The U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that it has started creating a new records system to track mail ballots, a concrete step toward carrying out Donald Trump’s voting executive order while court challenges continue to pile up. The filing also says the Postal Service has already given advance notice to two congressional committees and the Office of Management and Budget.
The move matters now because the Postal Service is not waiting for the legal fights to end before building the machinery that would support the order. Trump’s March executive order directs USPS to send mail ballots only to voters on approved lists submitted by states, and USPS published a proposed rule earlier this month that would require states to send over information about voters who request mail-in or absentee ballots for federal elections.
If finalized, that proposal would reach every state that handles federal mail voting, since the rule is aimed at the voter-request information states collect for mail-in and absentee ballots. USPS said the new records system would not take effect unless it finalizes the rule, but the agency is already moving on the paperwork and privacy system behind it. The Postal Service said it will next send the notice to the Federal Register for publication.
That push is happening even as Democratic groups, voting rights organizations and state officials keep suing to block the order. The NAACP has asked a federal court to stop USPS from enforcing the rule, arguing that it violates a 2021 settlement requiring the Postal Service to prioritize timely election mail delivery through 2028. The American Postal Workers Union has also condemned the proposal as an unconstitutional attack on the millions of Americans who vote by mail.
The administration is building out the order from both ends at once: a system that would help states supply the voter-list information Trump wants, and now a Postal Service records system tied to ballot delivery. What remains unresolved is whether USPS will finish the rulemaking at all, because the records system disappears if the proposed mail-ballot rule never becomes final.
