The Postal Service has finished its rule on ballot mail, made it effective the day it signed it, and said it will not use it in November unless a court lifts two injunctions
Page one carries the date that decides everything else. Effective August 21, 2026.
That is the day the Postal Service signed the rule, and the reason it gives is the calendar. Delaying the effective date, the text says, would jeopardize implementation in time for the general election on 3 November. The Postal Service is exempt from the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act by 39 U.S.C. 410(a). It took comment anyway on the June proposal at 91 FR 32915, closed the period on 2 July, and has now issued the final rule under 39 CFR part 111, amending the Domestic Mail Manual.
Two pages later it puts the rule back down. Injunctions are in place in State of California v. Trump, No. 26-cv-11581 (D. Mass. June 25, 2026) and League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump, No. 26-cv-11549 (D. Mass. Aug. 11, 2026), and the Postal Service states that it "will not take actions to implement the rule specifically for the 2026 election unless and until the government obtains relief from those injunctions." So the rule is in force and dormant at the same time, and the document says which of the two it is on any given day depends on a court.
What the rule requires
The whole of it sits in new section 705.24 of the Domestic Mail Manual, and it has four moving parts.
Envelope design comes first. The Official Election Mail logo, an automation compatible envelope, a uniquely serialised Intelligent Mail barcode on the outbound envelope and another on the return envelope, and review by a mailpiece design analyst. Each of those already appears as a recommendation in the Postal Service's own Official Election Mail Guide, and the rule's argument for making them mandatory is uniformity rather than novelty.
Then the Portal. Before an outbound federal ballot mailing can be presented for acceptance, a Federal Ballot Mail Portal User has to upload the voter's name and address exactly as they appear on the envelope, the issuing state, and the barcodes from both envelopes. Nothing else. The document rules out birth dates, Social Security numbers and any other registration detail, and it says the Postal Service will not compare what is uploaded against a voter roll, will not correct a name, and will not judge whether an address is good.
Then entry. Outbound federal ballot mailings must be presented at a Post Office retail counter or a business mail entry unit. Not a blue collection box.
Then verification. A clerk scans the barcodes on the envelopes and confirms they are in the Portal, which the rule says takes under a minute a piece and a few hours for a large mailing. Mail that does not verify is not accepted, and the cure sits with the election official who prepared it rather than with the voter. Return ballots are outside this step entirely. The final rule says so in terms, having found that a large share of the opposing comments assumed the opposite, and a voter may still post a completed ballot from a residential mailbox or a collection box as before.
The list
On or about Election Day the Postal Service compiles every Portal entry for a state into a Mail-In and Absentee Participation List and transmits it to that state's chief election official. It is not published.
The document is direct about the second audience. The list will "provide federal law enforcement with a list of individuals to whom states planned to mail a ballot (and who may potentially use the mail to vote), along with the associated barcode data", and the Postal Service writes that law enforcement currently lacks such information regarding the use of the mail. The list is built from Portal data only. It is not filtered against National Change of Address records, Homeland Security data or Social Security data, it carries no scan data, and the rule accepts that it will be over inclusive, because every entry a state submits is accepted without checking.
The comments, and what moved
More than 200,000 responses arrived in the month the docket was open, most of them form letters, alongside more than 250 letters from organisations: postal unions, governors, members of Congress, secretaries of state, county election administrators, state attorneys general and voting rights groups. A coalition of thirteen state attorneys general led by Alabama wrote in support, and argued that the burdens the rule imposes are justified by its security benefits.
Five things changed between the proposal and the final rule, and the Postal Service describes all five as clarification. Verification is confirmed not to reach return ballots. The mailpiece design certification moves into the Portal rather than the counter, with the effect that a user who does not certify cannot upload at all. Responsibility for creating the barcodes is pinned on the mailer. Commercial mailing standards are confirmed to bind only commercial mailings. And "Ballot Portal User" becomes "Federal Ballot Mail Portal User".
Nothing on the substance moved. Commenters who asked for the rule to be cut back to envelope design alone did not get it, and commenters who asked for a citizenship check to be added did not get that either.
One deadline did shift, and it shifted before the comments. Executive Order 14399 of 31 March, at 91 FR 17125, contemplated states submitting their lists no fewer than 60 days before an election. The rule sets 30 days, and describes even that as flexible rather than rigid, on the ground that state law decides when ballots go out.
