MADISON, Wis. — Law Forward filed an amici curiae (“friends of the court”) brief in federal court in Washington, D.C., supporting three consolidated lawsuits challenging President Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to take over key functions of mail-in ballot administration. The brief argues that the executive order would conflict with and upend Wisconsin’s uniquely decentralized election system and could disenfranchise eligible voters ahead of the next statewide election. The five amici include the nonprofit organizations Wisconsin Democracy Campaign and EXPO of Wisconsin as well as three Wisconsin voters who attend college out-of-state.

The brief was filed in DSCC v. Trump, pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where three different groups of plaintiffs are seeking to block the executive order. Law Forward’s brief supports those preliminary injunction motions, noting that the order is an unprecedented and unconstitutional federal power grab over the administration of absentee voting by mail, which falls clearly under the purview of states in the U.S. Constitution and the State of Wisconsin always has managed on its own.

The Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants authority over federal election administration to states and Congress, not the president. By directing USPS to refuse to deliver ballots to anyone not on a new federal “citizenship list” compiled by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the order effectively allows the executive branch to unilaterally determine who is eligible to vote. The federal databases DHS would use to build those lists were designed for immigration enforcement, not voter eligibility, and they have documented error rates that could wrongly flag American citizens as ineligible.

“As the plaintiffs point out in their preliminary injunction filings, the president has no more authority to decide who gets a mail ballot than he does to pick the winners of elections,” said Law Forward Director of Litigation Doug Poland. “The Constitution is clear: states run elections, not the White House. And building voter eligibility lists out of broken federal databases, then threatening to prosecute election officials who get it wrong, is a recipe for mass disenfranchisement. Our brief, which supports the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motions, provides an analysis and examples of how both the timing and substantive requirements of the executive order directly conflict with Wisconsin’s election administration process and would disenfranchise Wisconsin voters.”

Wisconsin administers elections through a network of 1,850 municipal clerks, 72 county clerks and the Wisconsin Elections Commission. This is a unique system nationally, where local officials are responsible for processing, tracking, and counting mail ballots in real time. Local clerks already face the issue of late-returned absentee ballots. The executive order’s directive to route mail-in ballot functions through USPS—an overburdened, under-resourced agency with no elections expertise—would only cause further mail delays. And in Wisconsin, ballots returned after election day are not counted, even if postmarked before election day.  

The brief also points out that the executive order would effectively prohibit any Wisconsinite who does not register with USPS to vote by mail at least 60 days before an election from voting by mail. This is so even though Wisconsin law permits voters to register and to obtain absentee ballots until a few days before each election.

“Wisconsinites have the freedom to vote how we choose and to decide our own future,” said Nick Ramos, Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Executive Director. “We value our decentralized elections because it means our trusted friends and neighbors run our elections in their communities. This executive order is a blatant attempt to suppress voters, and we won’t stand for it.”

The brief, filed Friday, can be read in full here.