Election officials are days away from learning whether Virginia’s mail-in voting system will be completely restructured ahead of the midterms.
The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let the U.S. Postal Service implement new mail-in ballot rules. Under the proposed rules, states would have to submit voter data to a federal portal to verify voter eligibility before mail-in ballots can be delivered. It is the latest move in a months-long legal battle over federal changes to voting rules.
With early voting in Virginia just over a week away, local election officials would not have much time to act if the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor.
“We would need to know fairly quickly because mail-in ballots actually go out by Sept. 18,” said Taylor Yowell, Charlottesville’s general registrar. Friday, Sept. 18 is the date early voting begins in Virginia.
Yowell said that her office usually mails them out a few days before early voting opens. Jacquelynne Harris, general registrar in Nelson County, said her office plans to mail them out Monday, Sept. 14.
The court battle is over an executive order issued in March 2026, which called for the USPS to set up procedures to verify the citizenship status of everyone voting by mail.
The USPS has since released a rule detailing how it would implement the order. State election officials would be required to submit voter lists to the USPS and add barcodes to mail-in ballot envelopes. The post office could refuse to mail ballots to voters if election officials do not comply.
But local election officials say the rule is short on specifics.
“What I personally haven’t seen yet is the full structural step-by-step sort of analysis,” said Harris, the Nelson County registrar. “And so, since we’re right in the midst of this happening, if it’s implemented, it’ll be a really fast learning curve.”
It’s unclear if that will happen.
Throughout the summer, the order was consistently blocked in district courts across the country.
“Like a lot of executive orders, it purports to do multiple things and it’s been challenged in different courts, different places and sometimes with slightly different legal theories,” said Michael Gilbert, director of the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy at the University of Virginia.
Virginia joined a multi-state lawsuit that took place in Massachusetts District Court, which ruled in June that key provisions in the executive order were unconstitutional because they were beyond the president’s authority.
Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution grants states the authority to administer elections and allows Congress to intervene. The President is not mentioned.
“It’s not about whether this is good or bad policy,” said Gilbert. “It’s just, look — as president of the United States, you can only exercise the powers that are granted to you in the Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t give you this power.”
However, district court rulings are not the final say.
“If you sue in a district court in Virginia, and that district court says this order can’t be enforced, it doesn’t mean anywhere,” said Gilbert. “It doesn’t even necessarily mean in Virginia. It might mean this judicial district, and that’s it. If you want to not enforce the order in the next district over, well, you better sue there too.”
However, the order was blocked across the country on Aug. 11, when U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani issued a nationwide injunction preventing the USPS from complying with the executive order in any state.
That began a flurry of appeals and new rulings at the end of the summer.
On Aug. 24, the U.S. Supreme Court published an emergency opinion allowing the Trump Administration to move ahead with the order. This opinion did not weigh in whether or not the order was constitutional, but rather argued the states could not claim to be harmed by something that hadn’t been implemented yet.
But that same week, the USPS formally published the 95-page rule explaining how it would implement the order. That prompted U.S. District Judge Talwani to instate a 14-day temporary restraining order. She later expanded it to a preliminary injunction set to expire on Election Day, meaning the USPS still cannot implement this rule. The preliminary injunction was upheld Thursday, Sept. 10 by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
But the Trump administration has also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court could make a decision as early as this week.
Trump himself voted by mail this year, in Florida’s Republican primary, according to Politico. Though, studies show a partisan divide in mail-in voting. The MIT Election Data & Science Lab reported that 37% of Democrats cast mail-in ballots in the 2024 presidential election compared to 24% of Republicans.
The mail-in voting executive order is one of multiple attempts made by the Trump administration to change voting procedures and requirements ahead of this year’s election. Trump has cited the need for increased voter ID laws to reduce voter fraud and non-citizen voting.
Researchers say cases of voter fraud are rare.
“The idea that there are hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of people voting illegally and swinging election outcomes, there’s just no evidence for that at all,” said Gilbert.
According to the Virginia Department of Elections (ELECT) 2024–2025 Annual List Maintenance Report, state agencies cross-reference data to flag questionable registrants through a five-step eligibility check. Out of more than 6.3 million registered voters statewide, ELECT canceled 4,531 non-citizen registrations from September 2024 through August 2025, roughly 0.07% of the total voter roll. The report does not indicate whether any of those individuals attempted to cast a ballot.
Trump had previously issued an executive order in March 2025, which required documentary proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and called for the Department of Homeland Security to review state voter registration lists. It was permanently blocked by the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in June 2026.
Trump has also attempted to go through Congress by heavily promoting the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE America) Act. Like the March 2025 executive order, the SAVE America Act also requires documentary proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote. But since it’s going through Congress, it does not violate constitutional authority.
“This is part of the reason that the White House has been pushing the Save America Act, because if the Save America Act passed, well, that would be Congress,” said Gilbert. “The Constitution specifically said that Congress can make or alter election regulations for federal elections.”
The SAVE America Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives in February, but it has yet to reach the 60-vote threshold to pass the Senate, despite pressure from the president.
With executive and congressional pathways facing hurdles, Trump has turned to other methods. The Department of Justice sent letters to election officials in all 50 states, warning that they could face criminal prosecution if noncitizens vote. In July, Trump fired two Democratic members of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission, which led the last remaining Republican member to resign. Later that month, Trump gave a primetime address highlighting the risks of voter fraud in U.S. elections.
And he awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on mail-in voting.
If it’s allowed, local election officials will find themselves grappling with new procedures whose details still remain unclear.
“What’s done at the state level, what’s done at the local level, what’s done by the post office and what’s done by us hasn’t been fully articulated yet,” said Harris, the Nelson County registrar.
But she emphasized that registrar’s offices are politically neutral. “If it goes into effect and it becomes law that we follow, then we will find a way to do that.”
In the meantime, registrars in Virginia continue to prepare to administer the election following current Virginia law.
We would need to know fairly quickly because mail-in ballots actually go out by Sept. 18.
—Taylor Yowell, Charlottesville general registrar
“All of our guidelines and guidance that we follow for mail-in balloting or anything of the sort will come from the state level,” said Yowell, the general registrar in Charlottesville. She said the Virginia Department of Elections, or ELECT, has “not given us any change in our current processes. So until we hear from them, we will just operate as normal.”
Currently, the USPS plays no role in verifying the eligibility of mail-in ballots. The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot has passed. But voters who already applied will likely receive it sometime next week.
There are several ways to return a mail-in ballot. Voters can take it to a local drop-box or to their local registrar’s office anytime between Sept. 18 and 7 p.m. on Nov. 3, Election Day. They can also mail it back, as long as the postmark is dated on or before Election Day and it’s received no later than noon on the third day after the election.
After a summer of uncertainty, the U.S. Supreme Court Decision will finally bring clarity to whether the midterms will look different this year.
“The laws are for the lawmakers,” said Jacquelynne Harris in Nelson. “We are here to the best of our capacity to follow those laws and implement them and serve the voters.”
Appomattox County General Registrar Patricia Morton said, “Basically, we try not to worry about things that haven’t happened yet.”
Help us make a voter guide that meets your needs
As part of Charlottesville Tomorrow’s annual Voter Guide, we send a list of questions to all registered candidates for each race in our central Virginia coverage area. This includes the City of Charlottesville; the counties of Albemarle, Appomattox, Buckingham, Cumberland, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Madison, Nelson, Orange and Prince Edward; and the towns of Scottsville, Appomattox, Pamplin, Dillwyn, Stanardsville, Louisa, Mineral, Madison, Gordonsville, Orange and Farmville.
We publish each returned Q&A with the candidates’ responses grouped under each question to help you, the voter, understand how they compare on the issues that matter most to you. (You can see an example of how this looks from last years’ guide here.)
What questions should we ask your candidates? You tell us!
To help serve voters, we’d like to know what issues and questions matter to you. Please take a few minutes to complete our two-question 2026 Voter Survey, and tell us what you would like us to ask candidates in your area.
New to Charlottesville Tomorrow? Find out more about our nonprofit news organization.
