Published on 04/09/2026 - 9:43 GMT+2

Voters in North Carolina in the United States began receiving their mail-in ballots on Friday, the first state to do so this election cycle.

It comes as the Trump administration pushes the Supreme Court to revive an executive order that would sharply limit the practice.

The administration filed an emergency request on Thursday asking the justices to lift a lower court's block on the order — a request lodged just as ballots started going out, and roughly two months before the November midterms.

North Carolina election officials say they're pressing ahead regardless, with the state's elections chief telling reporters it remains "business as usual" as ballots are distributed and other states, including Alabama, prepare to follow later this month.

Trump signed the executive order in March, arguing that mail voting is vulnerable to fraud — a claim tied to his long-standing assertion that mail ballots cost him the 2020 election.

Nearly a third of Americans voted by mail in the 2024 general election, accounting for more than 48 million votes, according to researchers States United.The order would require states to submit lists of eligible voters through a federal portal and would direct the Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those on the approved lists. Democratic-led states sued, arguing the Constitution gives states, not the federal government, authority over how elections are run.

A federal judge, Indira Talwani, blocked the order last week, ruling it "practically impossible" for states to comply given how close they are to sending out ballots.

Adding to the pressure on the system, a Postal Service whistleblower has warned that the technology behind the new voter-list portal ordered by Trump was built in a rushed, error-prone way that could see millions of ballots go undelivered.

The Supreme Court has already weighed in once, temporarily lifting a separate lower-court block on the order without ruling on its merits — leaving the practice in legal limbo just as voting gets underway.

The stakes for Trump are considerable. The midterms will decide control of Congress for the remainder of his term, and polls suggest Republicans face a real risk of losing their narrow House majority.

A Democratic-controlled House would be positioned to block his legislative agenda — and has signaled it could pursue a third impeachment attempt against him.

That backdrop helps explain why a voting method used by roughly a third of Americans has become such a high-stakes fight, fought out in the courts in the final weeks before ballots are cast.

Additional sources • AFP, AP