The US Supreme Court has dealt Donald Trump a significant setback in his bid to restrict mail-in voting, rejecting his administration's eleventh-hour request to enforce new Postal Service checks on mail ballots just weeks before the November midterm elections. The order would have allowed officials to cross-reference mail-in ballots against a central voter database and reject those from voters not listed, a measure critics said risked disenfranchising millions and sowing chaos so close to the vote, given roughly a third of Americans vote by post.

Only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, while fellow conservatives Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch joined the liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts in rejecting the plea, marking the third time the administration had unsuccessfully sought the court's intervention on the matter. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, though siding with the majority, wrote separately to say the Postal Service might have authority to implement such rules eventually but that election officials lacked sufficient time to do so before the midterms. Solicitor General John Sauer had argued the delay caused by a lower court injunction would create confusion, but this was dismissed even as some states, including North Carolina, have already begun issuing mail ballots. Notably, Trump himself voted by mail in Florida's Republican primary last month despite his opposition to the practice.