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This spring, President Donald Trump targeted mail-in voting with an executive order, setting off a legal battle that’s raged with increasing intensity and remains unsettled two months out from the midterm election.
The preferred voting method of Oregon and seven other states (and an option to vote in nearly all of them), mail-in voting is also a favorite scapegoat for Trump’s 2020 electoral loss. His order in part attempts to use the U.S. Postal Service to distribute ballots only to voters on approved lists. But voter organizations and 23 states, including Oregon, have fought back, asserting in separate legal challenges that the order is an unconstitutional attack on the duty of states to conduct national elections.
U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani has so far agreed with the plaintiffs and issued legal blocks on several occasions. Trump continues to seek emergency relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Friday, Talwani extended her prohibition on the Postal Service implementing Trump’s order. Secretary of State Tobias Read and Oregon’s two U.S. senators have scheduled a press conference Tuesday at the state Capitol where they intend to discuss “what actions can be taken now to protect Oregon’s safe, accurate, and fair vote-by-mail elections.”
With time running out for Trump to implement his order (North Carolina began sending out mail ballots Friday morning), Oregon leaders sound confident that voters will have their say in November. But a certain high-ranking executive official sounds confident, as well. He called an earlier Supreme Court ruling—which temporarily allowed the executive order to proceed—“great for the Republican party.”
Whatever happens, observers say Executive Order 14399 represents an unprecedented interference with the ability of all states—not just Oregon—to hold elections as they have for the past 200 years. But despite the high stakes of the 2026 midterms and the bad faith of some leaders involved, many have kept faith in U.S. institutions.
Norman Willams is among them.
Williams is the Peterson professor of constitutional law and director of the Center for Constitutional Government at Willamette University College of Law, where he’s taught constitutional and election law for more than two decades. He’s written two books on election law.
Last week, he spoke with WW about how Trump’s gambit could impact Oregon elections. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
WW: How freaked out should we be right now?
Norman Williams: Not too freaked out, I guess. I want to be very balanced about this—the system is working right now. Judge Talwani issued her injunction. The Supreme Court’s lifting of her earlier injunction was on a very narrow ground, and the court was very careful to not opine on the merits. I think the Supreme Court will be very reluctant to allow the president to make changes nationwide for the 2026 election on his own volition without any congressional authorization.
So I guess I’m cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court is going to allow Judge Tawani’s injunction to stand, so Oregon and other states that use mail-in voting and absentee voting by mail will be able to conduct their elections as they always have. If the Supreme Court does something different—if it allows this executive order to go into effect—then I think we’re in a whole different universe.
It’s easy to envision a scenario where lots of people around the country are disenfranchised. What would be the remedy there, because there aren’t really do-overs with elections, right?
No, that’s right. Election Day is Election Day, as Congress has specified since the 1840s. And this is essentially what the states are arguing—that you can’t unring the bell if the Postal Service’s regulations go into effect and USPS refuses to deliver ballots to registered voters. You could have a situation where millions of voters nationwide are essentially prevented from participating in the 2026 election.
And that’s the fear that’s driving the states’ challenges here: You can’t do this in a way, at this late juncture, that doesn’t run the risk of disenfranchising a lot of voters in many states.
A whistleblower at USPS says the agency is already rushing to implement some of these new rules. Does that concern you?
I think the whistleblower report will become grist for Judge Talwani because it really does give substance to the states’ argument that the Postal Service just doesn’t have the resources to implement this executive order. And it’s trying to implement the order, as the whistleblower alleges, on the fly in a manner that’s only going to produce more problems for states.
And I think the whistleblower report in some sense vindicates the state of Oregon and the other states’ arguments that this order can’t be implemented in time for 2026.
Have you seen anything comparable to this in U.S. history?
Fortunately, election disputes of this magnitude don’t arise often, at least in recent American history. Yes, we had the disputed 2000 presidential election, the litigation out of Florida. We’ve had individual controversies about elections—if you recall President Trump in 2020. A challenged election was the result in a number of swing states, most notably Pennsylvania. But notice: The system worked. The federal courts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, all rejected the challenges and said there was no evidence those elections were incorrect, let alone rigged as President Trump and his lawyers were arguing at the time.
So overall, we’ve had election controversies in the past and American democracy has survived and flourished. And while I certainly understand the emotions surrounding these challenges, again, I’m cautiously optimistic that the courts will ensure a free, fair and open election process. I guess we’ll see.
What happens if public trust in our electoral system continues to diminish?
This is where I think President Trump has done a real disservice. Not only to the nation as a whole but in particular to election workers in all 50 states. The United States has over two centuries of experience with running elections. That’s what makes the U.S. exceptional—we were committed to democracy. And yes, our democracy has been imperfect. But the trend has always been towards improving it. And we’ve been running elections not only in Oregon but in all 50 states, really, without any significant flaws.
It’s both inaccurate and ultimately unfair for the president to suggest that our election system is subject to being rigged, manipulated, or is broken. The president’s never been able to come up with evidence of that. The problems that the president’s supporters have identified are, in the vast scheme of things, small beer, and they’re not going to imperil the validity of a particular election.
There’s one thing I tell my students and that I tell people, both Republicans and Democrats, and that is: Have faith in your election workers. Have faith that the election in your state is going to be fair, equal, open and accurate—that the person who election authorities declare the winner, is in fact the person who won the most votes. And the reason I can say that is we have so many safeguards in our system now. There’s every reason that Americans of all political stripes should have confidence in our election process.
