1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

As your constituent, I am writing to urge immediate congressional action against an unprecedented expansion of executive power over our state-run election systems. On June 24, Postmaster General David Steiner testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee that under a proposed new rule, USPS will refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in any state that doesn't hand over its list of voters who requested absentee ballots. When Senator Gary Peters asked directly — "Will the Postal Service still mail their ballots if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government?" — Steiner answered: "No." This rule flows from a March 2026 executive order directing USPS to send absentee ballots only to voters on federally approved lists. It is straightforward coercion: hand over your voter data to the federal government, or your constituents can't vote by mail. It is wrong on every level: - It's unconstitutional — and a federal court said so today. On June 25, a federal judge in Boston stepped in and blocked the order, ruling its provisions "unconstitutionally violate the separation of powers." All 47 Senate Democrats plus two independents have also called on USPS to withdraw the associated rule, calling it an "unconstitutional and illegal attempt to transform USPS into an election administration agency controlled by the White House." The USPS proposed rule remains in play and must be addressed legislatively. - It solves a problem that doesn't exist. The conservative Heritage Foundation has spent decades building its Election Fraud Database — a curated collection of every proven fraud case it could find going back to 1982. It found that less than one-thousandth of one percent of votes might have been fraudulent out of more than two billion votes cast. A sweeping federal mandate that risks preventing millions of eligible Americans from voting by mail is not a proportionate response to a problem that small. - It will disenfranchise eligible voters. The order requires states to submit pre-approved lists of mail voters earlier than their own state deadlines allow — meaning voters who request ballots through legal state processes may simply never receive them, with no notification that their vote wasn't counted. States like Oregon conduct elections almost entirely by mail. This doesn't prevent fraud — it prevents voting. - It threatens states with loss of federal funding. States that don't comply face the withholding of federal funds — and the order is unclear about whether that means just election funding or broader federal support. Using funding as a weapon to coerce states into surrendering voter data is a form of federal blackmail that has no place in our constitutional system. - It is operationally reckless. UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen wrote that "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections... It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts." Building new federal eligibility databases, creating new USPS tracking infrastructure, and requiring states to integrate these systems in months — without additional funding or support — is a recipe for administrative chaos that will cost eligible voters their ballots. - The USPS Board of Governors didn't even approve it. Senate questioning during the hearing indicated the Board did not formally authorize this rule — raising serious questions about whether the Postal Service is acting within its own governance structure, let alone within the law. The Constitution is clear on this. Article I, Section 4 gives states the primary authority to set the times, places, and manner of holding elections. Congress has a defined secondary role to set uniform rules. The president has no constitutional authority over election administration at all. What is happening now is the executive branch using the Post Office — an independent agency — to muscle into a process it has no constitutional standing whatsoever to direct. I urge you to act on three fronts: 1. Block the USPS rule legislatively. Today's court ruling halts the executive order — but the USPS proposed rule it spawned remains active and must be stopped through legislation and funding restrictions that explicitly prohibit the Postal Service from conditioning delivery of official election mail on receipt of state voter data. 2. Defend the court ruling. Support the legal outcome and make clear that Congress will resist any attempt to achieve through legislation what the court has just ruled the executive cannot do unilaterally. The constitutional division of election authority is not a partisan position — it is the foundation of our federal system. 3. Protect states from funding coercion. Pass legislation clarifying that no federal funds — election-related or otherwise — may be withheld from states as a condition of compliance with executive branch demands for voter data. Our election systems must remain decentralized, independent, and under local control. I expect you to act.