2026-08-03T10:00:25.631Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/trump-mail-voting-supreme-court-appeal
唐纳德·特朗普总统限制邮寄选票使用的紧急上诉，即将考验一项有争议的、已存在20年的最高法院原则——该原则旨在避免选举前出现混乱。
这项“珀塞尔原则”源自2006年最高法院的一项判决，警告联邦法院不得在选举最后时刻修改投票规则。但在此前的最高法院案件中，该原则从未被用于涉及联邦选举政策的案件，比如特朗普此次试图让美国邮政服务局和国土安全部协助各州筛查选民名册，找出潜在的非公民选民的行动。
由6名保守派大法官组成的多数派在特朗普案中如何处理这项由法院自身确立且屡遭批评的原则，可能会对最高法院如何处理今年秋季以及2028年总统大选前必然涌入其日程的大量选举诉讼产生实际影响。
“我们此次面临的可能是会影响2026年选举运作的联邦机构行动，”专注于投票政策的保守派团体“诚实选举项目”副总裁查德·恩尼斯说道，“我认为这是前所未有的案情，最高法院如果会适用珀塞尔原则的话，如何适用还是个未知数。”
特朗普总统今年3月签署的行政命令将要求各州向美国邮政服务局提交合格选民名单，该局不得向不在该名单上的人邮寄选票。该命令还要求各州在选票信封上使用追踪条形码，并“优先”联邦起诉那些向非公民或其他无投票资格者寄送或接收选票的州选举官员。
该命令还要求国土安全部创建各州符合条件的美国公民选民名单。
波士顿的联邦法院已阻止该命令的执行。特朗普上周向最高法院提起了紧急上诉。此次上诉并未涉及总统行政命令的实质内容，也未提及珀塞尔原则。但如果最高法院在该案的任何部分支持特朗普，今年晚些时候很可能会引发一场围绕该原则的对决。
挑战特朗普的民主党州集团将于周一回应总统的紧急上诉。最高法院随后可能在本月晚些时候作出裁决。
由于珀塞尔原则的存在，时机问题几乎始终是联邦挑战投票规则案件的核心议题。
去年12月，最高法院允许德克萨斯州使用有利于共和党保住众议院控制权的国会选区地图，部分原因是该州的初选定于3月举行。
2024年，最高法院援引珀塞尔原则，允许路易斯安那州使用有利于民主党人的国会选区地图，因为该州辩称候选人报名截止日期已近在咫尺。
两年前，在阿拉巴马州初选前约一个月，最高法院似乎依靠珀塞尔原则保留了该州共和党人绘制的国会选区地图，尽管下级法院判决该地图稀释了黑人选民的政治影响力。最高法院的简短命令并未援引珀塞尔原则，但布雷特·卡瓦诺大法官撰写了一份长篇协同意见，为该案中适用该原则进行辩护。
“本院多次指出，联邦法院通常不应在选举临近之际叫停州的选举法律，”卡瓦诺写道，“这项被称为珀塞尔原则的准则，反映了选举法的一项基本原则：选举临近时，选举规则必须明确且稳定。”
但批评者指出，最高法院多数派在5月允许路易斯安那州立即恢复使用有利于共和党的国会选区地图，尽管当时该州根据包含第二个黑人选区的不同地图已经启动了初选提前投票。自由派大法官凯坦吉·布朗·杰克逊当时质疑，她的同僚们如何能将该案中的快速处理方式与他们在其他案件中不愿在最后时刻介入的态度相协调。
杰克逊指出，路易斯安那州的紧急上诉是在“全州选举进行期间”提出的。
“最高法院今日解除了自身的两项约束，投身于这场纷争，”她写道，“就这样，这些原则让位于权力。”
她的异议招致了保守派大法官塞缪尔·阿利托的严厉反驳，阿利托指出，杰克逊本应在今年选举中保留的选区地图几天前已被最高法院裁定违宪。在路易斯安那州诉卡莱斯案中最高法院作出裁决后，该州还暂停了众议院选举的投票。
珀塞尔原则目前并未在特朗普邮寄选票上诉案中成为争议焦点，但各州可能会要求法院牢记该原则，以避免陷入一个死局。这是因为特朗普的核心论点是，挑战其行政命令的州和团体起诉得太早。如果最高法院同意特朗普的观点，各州将不得不等待重启诉讼，这必然会使案件临近11月的选举，届时政府可以援引珀塞尔原则阻止法院介入。
特朗普领导的司法部辩称，针对政府的诉讼尚未“成熟”，因为政府尚未采取任何措施执行其行政命令。
https://www.cnn.com/
特朗普请求最高法院允许其限制邮寄选票
1:12 • 来源：CNN
“这项行政命令是总统向其下属发出的部门内部指令——就其本身而言，根本不会改变任何州的选举状况，”美国副检察长D.约翰·佐尔在上周政府向最高法院提交的上诉中告诉大法官们。
与此同时，政府并未排除在案件后续阶段援引珀塞尔原则的可能。在5月另一起涉及同一行政命令的案件听证会上，特朗普任命的联邦地区法官卡尔·尼科尔斯询问政府是否会提出这一论点。政府律师斯蒂芬·佩齐表示他认为不太可能。
但他也没有完全排除这种可能性。
“当然，我不能也不会在今天的听证台上排除8月份的局势可能出现的任何情况，”佩齐说，“但在我看来，这类考虑是否适用于本案还远未明确。”
由于联邦政府在历史上对选举运作的参与度极低，提交至最高法院的最后时刻投票案件通常都涉及州级政策。
美国公民自由联盟投票权利项目主任索菲亚·林·莱金将特朗普政府的邮寄选票行政命令描述为前所未有的。这意味着该案可能会揭示最高法院对珀塞尔原则的处理方式。
“许多关于珀塞尔原则的判决都是在‘影子案卷’中作出的，未必能获得五名大法官的明确支持，因此我们有时需要拼凑各种不同的观点，才能推断出最终结果，”莱金说道，她所在的团队正在马萨诸塞州联邦法院对特朗普的行政命令提起另一项诉讼。
尽管特朗普的紧急上诉提出了最高法院尚未直接回应的问题，但莱金表示，她认为有迹象表明，多数大法官可能会投票介入以阻止政府的命令，即便他们已考虑到珀塞尔原则。越来越多的保守派大法官将该原则描述为限制联邦法院干涉各州负责的选举的权力。
从这个意义上说，该原则部分涉及将选举管理权让渡给各州——而非联邦法院或联邦机构。
“这项邮寄选票行政命令越过了红线，”莱金说，“这是联邦行为者在负责选举的各州反对的情况下，向州选举系统强加了突如其来的变革。”
https://www.cnn.com/
卡玛拉·哈里斯提议将最高法院大法官人数增至13名
0:40 • 来源：CNN
圣母大学法学教授、选举法专家德里克·穆勒对此表示赞同。
“当你因联邦制关切而叫停州级规则时，珀塞尔原则的分量更重，”穆勒说，“这本身就是与联邦选举政策的有力区别。”
穆勒表示，最高法院在审理选举案件时还会考虑珀塞尔原则之外的其他因素。他说，如果法院认为联邦政府试图通过最后时刻的变更操纵体系，这些其他因素可能会对联邦政府不利。
“我还认为，当规则在选举临近时才制定，珀塞尔原则实际上并不适用，”穆勒说，“在这种情况下，常规的衡平法考量会允许法院介入。”
华盛顿特区的联邦上诉法院上周在另一起案件中批准了特朗普的行政命令。在该命令的最后一段，法院驳斥了特朗普政府能够援引珀塞尔原则阻止今年晚些时候对其命令的未来挑战的观点。
“原告的担忧将珀塞尔原则搞反了，”由三名上诉法院法官组成的合议庭说道。
如果政府试图“在即将到来的选举前夕对各州的投票系统进行大规模变革”，联邦法院可以不顾珀塞尔原则予以阻止——因为此举将“维护各州现有的选举现状”。
值得注意的是，该上诉法院未援引任何最高法院判决来支持这一结论。
CNN的蒂尔尼·斯尼德为本报道撰稿。
Trump’s mail voting appeal tests Supreme Court’s anti-chaos election rule
2026-08-03T10:00:25.631Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politics/trump-mail-voting-supreme-court-appeal
President Donald Trump’s emergency appeal aimed at limiting the use of mail ballots is poised to test a controversial, 20-year-old Supreme Court principle that was intended to avoid chaos before elections.
The “Purcell principle,” rooted in a 2006 Supreme Court decision, warns federal courts against making last-minute changes to voting rules. But the principle has never before been weighed in a Supreme Court case involving a federal election policy like Trump’s effort to give the US Postal Service and the Department of Homeland Security a hand in screening state voter rolls for potential non-citizen voters.
How the 6-3 conservative majority deals with its self-created and oft-criticized rule in the Trump case could have practical implications for how the court handles the flood of litigation that will inevitably crash onto its docket this fall, and ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
“Here we have potential federal agency action that could impact the way the 2026 election is run,” said Chad Ennis, the vice president of the Honest Elections Project, a conservative group focused on voting policies. “I think this is a novel set of facts and how SCOTUS would apply Purcell, if at all, is an open question.”
Signed in March, the president’s executive order would require states to submit lists of eligible voters to the US Postal Service, which would be barred from sending ballots to anyone not on those lists. It would also require states to use tracking barcodes on ballot envelopes. And it would “prioritize” federal prosecution of state election officials who send or receive ballots to non-citizens or others ineligible to vote.
The order also requires DHS to create lists of what it views as eligible, US citizen voters in each state.
Federal courts in Boston blocked the order’s implementation. Trump filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court last week. That appeal doesn’t deal with the merits of the president’s order, nor does it say anything about Purcell. But if the court sides with Trump on any portion of the case, it will likely set up a showdown over the doctrine later this year.
A group of Democratic states challenging Trump will respond to the president’s emergency appeal on Monday. The Supreme Court could then rule later this month.
Because of the Purcell doctrine, timing almost always lurks as a central issue in federal challenges to voting rules.
In December, the Supreme Court allowed Texas to use a congressional map that boosted the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the House, partly because the primary election was set for March.
In 2024, the court cited Purcell when it allowed Louisiana to use a congressional map that benefited Democrats because the state argued that candidate filing deadlines were fast approaching.
Two years earlier, roughly a month out from Alabama’s primary election, the court appeared to rely on Purcell to keep a congressional map drawn by the state’s Republicans in place, despite a lower court decision that the map diluted the political power of Black voters. The court’s brief order didn’t cite Purcell, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurrence defending its application in that case.
“This court has repeatedly stated that federal courts ordinarily should not enjoin a state’s election laws in the period close to an election,” Kavanaugh wrote. “That principle — known as the Purcell principle — reflects a bedrock tenet of election law: When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled.”
Critics, however, note that a majority of the court was fine allowing Louisiana to revert immediately to a Republican-friendly congressional map in May even though absentee voting had already started for the primary under a different map that included a second Black-majority district. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal, questioned at the time how her colleagues could square the hurry-up approach in that case with its reticence to engage at the last minute in others.
Jackson noted that the emergency Louisiana appeal came “in the midst of an ongoing statewide election.”
“The court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray,” she wrote. “And just like that, those principles give way to power.”
Her dissent drew a sharp rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, who noted that the map Jackson would have left in place for this year’s election had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court days earlier. The state had also suspended voting in the House contests after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.
Purcell is not currently at issue in the Trump appeal over the mail ballots, but the states are likely to ask the court to keep the doctrine in mind to head off a catch-22 scenario. That’s because Trump’s central argument is that the states and groups who are challenging his order sued too soon. If the Supreme Court agrees with Trump, then the states will have to wait to revive their litigation. And that will necessarily push the cases closer to the November election, allowing the administration to raise Purcell to bar courts from weighing in.
Trump’s Justice Department has argued that the lawsuit against the administration isn’t “ripe” because the government hasn’t taken any steps yet to enforce its order.
https://www.cnn.com/
Trump asks Supreme Court to let him curtail mail voting
1:12 • Source: CNN
“The executive order is an intra-branch directive from the president to his subordinates — which, of its own force, does not change anything at all about elections in any state,” US Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices in the administration’s appeal last week.
At the same time, the administration hasn’t ruled out trying to invoke Purcell at a later stage in the case. At a May hearing in a separate case dealing with the same executive order, US District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump nominee, asked if the administration would try to raise that argument. The administration’s attorney, Stephen Pezzi, said he didn’t think it was likely.
But he also didn’t rule it out.
“I, of course, can’t and won’t take an argument off the table about what the world will look like in August from the lectern today,” Pezzi said. “But it’s far from clear to me that that sort of consideration would apply here.”
Because the federal government has historically had an infinitesimal role in running elections, the last-minute voting cases that race up to the Supreme Court have dealt with state policies.
Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, described the Trump administration’s executive order on mail ballots as unprecedented. And that means the case may shed light on the court’s approach to Purcell.
“Many of these decisions on Purcell have been handled on the shadow docket in a way that hasn’t necessarily garnered clear support of five justices, so we’ve been at times piecing together different ideas along the way to determine how it might play out,” said Lakin, whose group is challenging Trump’s executive order in a separate case pending in a federal court in Massachusetts.
While Trump’s emergency appeal raises questions the court hasn’t directly addressed, Lakin said she believes there are clues that a majority of justices might vote to intervene to halt the administration’s order, even with Purcell on their minds. Increasingly, the court’s conservatives have framed the principle as a check on the power of federal courts to interfere in elections that are run by states.
In that sense, the doctrine is partly about ceding control to run elections to the states — not the federal courts, nor federal agencies.
“This mail voting executive order sits on the wrong side of the line,” Lakin said. “It’s a federal actor imposing late-breaking changes on state election systems over the objections of the states that run them.”
https://www.cnn.com/
Kamala Harris proposes expanding the Supreme Court to 13 justices
0:40 • Source: CNN
Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame who is an expert on election law, agreed.
“Purcell has more weight when you are enjoining a state rule because of federalism concerns,” Muller said. “That on its own is a powerful distinction” from a federal election policy.
The court also considers more than just Purcell when it’s weighing an elections case, Muller said. Those other factors, he said, might disfavor the federal government if courts felt it was attempting to game the system with last-minute changes.
“I also think Purcell doesn’t really work when the rule is being enacted very close in time to the election,” Muller said. “In that circumstance, regular equitable considerations would allow courts to intervene.”
A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, okayed Trump’s executive order in a separate case last week. In the final paragraph of that order, the court dismissed the idea that the Trump administration would be able to invoke Purcell to shut down a future challenge to its order later this year.
“Plaintiffs’ fear has the Purcell principle backwards,” the panel of three appeals court judges said.
If the administration were to attempt to impose “massive changes on the states’ voting systems on the threshold of the upcoming election,” then federal courts could block that — despite Purcell — because such a move would “preserve the states’ existing electoral status quo.”
The appeals court, tellingly, didn’t cite a single Supreme Court decision to back up that conclusion.
CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.