Postmaster General Steiner Confirms USPS Will Withhold Mail Ballots From States That Refuse to Hand Over Voter Rolls

Since the USPS proposed rule dropped on June 11, the debate over federal control of mail voting has moved from regulatory fine print to open confrontation on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Postmaster General David Steiner made the stakes explicit.

Asked directly by Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) whether USPS would still mail ballots if a state refused to turn over its absentee voter list, Steiner answered: "Under our proposed regulation, no."

Earlier this year, Steiner told the New York Times that USPS would "absolutely" continue delivering mail-in ballots and would defer to the courts on the legality of President Trump's March executive order. Wednesday's testimony at the Senate Homeland Security Committee contradicts that directly.

What the Rule Actually Does

The proposed rule, reported by the New York Times and GV Wire, would require state election officials to send USPS a manifest of voters who have requested mail or absentee ballots at least 30 days before ballots go out. USPS employees would then screen ballots for eligibility against those lists. States that refuse don't get delivery.

This would effectively create a federal voter registration layer for absentee voting, something the Constitution has traditionally left to the states. As Michael Cohen, California's deputy attorney general, told a federal judge in Boston last week: "It's just difficult to overstate the disruption that this will cause to election administration."

Steiner defended the proposal by arguing it simply codifies "Kit 600," a set of USPS best practices for election mail. Peters pushed back, noting there is a clear legal difference between recommending best practices and conditioning ballot delivery on state compliance with a federal data demand.

The Constitutional Tension

The strongest argument for the proposed rule is that ballot integrity matters, and USPS has a legitimate operational interest in knowing what mail it is expected to handle. Supporters of Trump's executive order argue that voter rolls riddled with outdated or inaccurate entries create real logistical problems, and that a federal manifest requirement is no different from the coordination USPS already does with mailers for bulk mail. The 30-day advance manifest is an administrative tool, not an attack on voting rights, under this reading.

That argument deserves a straight hearing. But it runs into a hard structural problem: the Constitution assigns election administration to the states, and federal conditioning of a basic mail service on state disclosure of sensitive voter data is a different category of federal involvement than standard bulk-mail logistics. As Peters put it Wednesday, "This is basically a back-door way for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution."

Anton Hajjar, a former member of the USPS Board of Governors, told the New York Times the rule also threatens the service's historic independence as a nonpartisan carrier, a point that cuts across partisan lines.

The Scope of Impact

The states with the most exposure are those where mail voting is not optional. Oregon, for example, conducts elections almost entirely by mail. If USPS withholds delivery in a state that refuses to comply, the effect is not marginal. According to the New York Times, millions of Americans could be affected.

The GV Wire report, sourcing the New York Times, notes that the population most disrupted would disproportionately be Democratic voters, because Trump's repeated claims that mail balloting invites fraud have led more Republicans to vote in person. Democrats see targeted disenfranchisement. Trump supporters see correcting a system they believe is structurally biased against them.

No verified evidence of the widespread mail-ballot fraud Trump has cited has been presented in these sources.

A Direct Conflict on the Record

The New York Times noted that Steiner committed on Wednesday to following any court orders governing voting by mail, which is consistent with his earlier statement. But that hedge matters less than the underlying policy. If the rule takes effect and no court blocks it before state ballot preparation deadlines hit, states face a binary choice: comply and hand over voter data by the 30-day window, or refuse and potentially leave their voters without mail ballots.

Sen. Margaret Hassan (D-N.H.) called on Steiner to withdraw the rule immediately. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told him directly: "Please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook."

Steiner did not indicate he would withdraw the rule.

What Happens Next

A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general is already in federal court in Boston challenging the rule. With the 2026 general election roughly 130 days away, the timeline for legal resolution is tight. States that run primarily mail-ballot elections will need to begin ballot preparation well before any final court ruling. Whether a federal judge will issue a preliminary injunction blocking the rule before states face that 30-day manifest deadline, or whether the legal process drags past the point where states can realistically comply or adjust their systems, remains unclear.