# Executive Order 14399 **Title:** Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections Signed **March 31, 2026**; published at **91 FR 17125**. The order directs federal agencies to verify voter eligibility and, in the provision that has generated nearly all of the litigation, instructs the [[USPS]] to impose new design, technology and data requirements on [[Mail-in Voting]] and absentee ballots for federal elections — and to **refuse to transmit ballots that do not comply**, or that are addressed to people whose names do not appear on lists the states supply to the Postal Service. That instruction is the whole story. It converts a mail carrier into a checkpoint. ## What the order changed Before EO 14399, the Postal Service issued *recommendations* about election mail — envelope design, barcode placement, the Official Election Mail logo — collected in its Kit 600 guidance. States were free to ignore them and the mail went anyway. The order directs the Postal Service to make those recommendations mandatory and to condition acceptance of a state's ballot mailing on compliance. The Federal Register rule implementing it, **Ballot Mail for Federal Elections, 91 FR 54966**, states the gate in one sentence: "the Postal Service will generally not accept Outbound Federal Ballot mailings unless compliance with the rule's new standards has been verified." Compliance runs through a new online system, the [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]], into which state election officials must upload voter names, addresses and barcode identifiers before presenting ballots for mailing. The rule reaches **federal general, special and runoff elections** — not state elections or primaries — and exempts ballots covered by UOCAVA. > [!note] The order asked for 60 days, the rule settled on 30 > EO 14399 contemplated requiring states to submit their lists "no fewer than 60 days before the election." The Postal Service adopted a softer 30-day timeline, explaining that state law varies. The only hard requirement in the rule is that data be uploaded *before* the mailing is presented for acceptance. ## The unitary-executive move The order is the mail-ballot counterpart to [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]], the March 2025 order imposing a [[Proof of Citizenship Requirement]] on voter registration. Both pursue by presidential directive what Congress has declined to enact, and both rest on the same premise — that the executive has an "unavoidable duty under Article II" to police elections that the Constitution assigns primarily to the states. The Postal Service's own preamble contains the tell. The agency concedes that "the Executive Order did not mandate a final rule," then promulgates one anyway, adding that "[c]onsiderations of Postal Service independence are not relevant to this rulemaking." An entity structured by Congress as an independent government corporation is here describing its independence as beside the point — which is what [[Unitary Executive Theory]] looks like when the target institution agrees with it. ## Litigation | Date | Court | Action | |---|---|---| | 2026-05-28 | D.D.C. | *DSCC v. Trump* (consolidated with LULAC and NAACP) — Judge [[Carl Nichols]] denies a preliminary injunction for lack of standing, no final rule having issued | | 2026-06-25 | D. Mass. | *California v. Trump*, No. 26-cv-11581 — enjoined implementation of Section 3 as to 23 states and the District of Columbia | | 2026-07-25 | 1st Cir. | No. 26-1774 — affirmed the district court | | 2026-07-28 | D.C. Cir. | Affirms Nichols's denial on ripeness grounds | | 2026-08-11 | D. Mass. | *League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump*, No. 26-cv-11549 — nationwide injunction against enforcing Section 3 | | 2026-08-24 | Supreme Court | *Alabama v. California*, No. 26A139 — stayed the June 25 injunction | | 2026-08-26 | D. Mass. | August 11 order lifted; USPS final rule published the same day | | 2026-08-27 | D. Mass. | Temporary restraining order — halted all work on the Portal for 14 days pending briefing on a preliminary injunction | | 2026-09-03 | D. Mass. | Preliminary-injunction hearing before Judge [[Indira Talwani]]; the same afternoon the Solicitor General applies to the Supreme Court for a stay of the TRO, *No. 26A297*; Justice Jackson calls for responses by 10 a.m. Sept. 8 | | 2026-09-04 | D. Mass. | Preliminary injunction granted, superseding the TRO — the Postal Service may not require states to comply with the envelope-design and Portal-registration provisions for the November 2026 election | | 2026-09-06 | Supreme Court | No. 26A297 withdrawn as moot (the TRO it targeted had been superseded); refiled against the preliminary injunction as **No. 26A305**, *U.S. Postal Service v. California* | | 2026-09-14 | Supreme Court | ⚡ **Stay DENIED in No. 26A305.** The unsigned order found the government "unlikely to succeed on the merits" of its challenge to the preliminary injunction. Kavanaugh concurred; Alito and Thomas dissented. The injunction stands through the November 3 election | > [!success] Resolved for this cycle — September 14, 2026 > The Supreme Court's denial in No. 26A305 ends the operative question for 2026: **the USPS rule cannot be enforced in the November election.** All fifty states keep their existing mail-voting processes, and the Postal Service can neither refuse to carry ballot mail nor require states to load voter information into the [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]]. > > This is not a final judgment. Both injunctions are **preliminary**, the merits remain to be litigated, and Kavanaugh's concurrence leaves open that the rule might be within the Postal Service's statutory authority when it is not imposed ten weeks before an election. What September 14 settles is the 2026 cycle. What it forecasts for 2028 is a separate question. The Aug. 27 TRO was sought by the [[League of Women Voters]] of Massachusetts together with the national League, the Association of Americans Resident Overseas, the U.S. Vote Foundation, OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. ## The rule's effective date preceded its publication The final rule carries the line "Effective August 21, 2026" — **five days before it appeared in the Federal Register on August 26**. The Postal Service justified the immediate effective date on the ground that "[d]elaying the effective date would jeopardize implementation of this rule in time for the 2026 general election, which will be held on November 3, 2026." It also asserted that 39 U.S.C. 410(a) exempts it entirely from [[APA Notice-and-Comment Rulemaking]] — having nonetheless taken comment, and received more than 200,000 responses plus over 250 organizational letters. An **Alabama-led coalition of thirteen state attorneys general** filed in support. The rule does not name the thirteen states. ## Why it matters here The [[2026 Midterm Elections]] are the object. Roughly three in ten American voters cast ballots by mail — 29.0% in 2024 per the Census Bureau, about 30% of all ballots per the [[Election Assistance Commission]] — and 43% did so in 2020. See [[Mail-in Voting]]. A rule that lets a federal agency decline to carry a state's ballots — issued under an order that names ballot mail as its target, effective before publication, implemented on a compressed timetable against standing injunctions — is an election-administration change of a different kind from the ones the vault usually tracks under [[Voter Suppression]]. It does not restrict who may register or how long the polls stay open. It inserts a federal veto between a state's decision to send a ballot and the ballot's arrival. ## See Also - [[Indira Talwani]] — the district judge in every Massachusetts order above; [[D. John Sauer]] — who took it to the Supreme Court - [[Carl Nichols]] — the D.C. district judge in the parallel Democratic Party challenge, who has denied relief - [[USPS Federal Ballot Mail Portal]] — the system built to implement it, and the whistleblower disclosure about how - [[USPS]] — the agency told to become a gatekeeper - [[David Steiner]] — the Postmaster General who promulgated the rule - [[Executive Order - Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections]] — the registration-side companion - [[Voter Suppression]] · [[The Big Lie]] — the policy lineage - [[Election Assistance Commission]] — the agency Congress actually assigned election administration support