Facing rising oil prices and criticism that he is out of touch with the news cycle, President Donald Trump heads into the midterm elections with considerable political challenges. In an effort to improve his party's chances regardless of voters' preferences, Trump has sought to restrict mail-in voting — and a new report shows that Democrats in at least one state are preparing a workaround.

As The Washington Post's Patrick Marley and Justin Jouvenal reported on Sunday, "New Mexico officials are talking to FedEx and UPS about using their companies to deliver mail ballots instead of the Postal Service, said Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver (D)." According to the secretary, the cost would be manageable because the state sends out a relatively small number of mail-in ballots. "We are still planning for plan B in a worst-case scenario," she said. "There are other ways to deliver ballots."

The outreach to private carriers underscores how tightly election administration is bound to the Postal Service, which for decades has been the default channel for absentee and mail-in ballots across the country. States like New Mexico, where absentee voting is an option rather than universal, send ballots only to voters who request them — one reason a private-delivery fallback could be financially feasible there, even though it would be far harder to scale in states that mail ballots to every registered voter.

The Post previously noted that Trump's efforts to restrict voting have largely been stymied by lower courts, although the Supreme Court has on occasion sided with him.

"A judge has blocked Trump's plans for now in a legal fight that has made its way to the Supreme Court once and could soon be before the justices again," the newspaper wrote. "The Supreme Court could still upend mail ballot rules, but the president and the U.S. Postal Service are running out of options that don't involve significant upheaval because tens of thousands of voters will be getting ballots in their mailboxes in the coming days."

That clock is set by state law: election offices are required to send absentee ballots to voters weeks before Election Day, meaning any rule change arriving late in the cycle collides with deadlines officials cannot easily move.

Election officials in Wisconsin and North Carolina have already begun sending out mail-in ballots despite the Trump administration's directives to the Postal Service.

"Those ballots are getting placed in the mail under long-standing policies, not the new ones Trump has spent months trying to impose," The Post reported. "Some officials said they wanted to mail ballots as soon as possible because they considered the new rules — which require new approvals and the use of technology that has not yet been deployed — impossible to follow."

The report added: "'There's no practical way for Wisconsin clerks to comply,' said Don Millis, chairman of Wisconsin's elections board." Millis, a Republican who has helped oversee Wisconsin elections for years, said the president's proposal would "hurt the Republican turnout more than the Democratic turnout." His warning points to a dynamic election officials in both parties have raised before: mail voting is used by voters across the political spectrum, and disruptions to ballot delivery tend to affect whichever voters rely on it most.

Speaking to AlterNet in June, one election expert outlined what he sees as the risks Trump's voter suppression actions pose to democracy.

"What they all add up to is a desire to avoid any accountability to the voters in the midterm elections — to ensure, to preordain the outcome of a midterm that he thinks is going to go badly for him," said Dan Vicuña, Senior Policy Director for Voting and Fair Representation at Common Cause. "We know, from the Big Lie of the 2020 election to spurring on a violent revolt to overthrow a free and fair election, that he has no respect for democratic norms, for the voice of the people. This is entirely about his own power and his own ego. He will even invest in protecting that ego and protecting his power at the expense of the needs of the public. People are suffering with high gas prices and affordability issues, and he does not care. All that matters is protecting his power, and he has no interest in whether he does that through democratic means."

He added, "I think this all adds up to a desire to ensure that his party stays in power and his ability to do what he wants — to attack vulnerable communities — remains intact."

What happens next largely depends on the courts: with the Supreme Court potentially revisiting the dispute and ballots already entering the mail stream, the practical question for states like New Mexico is whether their fallback plans are needed before Election Day.

Source: The Washington Post