Courts Block New USPS Mail Ballot Rule Ahead of Midterm Elections
Trump’s Mail-Ballot Gambit Shows Power Without Preparation
A leader who tries to bend the vote by legal tricks and spectacle, but neglects execution and institutions, offers a lesson in how fortuna punishes unarmed boldness.
In Dallas, a man tells voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot” in a midterm where, formally, he is not. That is not a joke; it is a strategy. He wants the election to be a referendum on himself, to transform every local contest into a test of his strength. This is the instinct of any prince who fears becoming irrelevant. When I wrote in *The Prince* that a ruler’s first task is to maintain the state, I meant that he must maintain the state that sustains him. He has understood this. He fights not merely over seats but over the perception that he remains the inevitable center of events.
To this end he attacks mail voting, blames it for an earlier loss, and yet uses it himself. One must not look for coherence of doctrine here but for coherence of interest. By discrediting a method of voting disproportionately used by his adversaries, while quietly enjoying its convenience, he tries to shear the sheep and keep the wool. The effectual truth is simple: he wants fewer hostile ballots counted and more of his own. Men do not ruin instruments they truly fear; they ruin those that mostly cut the other side. This is not hypocrisy; it is tactics.
He does not move alone. A conservative majority on the supreme tribunal has, we are told, already destroyed protections in the Voting Rights Act and approved unprecedented mid-decade changes in districts that yield some ten more friendly seats in the contest for the people’s chamber. Here are arms, though not of steel: legal arms, institutional arms, judgments that cut new channels for the vote like engineers diverting a river. In *The Prince* I warned against relying on mercenaries and auxiliaries, for power borrowed is power owed, and the debt comes due at the worst hour. A leader who leans on judges as his soldiers must remember that judges obey law, reputation, and their own factional calculations, not personal loyalty.
The postal scheme shows this dependence and its limits. The administration pushes a new rule: states must hand over their voter rolls through a portal not yet finished, adopt new envelopes and bar codes, accept that a single scanning error could void a batch of ten thousand ballots. A whistleblower calls the system rushed and fundamentally flawed. Republican officials in several states tell the court neither they nor the postal service can implement it successfully in time. This is where virtù fails. In calm weather, a prudent ruler builds dykes and barriers against fortune’s floods; as I wrote in *The Prince*, in W. K. Marriott’s translation, this preparation is the whole difference between being drowned and staying dry. Here, the dykes are missing, and the river runs back on its author.
Lower courts block the rule, describing near-certain disenfranchisement if states must suddenly “pivot” in the middle of an election cycle. A unanimous panel affirms. Even within the high court, one justice agrees these restrictions should not operate for the midterms, though he hints he may favor them later. This is the mixed order at work. In the *Discourses on Livy*, translated by Ninian Hill Thomson, I argued that a people with good laws is wiser and more constant than any prince, and that institutions which set appetite against appetite endure longest. Here, the ambition to tilt the field meets resistance not from sermons but from other powers who fear chaos, blame, or future precedent turned against them.
What remains is a dangerous middle course. Part of the broader effort to shape elections has succeeded: earlier decisions on voting rights and districts stand, empowering one side. Part fails: the mail-ballot rule collapses as “Kafkaesque,” secretive, chaotic. The result is neither open tyranny nor clear legality, but muddle. I despise this middle course. Mercy ill-used lets disorder fester; severity ill-used multiplies enemies without ending the fight. Here, legal severity toward mail ballots is attempted without the preparation to make it orderly, so the courts must intervene, and the people receive another lesson that the system is both manipulated and incompetent.
Does the referendum on the man occur? In one sense, yes: every blocked rule, every denunciation from state officials, every statement calling the court’s decision a “major victory for American democracy” feeds the story that he stands against the many. In another sense, no: the true referendum falls not on one person but on the capacity of institutions to restrain him. For now, he has shown boldness without sufficient arms of his own, spectacle without execution, legal allies who will not always walk into obvious disaster. Fortune sometimes favors such men for a season. But when a leader asks the whole country to think only of him, he invites them, in time, to tire of him too.
From the works cited
- The Prince — Virtù versus fortuna — the raging-river figure: preparation in fair weather is the whole difference between the drowned and the dry.
- The Prince — Arms of one's own versus mercenaries and auxiliaries: power borrowed is power owed, and it will be collected at the worst moment.
- Discourses on Livy — The people, collectively and under good laws, are wiser and more constant than princes — but an unchecked people is as dangerous as an unchecked prince. Mixed orders that set appetite against appetite outlast anything pure.