Peters, Slotkin challenge Post Office chief on Trump's vote-by-mail 'power grab'
Peters, Slotkin challenge Post Office chief on Trump's vote-by-mail 'power grab'
Todd Spangler, Detroit Free PressThu, June 25, 2026 at 5:29 PM UTC
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Under questioning this week by U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Michigan, Postmaster General David Steiner acknowledged that if proposed new regulations are finalized, the Postal Service will no longer deliver absentee ballots to voters if his or her state hasn't provided a comprehensive list of voters to the federal government and their name isn't on it.
Peters, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told Steiner at a committee oversight hearing on June 25 it sounded like an unconstitutional "power grab" by the Trump administration. The states are under no obligation to provide lists of voters to the federal government to vet, Peters said.
"You're telling these states either give the federal government this information, trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration ... and if you don't do it, you can't mail absentee ballots," Peters said, his voice rising. "You're going to make a decision that people can't vote by mail. That's unacceptable."
Steiner reiterated several times that the proposal hadn't been finalized and described it as a simple matter of delivering election mail more securely and efficiently. And while if it's finalized and not stopped by the courts it could potentially affect elections as soon as this November; it has no effect on the upcoming Aug. 4 primary in Michigan.
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In early June, the Postal Service issued the proposed regulations to carry out President Donald Trump's March 2026 executive order requiring the Homeland Security Department and Social Security Administration to produce a list of all persons potentially eligible to vote and transmit it to the states. The states, under the order, would then provide their lists of registered voters who wish to vote in federal elections by absentee ballot by mail to the Postal Service, which would affix bar codes to ballot envelopes as an election security measure.
But it comes as Trump has continued to insist that he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden because of fraudulent voting and voting by illegal immigrants and ballots cast on behalf of dead voters despite any substantial evidence to back up those claims.
He and his administration have been demanding detailed voter rolls from various Democrat-led states — an appellate court this week upheld a dismissal of such a demand sent to Michigan and, on June 25, a judge in Boston at least temporarily blocked implementation of Trump's executive order.
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The U.S. Constitution leaves voter registration and eligibility questions to the states and while Congress can enact regulations involving federal elections, there is no unilateral role for the administration to dictate election rules. States, meanwhile, are wary about providing personal voter data to the federal government, not knowing how it might be used, and in many cases face state laws restricting the release of voter data.
Calling the prospect of the proposed order "an alarming departure from the Postal Service's longstanding tradition of neutrally delivering all types of mail," Peters, who is leaving the Senate at the end of this term, said the federal government doesn't have authority to collect a "master database" of voters. "Under what legal authority can the Postal Service regulate who and how people can vote by mail?
"Yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?" Peters asked Steiner.
"Under our proposed regulation, no," Steiner said. Peter responded by calling it "an incredibly dangerous precedent."
Later in the hearing, Michigan's other U.S. senator, Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who also sits on the committee, took up the issue again, saying Steiner is a "pawn" in Trump's "obsessed" effort to federalize elections.
"We will move those ballots in accordance with whatever rules are in effect at that point in time," Steiner said as to the November election, suggesting the new rules are simply an outgrowth of trying to protect the mail. "This is not something that's new, this is something [improvements in mail ballot security] we've been recommending for many, many, many years."
Said Slotkin: "You're being used in a much bigger story that this president is trying to play out where he does not believe elections that he loses are valid elections."
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump's vote by mail 'power grab' challenged at Senate hearing
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