. This was a preliminary case. This wasn't one that was argued in merits briefs and all of this. It was all bubbling up rather quickly. And the Supreme Court decided not to step in and allow the desired changes that Donald Trump and the US Postal Service have proposed to handling mail balloting too in the Trump administration to make sure that these mail ballots are secure and that actual US citizens are casting in them and that they have enough information on them to be delivered. So it sounds like at this point, mail voting is going to proceed as it has in recent years. What Donald Trump wanted to do was pretty dramatically alter the way these mail ballots would be handled just a few months before the election.

Sarah Smith (2:39)

Yeah, we're less than eight weeks out now, I think. And what I wanted to do, if I understood it correctly, was have all the individual states actually run their own elections. It's not a federal effort.

They were to send lists of voters to the postal service, and unless somebody was on that list, they wouldn't receive a postal ballot, and each postal ballot had to have a unique barcode stamped on the envelope. And the argument was there just wasn't time to organize all of this before the elections, not least because the web portal where the states were supposed to upload their voters names wasn't even working.

Anthony Zurcher (3:13)

Yeah, Sarah. So this all goes back to that March executive order that Donald Trump issued directing the post office and other government departments to come up with a plan in order to secure the mail balloting. He's been talking about mail balloting being rife with fraud for years now, although I will add that there hasn't been any tangible evidence of the kind of widespread voter fraud that would affect elections. But he issued this executive order, was challenged in court. But if you remember just not too long ago, the Supreme Court kind of let that order go through and let the post office come up with these guidelines for handling ballots. But now other courts stopped those guidelines from going into effect. And this time, the Supreme Court said, yes, too close to the election. It doesn't look like the Trump administration is going to be able to win on the merits of this case. Much too close to the election. Let's just punt this off and let this work through the courts.