Boiler Bay Beacon
SALEM — U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston issued an 11-page temporary restraining order Thursday staying key pieces of the Postal Service’s final “Ballot Mail for Federal Elections” rule for elections on or before Nov. 3.
The stay lasts 14 days. It names the sections. It does not find that President Donald Trump rigged an election.
Secretary of State Tobias Read’s office announced the pause in a press release. His statement went further than the order.
“Presidents don’t get to rig elections via executive decree,” he said. “The USPS rule and the executive order it came from are unconstitutional.”
That is the secretary talking. It is not the holding.
The order
Talwani, in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump and the companion states’ case that includes Oregon, stayed mandatory envelope standards, mandatory registration and voter enrollment in a USPS “Federal Ballot Mail Portal,” and the provisions that let the Postal Service refuse ballot mailings that miss those steps.
“The court finds Plaintiffs likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that (1) the USPS lacked authority to issue the Final Rule; (2) the Final Rule is unconstitutional in imposing these requirements on the States; and (3) the Final Rule is unconstitutional in prohibiting non-compliant State and local officials from using the United States Postal Service to mail ballots,” she wrote.
She also wrote that states face “irreparable harm” because compliance is “practically impossible” this close to the midterms. Many plaintiff states have already ordered ballots. Some must start mailing next week. The rule, as she described it, gives USPS no deadline to approve envelope designs. Miss the design, skip the portal upload, or skip the unique Intelligent Mail barcode, and “the USPS will not mail ballots to voters.”
On fraud, she was blunt about the file in front of her: “The record continues to lack any evidence regarding fraudulent absentee or mail-in voting.” That is a statement about this docket, not a clean bill for every state’s rolls. The Motor Voter numbers below are Oregon’s disclosure. They were not the evidence Talwani said was missing.
She ordered Justice Department counsel to notify USPS officials within 24 hours, under penalty of contempt. The stay is 14 days. A longer block would take another order.
The other side
USPS, in a FAQ dated Aug. 27, says it is not picking voters. “States retain full control over who is eligible to vote, whether a voter is eligible to receive a ballot by mail under state law, and whether a ballot will be counted.” The portal list, the agency says, comes from what states upload. It says it will not rewrite those names off a federal citizenship database.
Justice Department lawyers told Talwani the rule imposes “modest informational requirements,” does not displace a single state election law, and “need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.” In their words: “this is ultimately a regulation of the U.S. mail, and a modest one at that — not a federal takeover of election administration by the Postal Service.”
Those are the administration’s lines. They are also untested. The judge did not buy them at the TRO stage. The Supreme Court, on Aug. 24, had already told her an earlier challenge was premature because the rule was not final. She lifted that injunction Wednesday. Thursday she put a new one on the final text. The week has been a hinge.
Read’s record, and Oregon’s
Read has met every federal touch on Oregon elections as an attack. In July he called a DOJ Civil Rights Division letter “threats” and “fever dreams.” The letter cited statutes from 1960, 1965, 1993, and 2002 and asked how Oregon keeps ineligible voters off the list. It did not attach Oregon-specific fraud proof. His adjectives still outran the page.
The rolls are not a hypothetical. Read’s own Elections Division says a DMV Motor Voter review found clerical, technical, and policy errors that put 1,945 people on the voter list who had not provided proof of eligibility. The office says 44 of them voted. Investigations into those 44, it says, are closed. The page stresses that not all 1,945 were shown to be noncitizens, that the people swept in by the error did not apply to register, and that 44 ballots could not have changed the 2024 result. All of that can be true at once: the system mailed ballots to people who should not have been in the file.
The United States has also sued Oregon and Read for an unredacted copy of the statewide voter list. Read has refused the full file. That case is separate from Thursday’s Boston order. It is the same fight: who keeps the list, and who gets to see it.
Thursday’s “rig” sentence fits the pattern. A two-week stay on named sections of a postal rule is a procedural win for the plaintiff states. It is not a finding that the president stuffed a ballot box. Oregon’s separate Motor Voter error is documented by Read’s own office. Those are different problems. Thursday’s release treated them as the same fight.
What does not change here
Lincoln County Clerk Amy Southwell has already posted the local chain. Ballots are set to mail starting Oct. 14. Drop boxes open Sept. 24 at the Lincoln County Courthouse, Newport City Hall, Lincoln City Hall, the Toledo Police Station, Waldport City Hall, Depoe Bay City Hall, Siletz City Hall, Yachats City Hall, and Eddyville Community Church. They run 24 hours until 8 p.m. Nov. 3. Two deputized workers from opposite parties do the pickups. Collection times are not posted. Signatures are checked before a ballot is opened. The DS 950 tabulator, she wrote, “is not and never has been connected to the internet.” Registration or party-change deadline is Oct. 13. First results: 8 p.m. election night.
Read’s Aug. 25 directive told clerks to keep running the election under Oregon law and to log Postal Service trouble if it shows up. Thursday’s statement does not move those dates.
The order freezes the mandatory pieces of the rule for two weeks. It does not decide the constitutionality of Executive Order 14399 for good. It does not clean Oregon’s file. It does not put a federal observer in Newport. Readers can take Read at his word that he will keep suing. They should read the 11 pages before they take “rig” as the holding.
A Lincoln County ballot can still go in a drop box. That was true before the release and it’s true after it.
