CBS Colorado reports that a federal judge has temporarily blocked a new rule that would have allowed the U.S. Postal Service to regulate mail-in ballots. Colorado joined more than two dozen states in suing to stop it.
That sentence should make anybody who has read even the Cliff Notes version of federalism scratch his head. The Postal Service has an important job in mail elections: deliver the mail. That does not magically promote it to assistant secretary of state for elections. Apparently, somewhere in Washington, an agency saw the line between delivering ballots and regulating ballots and thought, “That looks more like a suggestion.”
For now, a federal judge has hit the brakes. “Temporarily” is doing some heavy lifting here. The rule is paused, not buried, which means Colorado voters and election officials remain stuck watching another federal courtroom fight over who gets to make the rules.
The Bullet Point Brief
- The Postal Service wanted a bigger seat at the election table. According to CBS Colorado, the blocked rule would have allowed USPS to regulate mail-in ballots. Delivering them apparently was not enough excitement for one federal bureaucracy.
- Colorado said no thanks. Our state joined more than two dozen others in court challenging the rule. When that many states lawyer up against Washington, it might be worth asking whether somebody at the federal level wandered outside the lines.
- The judge issued a temporary block. That means this thing is stopped for now, not dead forever. The lawyers will continue billing by the hour, and the rest of us will continue wondering why election administration requires enough litigation to support its own economic sector.
- Mail voting needs the Postal Service. It does not follow that the Postal Service gets to write election rules. The guy who delivers the lumber does not get to redesign your house. Useful role, important role, different role.
- And then there is the judicial circus. The president runs the executive branch and executive orders are a normal tool of presidential authority. Yet when Donald Trump exercises executive power, the modern ritual seems to require somebody, somewhere, to sprint toward a federal courthouse. If Trump sneezes, there is apparently a decent chance somebody files for an injunction before he finds a Kleenex.
My Bottom Line
There are two flavors of government overreach fighting for screen time here, and neither one should make constitutional conservatives particularly comfortable.
First, federal agencies do not get to accumulate authority simply because they are adjacent to something important. The Postal Service moves mail. Colorado administers Colorado elections. A ballot passing through a postal facility does not convert election law into postal regulation any more than mailing your tax return makes the postmaster your accountant. Washington has spent decades perfecting this little trick: find a legitimate federal responsibility, stretch it until the seams pop, then call the result “administrative authority.”
But conservatives should also recognize the increasingly ridiculous dependence on judges to settle every political dispute involving Donald Trump. Presidents issue executive orders. Courts review executive action. Both are constitutional realities. What has become absurd is the hair-trigger assumption that virtually every Trump directive requires an emergency courtroom intervention. We have turned separation of powers into litigation by reflex.
Colorado voters deserve rules that are clear, lawful and settled before ballots start flying around the state. County election officials deserve the same. What they do not need is another federal agency inventing authority, followed by another election-year legal cage match to figure out whether anyone in Washington remembers where its jurisdiction ends.
Government has enough jobs already. It might try doing those before applying for ours.
Source: Politics – CBS Colorado
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