Preserving History and Democracy
Sep 18, 2026 · 19 min · 7 segments
What actually happens to your absentee ballot after you request it? How secure is voting by mail? And what does the latest Supreme Court decision mean for the 2026 election? In this episode of…
get into it um there was A big decision yesterday, and that is the Supreme Court decision, but really what happened is I want to start with what happened in September of 2026, and that is once the US Postal Service issued a final rule.
A federal judge in Boston actually actually issued a new preliminary injunction which blocked the United States Postal Service.
And those requirements would have been asking the US Postal Service, giving them an authority to ask for certain lists and certain data from our states.
And so what ended up happening after that is a second federal judge issued another injunction later in September, which was on September 13th.
What happened yesterday was the administration, the federal administration saw an emergency stay to lift these injunctions and they lost in an unsigned order.
the administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits and its challenge to the injunction.
Now Justice Kavanaugh concurred in writing that while the Postal Service might have statutory authority for such a rule in principle, applying it to the 2026 election would be arbitrary and capricious.
Under the Administrative Procedures Act, because officials lack to implement it.
So the bottom line for this is that the decision means a postal service measure that could lead to ballots not being sent to voters won't be in effect for the November midterm election.
I think sometimes because we are so focused on elections, we always want to remember like the average person is not you know, necessarily tuning in to these decisions.
They are going at their lunch time to pick up groceries, right? So what does that mean in like the average lay person's terms? It means there wouldn't have been enough time to put these layers in place.
And it is such a heavy lift for the people who run elections that Basically, the Supreme Court made a very common sense decision and said no.
And they looked at the content, right, which means like the actual arguments.
You know, what I really think is important to put out there is that if it had not been blocked, it would have forced the U.S.
get into it um there was A big decision yesterday, and that is the Supreme Court decision, but really what happened is I want to start with what happened in September of 2026, and that is once the US Postal Service issued a final rule.
A federal judge in Boston actually actually issued a new preliminary injunction which blocked the United States Postal Service.
And those requirements would have been asking the US Postal Service, giving them an authority to ask for certain lists and certain data from our states.
And so what ended up happening after that is a second federal judge issued another injunction later in September, which was on September 13th.
What happened yesterday was the administration, the federal administration saw an emergency stay to lift these injunctions and they lost in an unsigned order.
the administration was unlikely to succeed on the merits and its challenge to the injunction.
Now Justice Kavanaugh concurred in writing that while the Postal Service might have statutory authority for such a rule in principle, applying it to the 2026 election would be arbitrary and capricious.
Under the Administrative Procedures Act, because officials lack to implement it.
So the bottom line for this is that the decision means a postal service measure that could lead to ballots not being sent to voters won't be in effect for the November midterm election.
I think sometimes because we are so focused on elections, we always want to remember like the average person is not you know, necessarily tuning in to these decisions.
They are going at their lunch time to pick up groceries, right? So what does that mean in like the average lay person's terms? It means there wouldn't have been enough time to put these layers in place.
And it is such a heavy lift for the people who run elections that Basically, the Supreme Court made a very common sense decision and said no.
And they looked at the content, right, which means like the actual arguments.
You know, what I really think is important to put out there is that if it had not been blocked, it would have forced the U.S.
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