Editorial: A win for vote-by-mail, amid gathering concern

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, January 13, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

A ruling Friday by a federal District Court judge in Seattle scored a win for states — specifically Washington and Oregon — regarding administration of federal elections.

Judge John H. Chun ruled against an executive order issued by President Donald Trump in April that threatened to withhold federal election funds to the states if they did not uphold a requirement that those registering to vote show proof of U.S. citizenship; and if both states — both of which allow ballots to be submitted by mail — did not disqualify ballots received after Election Day, even if postmarked on or before Election Day.

“Today’s ruling is a huge victory for voters in Washington and Oregon, and for the rule of law,” Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said Friday. “The court enforced the long-standing constitutional rule that only States and Congress can regulate elections, not the Election Denier-in-Chief.”

The lawsuit was separate from a suit filed by 19 other states over the same order, challenging the Trump administration because it specifically targeted both state’s vote-by-mail deadline provisions. (Six other states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah and Vermont — and Washington, D.C., also run vote-by-mail-only elections.)

Trump, in arguing for his order has repeatedly dredged up old and disproved fears of ineligible (read, noncitizen) voters and election fraud to justify regulations that, rather than making elections more secure, threaten to disenfranchise legitimate voters, discourage eligible Americans from registering to vote, and make voter registration and elections more cumbersome and expensive for states to run.

Claims of rampant voting by noncitizens have repeatedly been refuted, including a 2017 report by the Brennan Center for Justice that examined voting in 42 jurisdictions for the 2016 election, which found that of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found only about 30 instances of noncitizen voters that were referred for prosecution.

Instead of finding violations, the proof-of-citizenship requirement was likely to discourage registration of eligible voters, while the ballot deadline could have nullified the votes of thousands of voters in both states. In the 2024 general election, county election offices in this state received more than 250,000 valid ballots after election day that were postmarked on time. In the 2025 primary, county election offices received 151,000 after election day that had qualifying postmarks.

Chun found Trump lacked the authority to order such changes to states’ voting laws, finding the president had no constitutional authority to set a requirement for proof of citizenship or a ballot deadline.

Congress has constitutional authority over elections’ time, place and manner, but states reserve general authority for their elections. As we’ve noted before, presidents — with the exception of their own ballots — have no authority over elections.

“Unless, and until, Congress amends these statutes or otherwise enacts a law that establishes a national ballot-receipt deadline of Election Day, the Elections Clause authorizes Washington and Oregon to maintain their existing laws, which permit the counting of certain ballots received after Election Day,” Chun wrote.

Nor did the president have authority to “‘thwart congressional will by canceling appropriations passed by Congress,’” Chun wrote.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, whose office oversees the state’s election laws, echoed the importance of the ruling: “It draws a firm line between enforcing the law and trying to remake it, and it protects voters and local election officials from political overreach that would have made our elections less fair, not more secure,” Hobbs said.

Yet, while the judge’s ruling permanently blocked the executive order, the Trump administration’s challenges to the states’ constitutional authority to run elections are likely to continue up to and past this fall’s midterm General Election, which will determine which party will control the U.S. House and Senate.

Still pending are federal lawsuits brought by the U.S. Department of Justice against as many as 40 states, including Washington, that have demanded full lists of registered voters and their complete information — including driver’s license numbers, full birth dates and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers — despite offers from Hobbs and other states’ election officials to provide information that is publicly available.

The Trump administration also continues its campaign to demand that states with Republican-controlled legislatures redraw the boundaries of congressional districts — even before the next census in 2030 — to squeeze out higher GOP-concentrations for state delegations, improving the odds that Republicans can keep the House after the midterms. That has resulted in a disconcerting grab by legislatures in red and blue states alike to gain a partisan advantage at the expense of representational fairness.

At the same time the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in October regarding a Louisiana redistricting case that could end the last provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its requirement to draw districts that consider race to better ensure minority representation. If invalidated, that too, could prompt a wave of partisan redistricting, favoring the GOP.

And some have raised concerns that the administration’s motives in increasing the presence of federal agents, especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in majority Democratic cities and communities, might include their deployment near precinct voting centers during elections — justified as discouraging noncitizen voting — but chilling the voting participation by minorities who, while U.S. citizens and registered voters, might fear a confrontation with ICE and stay home. That’s a fear all the more heightened by last week’s death of a woman in Minneapolis, fired on by an ICE agent.

That’s a concern that makes the judge’s ruling for Washington and Oregon to protect their vote-by-mail elections all the more relevant and should prompt discussions in other states to adopt similar legislation.

Yet, a threat to vote-by-mail’s commonsense postmark deadline — that the act of marking a ballot and putting in a mailbox on election day is akin to what happens in the voting booth — is not yet fully resolved.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Mississippi after an appellate court invalidated that state’s law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by election day to be counted up to five days after polls close.

Arguments before the court are expected as early as March, and a decision is expected later this summer, prior to the midterms.