U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Trump . . . for now

There’s a couple of big stories this week, but let’s focus on the mail-in ballots story.

Here’s a quick refresher:

• In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that established a national list of eligible voters and directed the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to transmit mail-in ballots only to voters on that list.
• A lawsuit ensued and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiff states didn’t have the standing to sue, leaving open the possibility for USPS to implement its plan.
• After that ruling, 21 states, including Michigan, and the District of Columbia filed another lawsuit to block USPS' plan to implement the order.
• Earlier this month, a federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction in response to the suit, blocking the USPS from implementing the new ballot requirements from the executive order.

USPS and the election

That brings us to Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Donald Trump.

The majority decided to keep the Boston-based federal judge’s injunction. However, in his concurring opinion, Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that this sort of election administration could potentially be within USPS’ jurisdiction, but that implementing it for this election would be “in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

Voter confidence

Alongside this Supreme Court decision are the results of a new Glengariff poll showing Michiganders' confidence in the election system.

The poll surveyed about 800 likely Michigan voters. Of those, 74.4% said they believe the system is fair and accurate. That’s a drop from 2025’s 79.4%.

Additionally, while 85% of Republicans, Democrats and Independents trust their own county’s election results, 48% don’t trust other counties to do it right.

With voter confidence on the decline and the impending possibility that USPS could gain election admin jurisdiction, we checked in with Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck for some clarity on the election process.

The following is an excerpt from the transcript that has been edited for length and clarity.

The interview

Kalloli Bhatt: When someone trusts the election you administer in Ottawa County but doesn't trust Wayne County's, what would you want them to understand about how similar (or different) the processes actually are?

Justin Roebuck: Across the state of Michigan, we follow the same laws, the same rules and regulations. And what's really important to note is, you know, there's three key factors that I think really are our pinch points of election integrity. You know, the cornerstones of election integrity. And that is that our elections are bipartisan.

That means that basically anytime your ballot is being counted, it's being counted in an environment where members of both political parties are at the table. There are election workers from both political parties who have taken an oath of office to uphold the laws of the state and the Constitution, and they're watching and checking each other's work.

The other element is that it's transparent. Also, anytime your ballot is being counted, it is being counted in public. You know, I mean, these are public events. You can actually go in and watch and observe absentee ballots being counted. You can go in and observe early voting and election day processes. And then also, we are trained professionals.

You know, our election administrators are constantly going through continuing education. But also we have over 30,000 election workers in Michigan. And these are your neighbors, my neighbors, people who've taken an oath of office to uphold the law and the Constitution.

That's not unique to one community or another. So I think voters can be confident that there are processes and rules and laws in place to be followed all across the state of Michigan.

KB: In the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Justice Kavanaugh suggested the issue wasn't necessarily whether USPS has the authority to impose these requirements, but whether election officials had enough time to implement them for November. If something similar returns before 2028, what would clerks need in order to implement a major change like that without disrupting an election?

JR: I think it was so critical to have that Supreme Court decision, at least in time for us to know the ground rules going into this election. But I think moving forward, there are a couple of critical elements that would be needed in that process in order for us to comply with that.

Importantly, the use of ballot envelopes that are uniform and approved by USPS for election mail purposes. You know, we've already checked that box in Michigan.

The use of intelligent mail barcodes, that was another requirement in the rule set. What that means is sort of like a hyper tracking process that occurs right where this barcode is printed on every single outgoing piece of mail and incoming piece of mail where a voter can actually track their ballot coming and going a little bit more thoroughly, which is a great feature. It's certainly a feature that we would need time and resources to prepare.

And then, finally, probably the biggest lift of this entire rule set would be the state submission of absentee voters or voters who had applied for and were being mailed a ballot. This massive submission of the lists from every state to USPS for them to check and run against their database.

I think what to me is ironic about the USPS rule set is that it actually doesn't accomplish what a lot of people in the political sphere are talking about it accomplishing, which is somehow this idea that USPS would prevent ineligible voters from casting an absentee ballot.

There was no such assertion in the rule set at all. In fact, USPS said, "We are not messing with that portion of it. We are leaving that responsibility in the hands of the states. We would take the list that the states gave us and mail ballots to those people."

End of excerpt.

All of this still leaves one question: what’s next?

Well . . . voting as usual. Since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the preliminary injunction, there will be no changes for this election.

As for the future, who knows? But, rest assured Michigan Public and the It’s Just Politics crew will keep bringing you updates and analysis as they happen.

Until next week,

Kalloli Bhatt, Digital Content Producer

Psssst: You didn’t hear it from me, but The Mids is talking about absentee ballots and (more importantly) how you can get this year’s “I voted” stickers even though you voted absentee on Oct. 5. Subscribe today at michiganpublic.org/mids.

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Have questions about Michigan politics? Or, just want to let us know what you want more of (less of?) in the newsletter? We always want to hear from you! Shoot us an email at politics@michiganpublic.org!

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Politics & Government

The Democratic and Republican Party Chairs look ahead to Election 2026

Zoe Clark, Rick Pluta

With absentee ballots set to go out next week, the chairs of the Michigan Democratic and Republican Parties join It’s Just Politics to discuss the midterm election, and what’s worrying them the most.

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