“I Believe” — Not Rain, Sleet, or New Mail Rules Should Change How We Vote by Keith Watts

There are certain things I thought I understood about government.

The president runs the executive branch.

Congress makes the laws.

States run elections.

And the Post Office delivers mail.

Apparently, I am naïve.

By now you’ve probably heard that the Supreme Court just refused to let the Trump administration put new Postal Service restrictions on mail ballots into effect for the 2026 election. The Court left in place a lower-court injunction blocking the rules while the legal fight continues. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Clarence Thomas, would have allowed the administration’s request to proceed.

Alito’s argument is ingenious in the same way that putting a screen door on a submarine is ingenious: You have to admire the creativity, even if you have questions about the actual application.

Reduced to its essentials, his dissenting argument goes something like this:

The Postal Service has broad authority over the mail.

Ballots sent through the mail are — mail.

Therefore, the Postal Service has authority to establish rules governing election ballot mail.

Well, sure.

And since Talbot County controls some of the roads in the county, in November we can let the Roads Department decide who gets to vote.

That’s not how government is supposed to work.

In Talbot County, we understand the distinction.

Our county government can regulate a house. It can regulate where you build it, how big it is, if and when you can rent it, what you do with the property and, if you’re really star-crossed, how many cars your guests can park in the driveway.

But that doesn’t mean Planning & Zoning gets to decide who sits on the County Council.

Why?

Because having authority over something doesn’t automatically give you authority over everything that happens because of it.

The Postal Service absolutely has authority over the mail.

No argument there.

But when mail contains a ballot, we’re not dealing with an ordinary piece of mail. We’re dealing with something that is part of the machinery of an election.

And that’s where Alito’s argument begins to feel like one of those legal prestidigitations where the rabbit is already in the hat before anybody asks where it came from.

The rules at issue would impose federal requirements concerning ballot envelopes and Intelligent Mail barcodes and would require election officials to provide certain voter and ballot information through a federal Postal Service portal. The proposed system also contemplated the Postal Service refusing to accept certain ballot mail that did not comply with the new requirements.

That’s a pretty remarkable amount of influence for an organization whose traditional job description is delivering Auntie Mame’s birthday card.

Which reminds me of “Miracle on 34th Street.”

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember the scene. A lawyer is trying to prove that Kris Kringle really is Santa Claus.

The evidence?

The United States Post Office.

Letters addressed simply to “Santa Claus” have been delivered to Kris Kringle. The lawyer’s argument is wonderfully simple: The Post Office is an agency of the federal government, and it delivered the letters to this man. Therefore, the government itself has effectively recognized him as Santa Claus.

The judge accepts the logic.

Case dismissed.

It is one of the great bits of movie courtroom logic because it depends on something we generally expect from the Post Office:

If a letter is properly entrusted to it, the Post Office delivers it to the person to whom it is addressed.

In “Miracle on 34th Street,” the Post Office helps establish the identity of the recipient.

In this case, the dispute is about whether the Postal Service can impose additional federal requirements on election ballot mail — requirements that could determine whether certain ballot mail is accepted by the Postal Service in the first place.

Justice Alito’s dissent, to be fair, was more complicated than simply saying, “USPS controls the mail, therefore USPS controls ballots.” He also questioned whether some of the plaintiffs had legal standing to bring the challenge and challenged the legal basis of their claims. He argued that the Postal Service has broad statutory authority to establish rules governing the handling of election mail.

That doesn’t make his position frivolous.

Quite the opposite.

It makes the disagreement more interesting — and more important.

Justice Kavanaugh, meanwhile, took a more restrained view. He indicated that there may ultimately be a legitimate legal question about how much authority the Postal Service has over election mail, but agreed that the new requirements should not be imposed for the 2026 election while the legal fight continues.

In other words:

Maybe.

Just not now.

That’s not exactly radical.

Imagine the Talbot County Council announcing that tomorrow they’re changing the zoning code, and all pending applications must immediately comply with the new rules.

You would probably hear — with amplification — some familiar words:

“Due Process!”

“Notice!”

“Fairness!”

“Public hearings and input!”

And somebody would inevitably say, “But we’ve already invested thousands of dollars based on the existing rules.”

To which the government would presumably respond:

“Sorry, Bud. The hearing is Thursday.”

We’d all understand the problem.

Elections deserve at least as much procedural care as a zoning hearing.

Maybe more.

Because a zoning decision can cost you money.

A voting rule can affect your ability to cast your vote under rules you relied upon.

That’s why I find Alito’s dissent troubling — not because his legal argument is vapid. It isn’t.

It is actually rather clever.

Maybe too clever by half.

He takes a legitimate proposition — USPS has broad authority over the mail — and argues that this authority extends to establishing rules governing election ballot mail.

That’s quite a leap. Or stretch, if you prefer.

The Court’s decision doesn’t permanently answer every question about USPS authority over election mail. It simply leaves the lower-court injunction in place, preventing these new rules from being implemented for the 2026 election while the legal fight continues.

And perhaps that’s the most important part.

You don’t change the rules of the game when the players are already on the field.

Especially when the game is democracy.

For two and a half centuries, men and women in this country — in this county — friends, neighbors, parents, sons and daughters — have made sacrifices — many making the ultimate one — so that we can do something remarkably simple:

Vote. Be enfranchised. Fill out a ballot and have your voice counted according to trusted rules established for the election.

They didn’t sacrifice so that the system charged with ballot delivery could decide whether a ballot counts.

We have spent 250 years arguing about who should run this country.

We’ve fought wars over it.

We’ve marched over it.

We’ve disagreed about it, sometimes loudly.

But surely we can agree on one modest proposal:

The system that delivers the ballot shouldn’t get to decide whether the ballot counts. States and Boards of Election should.

So, the next time “Miracle on 34th Street” comes around during the holidays, watch the courtroom scene again.

Remember what the Post Office was entrusted to do.

Deliver the mail.

And maybe, like Susan Walker — played by a young Natalie Wood — we can still say:

“I believe.”

I believe the system that delivers my ballot should deliver it.

I believe the States and Boards of Elections who count ballots should count it.

And I believe those decisions belong to the people whose job it is to run elections — not the system whose job is to run the mail.

After all, we already have Santa Claus. And there’s already plenty of make-believe at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Post Office should not get stuck with doing anything other than delivering the mail.

P.S. And here’s to the Talbot County Board of Elections and all our volunteer poll workers: Hats off to you. You are the real magic that makes democracy work.

Keith Alan Watts

Tilghman Island

Keith Alan Watts is from Tilghman Island. He currently serves on Talbot County’s Short-Term Rental Review Board and is a former Chair of the Board.