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SCOTUS May Restrict Mail-In Ballots for its Self-Preservation [1]

['Dan K', 'Chitown Kev', 'Chloris Creator', 'Miles Estrelle']

Date: 2026-09-06  

We all know why trump wants mail-in voting to be as limited as possible – he needs every tool of voter suppression he can get in order to avoid being called to account for his actions by a Democratically controlled Congress with the power to investigate and impeach. It’s his latest, most desperate attempt to escape responsibility. Up to now, he has been largely successful; his main failures have been the 2020 election, his felony conviction, and E. Jean Carroll’s civil judgment against him for raping her – and to this day he continues to rail against and deny all three.

So it’s no wonder he keeps trying to mess with the upcoming midterms. And he has generally done it with the cooperation of the most corrupt Supreme Court in history. The Court has generally gone along with his demands, though not entirely (perhaps to preserve the appearance of being neutral judges as much as for any other reason). But now the Scurrilous Six have a reason of their own to put their thumbs on the scale alongside trump: their self-preservation. Two stories from HuffPost this morning are neatly (and perhaps deliberately) juxtaposed:

Trump Administration Makes Another Appeal To The Supreme Court To Allow Mail Ballot Restrictions

The Trump administration on Sunday [today!] renewed its appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal judge blocked new restrictions on mail ballots ahead of the midterms. . . . The appeal marks the third time the administration has asked the high court to intervene. The high court has allowed the plan to move forward but not ruled on whether it is legal.

The new urgency is driven by the fact that ballots are now starting to be mailed out; North Carolina Mail[ed the] First Ballots of Fall, as Trump Tries to Restrict Them. But the second story in HuffPost gives the Court a reason of its own to side with trump: Expanding The Supreme Court Is Fast Becoming A Litmus Test For 2028 Democrats:

The 2028 presidential race is still months away from getting started, but one thing is already clear for the Democratic Party: reforming, or even expanding, the Supreme Court will be a litmus test for candidates running for the White House. . . . The party unity in the House came days after Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), one of the party’s elite power brokers, endorsed expanding the Supreme Court by adding four justices. “I think we are in a position now that calls for some significant actions taken by the Congress and we ought to expand, and 13 is a pretty good number,” Clyburn said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “A baker’s dozen, it would be a good number to have on the court.”

(This won’t happen overnight, obviously. Any expansion of the Court is done by law, and trump would veto it. But a Democratic president elected in 2028 would very likely do so.)

Institutions tend to act in ways that help preserve themselves. The Founders counted on this tendency when they constructed a three-part government where each part would check the other out of its own self-interest. They didn’t plan for a political party system that would eventually seize control of all three branches, with the consequence that all the branches would thereafter act to preserve a single institution: the party and those who control it. But that’s the situation we’re in now.

So, much as I would still like to believe that there is some residual sense of honor, of duty, of shame even, in this Supreme Court, I am very concerned that it will rule, 6-3, that the Post Office can go ahead and screw the voters now, and that the Court will decide later – too late – on the merits of the argument.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/9/6/800094757/community/to-preserve-is/

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