#david steiner

Postal Service would restrict mail-in voting under Trump proposal, chief says

President Donald Trump insists the proposal he ordered would crack down on voter fraud, but Democrats call it an attempt to seize control of election administration ahead of crucial midterms.

By EMILIO PEREZ IBARGUEN

06/24/2026 03:06 PM EDT

The U.S.’ chief mailman told lawmakers Wednesday that his agency would restrict the delivery of mail-in ballots in states that don’t hand over a list of eligible voters, in line with proposed rules ordered by President Donald Trump.

Postmaster General David Steiner dismissed Senate Democrats’ concerns that the floated regulations are an attempt by Trump to federalize elections, instead characterizing the proposal as an assurance that “the right ballots are going to the right people” during an appearance before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Though any new rule must be approved by the agency’s board of directors, Steiner’s public support is a boost for the president’s efforts to curtail voting by mail, which he has long characterized as susceptible to fraud. Trump issued an executive order in late March mandating the agency propose a rule requiring states to provide the Postal Service with a list of all eligible voters at least 60 days ahead of any federal election.

The proposal comes ahead of the November midterms, contests which usually see the president’s party lose seats in Congress. Republicans on the Hill have expressed growing consternation with their electoral chances they say are being hampered by Trump’s domestic agenda and a deeply unpopular war.

Democrats questioned whether USPS has the constitutional authority to enforce such a rule, arguing that the job of administering elections is delegated to the states.

Steiner, for his part, agreed that the Postal Service is not responsible for administering elections but cast the rule as a procedural step for ensuring ballots are only sent to eligible voters.

Jacob Knutson and Jim Saksa at Democracy Docket:

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said in a yet-to-be-published proposed rule Friday that it’s drawing up plans to radically crack down on mail voting by sending ballots only to voters who are registered with the federal government. The proposed rule, which will be formally published next week, is an alarming step toward implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping attack on mail voting ahead of the 2026 midterm election. And it would represent a massive expansion of federal control over voting, without congressional authorization. Trump signed a sweeping executive order in March that, in part, ordered the Postal Service to only send mail ballots to voters on lists created and controlled by the federal government. 

The order is currently the subject of multiple lawsuits. USPS’s proposed rule came a day after a federal judge overseeing one of the lawsuits declined to block the order. The judge concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the order since federal agencies had not yet taken steps to implement it.  Now, that appears to have changed. USPS is moving forward with the order even though legal experts and voting rights organizations have warned that it is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to restrict the right to vote and usurp states’ authority over elections.  Under the Constitution, states run elections and only Congress can set national standards.

The proposed rule would require state election officials to send USPS a list of voters who have requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are sent out under state law. If voters aren’t on the list, they will not receive a ballot. It also allows state officials to make “supplemental submissions to enroll additional individuals or modify prior submissions until the last day that ballots may be mailed out to individuals under state law.” In this way, that provision tacitly admits that it will lead to errors that need to be fixed, whether through “supplemental submissions” or modifying “prior submissions.” 

Those errors, caused by a new federal government program that is not explicitly authorized by Congress, are precisely the kind of harm the plaintiffs challenging the executive order seek to prevent.  In their lawsuits, Democrats and voting-rights advocates argued that using USPS’s list, as well as other federal registration lists included in Trump’s order, would lead to eligible voters being unable to cast ballots. In part, that’s because the lists would rely on Department of Homeland Security databases that have been shown to have serious flaws.

[...] Friday was the deadline Trump included in his order for Postmaster General David Steiner to initiate a rulemaking process to formally implement the president’s mail voting restrictions.  In recent weeks, Steiner, who also serves as CEO of USPS, has met with other senior Trump administration and DOJ officials to discuss ways to implement the order.

Trump's Postmaster General told a US Senate committee that the US Post Office will not deliver mail-in ballots in states which do not go along with Trump's voter suppression efforts.

Postmaster General David Steiner said so under oath in response to a question by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).

As Michael Steele reported in the vid above, federal judges struck down two of Trump's voter suppression efforts in rulings this week. Obviously good news, but the Orange One took it like the sore loser he is.

In a hissy fit, Trump declared via his failing Truth Social platform that he would not sign the bipartisan housing bill passed by overwhelming majorities in both House and Senate because Congress hasn't passed his voter suppression ironically named "SAVE America Act".

Following the couple in cars

Sending them threatening and insulting social media messages

Mailing the couple's neighbors pornography, but putting it under the couple's name so their neighbors thought it was for the couple

Sending them live spiders, fly larvae, and roaches, as well as a bloody pig's mask. The pig's mask was after they had arranged for the couple to be notified a pig in formaldehyde would be delivered. (I don't think the actual pig was delivered.)

Sending a funeral wreath to their house

Posting ads for a fake garage sale at the couple's house and telling people to knock at their door if the couple wasn't outside. Keep in mind, the couple would have no way of knowing who these strangers coming to knock on their door were; even though the people were responding to what they thought was a legitimate ad, the couple would be worried any of these people were their stalker.

Posting an ad inviting people to the couple's house for a sex party and saying anyone could show up and didn't need to knock

Monitoring police radios so that if the police or the couple mentioned a car the Ebay employees were using to stalk the couple, the Ebay employees could switch cars

Jim Saksa at Democracy Docket:

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) confirmed it is following a pair of court orders blocking it from implementing President Donald Trump’s anti-mail voting executive order.  “The Postal Service is abiding by these injunctions, which are also currently under appeal,” Postmaster General David Steiner and Amber McReynolds, chairwoman of the USPS board of governors, wrote Monday in a letter to Senate Democrats obtained by Democracy Docket. The USPS leaders were responding to concerns Democratic senators raised in a letter after Trump issued his executive order in March. That order directed the Postal Service to only deliver mail ballots if states handed over a list of preapproved voters. The senators later reiterated their concerns after USPS published a proposed rule to execute the order in June.  Trump’s directive also mandated USPS to develop secure ballot envelopes with unique barcodes for tracking and utilize them ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. USPS’s letter contends that, even though the agency proposed the rule in response to the executive order, the changes themselves would be “consistent with the Postal Service’s existing — and longstanding — recommended best practices.” 

Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket:

Postmaster General David Steiner told senators that, under a new proposed rule, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will not deliver mail ballots unless states hand over their voter lists to the Trump administration. “Under our proposed regulation, no,” Steiner said during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday after being asked whether USPS would deliver election mail if states refuse to divulge their voter lists. “We would tell the state that we need the manifest,” Steiner added. Steiner’s alarming answer is yet more evidence that the Postal Service is following through with President Donald Trump’s sweeping attack on mail voting and breaking from its decades-long history as a neutral, nonpartisan carrier of U.S. election mail. The USPS’s new proposal, which Postal workers have denounced, stems from Trump’s March 2026 executive order that, in part, demanded USPS only send mail ballots to voters on lists created and controlled by the federal government. Specifically, the proposal would require state election officials to send USPS a list of voters who have requested a mail-in or absentee ballot at least 30 days before ballots are sent out under state law. If voters aren’t on the list, they will not receive a ballot. If implemented, it would effectively create a federal registration list for absentee voters.

[...] Steiner’s admission Wednesday conflicted with a separate rule the USPS adopted under his watch last year, which stated that the independent agency “does not administer elections, establish the rules or deadlines that govern elections, or determine whether or how election jurisdictions utilize the mail.” Steiner defended the proposed rule by claiming that it mandates “Kit 600,” a series of best practices that USPS distributes to election officials who send election documents through the mail. 

Matt Cohen at Democracy Docket:

The Trump administration is quietly building a national voter database to help implement the president’s latest anti-voting order ahead of the midterm elections, despite its recent claims in court filings that it wouldn’t. 

According to reporting from NOTUS, White House officials have been meeting with leaders from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the U.S. States Postal Service (USPS) to move forward with plans to build and implement federally approved voter lists, along with plans to restrict mail-in voting. The discussions stem from President Donald Trump’s most recent anti-voting executive order targeting mail-in voting. The order directed DHS to work with the Social Security Administration to create lists of verified U.S. citizens eligible to vote in each state. It also instructed USPS to only send absentee ballots to voters on approved lists.  The order was met with a barrage of lawsuits challenging the Constitutionality of the president’s decree; the U.S. Constitution grants the states, not the federal government, the power to oversee elections. One of the main lawsuits against the order came from Democratic Party officials and a coalition of pro-voting groups. A federal judge is hearing the plaintiff’s case to block Trump’s order Thursday in Washington, D.C. 

[...] But Thursday’s report contradicts these claims as Trump administration officials from each department have reportedly been meeting to discuss how they plan to implement and defend the order in court. The officials involved in meetings include DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon, USPS CEO David Steiner, and Heather Honey, a notorious election conspiracy theorist who was appointed last year to a senior “election integrity” position within DHS.