Would it surprise you to know that a pair of socks you ordered from Amazon is far more trackable than your mail-in ballot, leaving your vote – arguably the most important kind of letter carried by the United States Postal Service (USPS) – with less of a digital trail than your latest impulse buy?
If you're a RedState reader, probably not. We've reported time and again about mail-in voting irregularities, ballot-harvesting schemes, ballots showing up where they shouldn’t, and questions about a reliable chain of custody being maintained once millions of votes start moving through the postal system.
The Trump administration is trying to do something about that. Short of doing away with mail-in ballots altogether, the administration would like there to be stricter rules in place to ensure the integrity of our elections.
US Postal Service issues rule to tighten requirements for mail-in voting despite courts looking to block https://t.co/VQJSIiveQL
— The Hill (@thehill) August 23, 2026
With the midterms just a few months away, the USPS has finalized a strict new rule on how mail-in and absentee ballots are to be handled in federal elections. This new rule, which was announced Friday, would require that states tell the Postal Service who is supposed to be receiving these kinds of ballots, and those envelopes would then have to have unique identifiers on them so that each piece can be individually tracked as it makes its way through the mail system.
The 95-page final rule, which is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register on Wednesday, stems from an executive order signed by President Trump back in March that ordered the USPS to develop stricter standards for mail-in ballots, which included a requirement that their envelopes have trackable "unique Intelligent Mail barcodes" on them.
Sounds sensible and easy, right? Not so fast.
Because this is the Trump administration we're talking about here, there is, of course, an Obama-appointed judge standing in the way of these common-sense measures being enacted.
JUST IN: DOJ says the Postal Service rule on mail-in balloting will be formally put on the books next week — but emphasizes that two court orders prevent it from actually having any effect and USPS won’t act to implement it. pic.twitter.com/Xp9lVGZkKa
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 22, 2026
If the courts eventually decide to clear the way for this rule to be implemented, participating states would then have to provide USPS with lists of voters who have been issued mail-in or absentee ballots. Blue states are likely to balk at this, considering most of them (see: New Jersey) have done a terrible job cleaning their voter rolls.
For its part, the USPS would also keep identifying information linking each mail-in voter to the unique Intelligent Mail barcodes on both the outgoing and return ballot envelopes.
You know, like we already do with those Amazon socks.
For now, though, the new USPS safeguards remain stuck in a legal vortex. The USPS rule has done what Trump's order instructed it to do and put the system in place on paper – whether it gets to use it before voters start casting ballots in November is now up to the courts. And precious time is ticking away.
Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure.
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