Will It Incapacitate the Post Office?

President Trump’s recent executive order directing the creation of a national voter list and conditioning the delivery of mail-in ballots on that list presents three distinct problems: feasibility, operational impact, and legality.

By way of background, I have more than twenty years’ experience as a judge of election in Chicago and have participated in the design of an electronic voting system. I am also familiar with U.S. Postal Service sorting operations through direct exposure to the design of their systems.

First, feasibility. Voter rolls are not static; they change continuously. Registrations are added, removed, and updated on a daily basis across thousands of jurisdictions. Any “national list” would be obsolete almost immediately upon compilation. Moreover, no federal system currently exists to aggregate, reconcile, and maintain these lists. Building such a system would be a substantial undertaking—almost certainly exceeding the 90 days contemplated by the order—and no funding has been identified.

Second, operational impact. The Postal Service’s sorting systems are designed for rapid routing and delivery, not for eligibility screening. While it may be theoretically possible to modify them, doing so within the required timeframe is highly unlikely. The alternative—manual sorting—would impose a labor burden for which the Postal Service has neither the staffing nor the capacity. At scale, this would risk disrupting normal mail operations.

Finally, legality. Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution assigns the regulation of federal elections to the states, subject to alteration by Congress—not by executive action alone. Whether this order exceeds executive authority is a question that will almost certainly be addressed in court.

For these reasons, even before considering its legal status, the order appears impractical to implement within the constraints imposed.