CBS News98%
Legal analysis on whether states or the federal government decide election rules 62%
7/30/2026, 5:07:39 PM
BS Summary: This video contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Burden of Proof, and Confirmation Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 32.6% saturation with 215 hits. Analysis detected 1,598 faulty-reasoning hits from 660 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 56.5% and a BS Rank of 62% (8,714 of 22,830 videos). This video is worse (more manipulative) than 61.80% of the video peer group.
President Trump is not backing down on his efforts to restrict mail-in voting
ahead of the midterms.
Earlier this week, his administration asked the Supreme Court to allow an executive order seeking to use federal data to create citizenship lists to determine eligible voters.
It also tells the Postal Service to deliver mail-in ballots only to people on those lists.
The order says ballots should have secure envelopes with unique tracking barcodes.
The administration says federal funding could be withheld from states that don't comply.
Last week, again, a federal appeals court sided with Democratic officials in 23 states and DC who sued to block the order.
CBS News legal contributor Jessica Levinson joins us now.
She's also a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
So, Jessica, do these states and DC have standing to sue the administration?
>> issues. There's a couple of challenges, as you mentioned, to this executive order that could change mail-in voting.
Now, one of the challenges is actually based on this initial question of the states who are challenging the executive order, can they walk into federal court?
We know that one of the things you need to walk into federal court is something called standing.
It means that you're injured, that your injury is caused by the action that you're complaining about, and that if you win, you could get some redressability, some remedy.
And the states are arguing here that they have standing, one, because the federal government is trying to invade their sovereignty, and two, because it's going to cost them money to try to implement this executive order, that they'll have to educate voters, that they might have to change election procedures.
And what they're saying is that's enough of a harm to move forward with the case.
>> So, who has the power when it comes to election rules, the states or the federal government?
>> Yeah, so here's a who decides question, and the answer is we always have to look to the constitutions, and the Constitution says states to determine the time, place, and manner of elections.
That's the default.
But then, as you know, there the next sentence says, "And Congress can pass contrary laws."
Now, of course, everybody listening will notice that I said states. Then I said Congress.
I didn't say the president by executive order.
So, the real question here is is there any statute that Congress passed that could give the president the power to issue this executive order about mailing ballots?
>> Could the creation of citizenship lists using federal data violate privacy laws?
>> Yes, it depends on the specific statute that the president is looking to to try and say compile these lists of eligible voters.
And it depends on exactly what information is being given to the federal government from the states.
Some people are arguing that this executive order was just an attempt to end run around previous efforts by the federal government to try and get citizenship lists from states kind of outside
[clears throat] of the rubric of mail-in voting.
>> Has the Supreme Court weighed in on mail-in voting?
>> Yes, they have. In fact, just recently, they made a decision that said that when states want to allow these so-called grace periods, for instance, that your ballot is postmarked by election day, but it's not received by a certain period after, that that's okay, that there's no federal law that preempts it.
And more broadly, what the Supreme Court has said what for decades now when it comes to mail-in voting and other election procedures, it's something called the Purcell principle.
Essentially, try to do no harm before an election. Try not to confuse voters.
And so, that's one of the guiding principles not just for mail-in voting, but for all of election law.
>> Jessica Levinson, thank you.
Analysis
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