Mail Voting in Wisconsin Is About to Get a Lot More Complicated

Two federal actions — one from the Postal Service, one from the Supreme Court — are converging on a deadline that could reshape how absentee ballots work in Wisconsin and across the country before November’s midterms. Neither has landed yet. Both are coming fast.

The U.S. Postal Service published a proposed rule on June 2 that would require every state to hand over a list of voters scheduled to receive mail-in or absentee ballots, along with a unique barcode tied to each voter’s outbound and return envelope. Only voters on that finalized list would be eligible to receive a ballot by mail. States that don’t comply risk having their ballots blocked from delivery altogether.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June in Watson v. Republican National Committee — a case that could eliminate the grace periods many states use to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days after. The justices heard oral argument in March, and observers widely expect a ruling in favor of the RNC.

Wisconsin is squarely in the crosshairs of both.

The USPS rule and what it means here

The proposed USPS rule, which stems from an executive order President Trump signed March 31, would require ballot envelopes to carry a unique Postal Service barcode for tracking. But in Wisconsin, only two cities have the equipment to read those barcodes: Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

That routing requirement has Wisconsin Elections Commission Chairman Don Millis — a Republican — concerned about what happens to voters far from either hub.

“If you’re in Oconto, and you want to mail your ballot in, it’s going to go to Milwaukee to be processed and then returned back to Oconto, and that’s going to be even a greater delay than it is now,” Millis said.

Rural areas in Wisconsin, he noted, are also less likely to have ballot drop boxes as an alternative. That creates a pinch: mail slower, fewer options to bypass the mail. “If the rule were to go into effect, I think the irony is that one of the biggest impacts is it would hurt Republicans incredibly,” Millis said.

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, raised a different concern — the rule would effectively make postal workers into election administrators, deciding in real time which ballots to process and which to reject.

“All of a sudden, it becomes an election administrator deciding who’s worthy of voting, and that’s not their role, and it’s a dangerous role for them to be in,” Jacobs said. She also questioned what remedies would exist if a small post office got it wrong, and on what timeline.

The proposed rule is not final. The public comment period closes July 2. Wisconsin voters can submit written comments by email to PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, subject line “Ballot Mail.”

Wisconsin has already pushed back on federal voter data demands

The USPS proposal arrives after a previous federal effort to obtain Wisconsin voter data was rejected in court. In May, a federal judge dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit demanding Wisconsin’s unredacted voter list — including names, dates of birth, residential addresses, driver’s license numbers, and the last four digits of Social Security numbers. Wisconsin election officials successfully argued that state law protects that information.

The Trump administration has filed more than two dozen similar lawsuits against states with Democratic governors. Wisconsin’s voter list is available for purchase — names and addresses only — for $12,500. Whether the USPS rule would seek the same level of data, or collide with the same legal wall, is not yet clear.

Watson v. RNC: the Supreme Court piece

Layered on top of the USPS proposal is a Supreme Court case with broader reach. Watson v. Republican National Committee asks whether federal law — specifically statutes dating to 1845 that define Election Day — preempts state laws that count mail ballots arriving a few days after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked on time.

Mississippi allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if received within five business days afterward. The RNC sued to eliminate that grace period. The Fifth Circuit ruled for the RNC; Mississippi appealed. Fifteen states and Washington, D.C. have similar grace period laws. A ruling against them would require all those states to overhaul their systems before November — on a very short clock.

Wisconsin does not currently have a grace period, so a ruling against Mississippi’s law would not immediately change Wisconsin’s rules. But Law Forward, the Wisconsin voting rights organization, warned in April that a ruling in the RNC’s favor could ripple here in a different way: it would foreclose Wisconsin’s ability to extend counting deadlines in an emergency, and it would validate the broader narrative — used to justify restrictions across the country — that mail voting is inherently suspect.

“Although a decision in Watson v. RNC is not likely to immediately impact Wisconsin law, it is representative of the widespread attacks on voting our country is currently experiencing and could perpetuate the false narrative that voting by absentee ballot is inherently fraudulent,” Law Forward’s Rachel Snyder wrote in April.

SCOTUSblog has reported that justices appeared ready at oral argument to overturn Mississippi’s law. A final ruling is expected before the end of June.

What the two actions have in common

Read together, the USPS proposed rule and the likely Watson ruling point in the same direction: tighter federal control over mail voting, more burden on election administrators, and a narrower window for voters — especially rural voters — to successfully cast a ballot by mail.

The USPS rule adds bureaucratic complexity before a ballot even goes out. A ruling in Watson shortens the window for it to come back. Rural Wisconsin voters, already facing longer mail routes and fewer drop box options, could feel both at once.

A decision from the Supreme Court could land any day now. The USPS comment deadline is July 2. The midterms are in November. The timeline is tight, and the pieces are moving simultaneously.

Sources: Wisconsin Law Journal, Law Forward, Ballotpedia News, Bipartisan Policy Center, SCOTUSblog, Votebeat, Newsweek, FindLaw, CNBC, Elias Law Group