CNN legal so-called analyst Norm Eisen used an appearance on the network to slam President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in ballots while casting doubt on the U.S. Postal Service’s capacity to enforce it.
“No mail-in voting is currently being affected by this rule; it’s grossly unconstitutional, and we and others have gone to court to stop it—we will stop it—and voters should know that this idea that the Postal Service is going to screen every mail-in voter and mail-in ballot in the country is not going to happen,” Eisen said, according to a clips of the interview.
In the same discussion, Eisen quipped that “they can’t even deliver my utility bill on time” and argued that USPS therefore cannot “turn into a kind of super registrar for every voter in the land,” using his own mail delays to contradict his defense of mail in ballot voting to begin with.
His comments came after the Supreme Court, in a 6–3 unsigned order, allowed Trump to move forward with key portions of the March executive order that directs the Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security to build voter-eligibility lists and limit mail-ballot delivery, while explicitly declining to decide the order’s legality leaving it open for further litigation amongst the states across the country.
The justices said the states that sued lacked standing because any harms were still “conjectural or hypothetical,” lifting a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Massachusetts that had blocked the USPS provisions in 23 states and Washington, D.C.
Even after the Supreme Court’s intervention, Talwani and other lower-court judges have questioned the constitutionality of using USPS to “police” mail voting, with earlier rulings emphasizing that election rules belong to state legislatures and Congress.
Hellbound and Down 