Why the Supreme Court’s rebuke of Trump might help democracy more than Democrats

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The reactions to the US Supreme Court putting an end to President Donald Trump’s efforts to significantly restrict mail ballots in the 2026 midterm elections were about what you’d expect.

It was largely Democrats, whose voters tend to avail themselves of mail voting more than Republicans do, who cheered the ruling. Trump, who has made no secret that he views his proposed election changes as helping Republicans, assailed it .

But it’s not totally clear that the restrictions would have harmed Democrats much, if at all, more than Republicans.

Indeed, the win in the Supreme Court ruling might be more for democracy than for Democrats.

A Postal Service whistleblower recently warned that the sweeping new system for verifying mail ballots was prone to errors and could lead to mass disenfranchisement of votes. And that would seem primed to hurt Democrats.

But while Democrats vote by mail more, multiple estimates show that gap narrowed somewhat between 2020 and 2024 . Amid expanded mail voting during the Covid pandemic in 2020, the Pew Research Center found that 58% of validated voters who voted Democratic said they voted by mail, while just 32% of Republican voters did. By 2024, the numbers were 43% for Democratic voters and 25% for Republican ones .

But the option is arguably more important for older and rural voters who live further from polling places, and those people tend to be more Republican than Democratic.

A CBS News poll among likely voters released this weekend showed mail and absentee ballot intentions looked a lot like the 2024 election, with 38% of Democrats planning to vote that way, compared to 22% of Republicans.

But Democrats were much more likely to say they intended to return their mail or absentee ballots through drop boxes rather than the mail service (40% of them) than Republicans were (15%).

All told, the poll found around 1in 5 Democrats planned to vote by mail or absentee and return their ballot through the mail service — only a little more than Republicans.

Longtime Republican elections lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who has sharply criticized Trump’s efforts to meddle in US elections and his claims of widespread fraud, has suggested the president’s plans to change mail voting might actually have backfired on Republicans.

Ginsberg said that was not just because GOP voters are older and more rural, but also because they’re disproportionately less likely to turn out to vote in elections that don’t feature Trump on the ballot.

“Thanks to Donald Trump, there are many more low-propensity voters in the Republican Party,” Ginsberg said on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” last month. “And Republican operatives in the states know that putting up those barriers to that part of the Republican base makes Republican turnout less likely.”

Ginsberg called it a “flawed political strategy wrapped in a rather vocally charged policy.”

Polls have also shown that Republican voters are significantly less enthusiastic about voting in the 2026 midterms than Democrats.

In other words, it’s too simple to just look at which side votes by mail more. To really gauge the impact of Trump’s changes and the ruling blocking them, you have to look at who might be dissuaded from voting at all or not have a ballot returned because of the restrictions.

The USPS whistleblower claimed that if there was just one discrepancy between voter lists submitted by state elections officials and the mail ballots they send out, entire batches of tens of thousands of ballots could be held up.

If mail ballots being sent to voters were held up because of that potential mass disruption, it would matter which party’s voters are more likely to use other avenues to vote or might not vote at all.

Regardless of whose voters the change might ultimately have hurt more, though, there were certainly plenty of ways the rushed restrictions could have created a debacle or threatened free and fair elections.

Trump, after all, has shown he’s plenty willing to do whatever it takes to win and has frequently flirted with meddling in how elections are run .

And even if that wasn’t the administration’s intention, allowing the changes so late in the game could have opened up a Pandora’s box. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, said in his concurrence that he was open to the rule changes being legal, but that election officials did “not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule.”

All of which might help explain why it wasn’t only Democrats who challenged the changes; so too did some Republican secretaries of state .

Weston Hancock/SOPA Images/Sipa USA/美联社

美国最高法院终止了唐纳德·特朗普总统试图大幅限制 2026 年中期选举邮寄选票的努力，其反应不出所料。

这项裁决主要受到民主党人的欢迎，因为他们的选民比共和党人更倾向于邮寄投票。而特朗普则对此裁决大加抨击，他毫不掩饰地认为自己提出的选举改革方案有利于共和党。

但这些限制措施是否会对民主党人造成比共和党人更大的伤害，目前尚不完全清楚。

事实上，最高法院的裁决对民主的益处可能大于对民主党的益处。

一位邮政部门的举报人近日警告称，用于核实邮寄选票的全新系统容易出错，可能导致大量选民被剥夺投票权。而这似乎对民主党极为不利。

尽管民主党选民更多地选择邮寄投票，但多项估算显示，2020年至2024年间，这一差距有所缩小。2020年新冠疫情期间，邮寄投票规模扩大，皮尤研究中心发现，在已验证的民主党选民中，58%的人表示他们通过邮寄方式投票，而共和党选民的这一比例仅为32%。到2024年，民主党选民的这一比例将达到43%，共和党选民则为25%。

但对于居住地距离投票站较远的年长选民和农村选民来说，这种选择可能更为重要，而且这些人往往更倾向于共和党而不是民主党。

CBS 新闻本周末公布的一项针对可能投票选民的民意调查显示，邮寄投票和缺席投票的意向与 2024 年大选非常相似，38% 的民主党人计划以这种方式投票，而共和党人中只有 22% 的人计划这样做。

但民主党人比共和党人更有可能表示，他们打算通过投递箱而不是邮政服务寄回他们的邮寄选票或缺席选票（40% 的民主党人），而共和党人只有 15% 的民主党人持相同观点。

总的来说，民调发现大约五分之一的民主党人计划通过邮寄或缺席投票的方式投票，并通过邮寄服务寄回选票——仅比共和党人略多一些。

长期担任共和党选举律师的本·金斯伯格曾严厉批评特朗普干预美国大选及其关于选举舞弊的说法，他认为总统改变邮寄投票的计划实际上可能对共和党产生了反作用。

金斯伯格表示，这不仅是因为共和党选民年龄较大且居住在农村地区，还因为在没有特朗普参选的选举中，他们的投票率明显较低。

“多亏了唐纳德·特朗普，共和党内低投票意愿的选民人数大幅增加，”金斯伯格上个月在CNN的“凯特兰·柯林斯访谈节目”中说道。“各州的共和党工作人员都知道，对这部分共和党选民设置障碍会降低共和党的投票率。”

金斯伯格称之为“一种有缺陷的政治策略，包裹在一种颇具争议性的政策外衣之下”。

民调还显示，共和党选民对参加 2026 年中期选举的热情明显低于民主党选民。

换句话说，仅仅看哪一方更多地使用邮寄投票是不够的。要真正评估特朗普的改革及其阻止裁决的影响，还必须考察哪些人可能因此完全放弃投票，或者因为这些限制而无法寄回选票。

美国邮政局的举报人声称，如果州选举官员提交的选民名单与他们寄出的邮寄选票之间哪怕只有一个差异，都可能导致数万张选票被扣留。

如果由于这种潜在的大规模混乱而导致寄给选民的邮寄选票被耽搁，那么哪个党派的选民更有可能使用其他途径投票，或者干脆放弃投票，就至关重要了。

尽管这项改变最终可能对哪些选民造成了更大的伤害，但仓促出台的限制措施确实有很多种可能造成灾难性后果或威胁自由公正的选举的方式。

毕竟，特朗普已经表明他为了赢得选举愿意不择手段，并且经常试图干预选举的进行方式。

即使这并非政府的本意，在选举临近尾声时才允许这些修改也可能打开潘多拉魔盒。特朗普任命的大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺在同意意见中表示，他并不反对规则修改的合法性，但选举官员“没有足够的时间来合理地执行该规则”。

这一切或许可以解释为什么不仅是民主党人对这些改变提出质疑；一些共和党国务卿也提出了质疑。