Trump’s order limiting mail-in voting is patently unconstitutional—but that didn’t stop the court from giving it the green light. There’s a scene in The Shawshank Redemption where the wrongly convicted prisoner, Andy Dufresne, is trying to convince Warden Norton to act on new evidence that could exonerate him. The warden, who is using Dufresne’s accounting skills to hide his own illegal dealings, offers a bunch of

reasons for ignoring the new evidence. Dufresne exclaims, “How can you be so obtuse?” The line sends the warden into a rage, and he throws Dufresne into solitary confinement. The warden, of course, is not being obtuse. He understands the implications of what Dufresne is saying perfectly well. He just doesn’t want to lose his bookkeeper, and certainly doesn’t want to risk Dufresne’s exposing his illegal operation. The warden is not dense; he is evil. So it is with our Supreme Court, which ruled on Monday to allow Donald Trump to move forward with one of his own illegal schemes. In an emergency decision, issued through the shadow docket, the Republican supermajority gave Trump permission to limit voting by mail in the upcoming midterm elections. In doing this, the six GOP justices understand that the president is trying to give himself the ability to manipulate the vote. They’re not confused by his plan. They’re not being obtuse. They’re simply aiding and abetting Trump’s assault on democratic self-government. The origin of this particular assault is an executive order, issued in March, titled “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” It does three things: Instructs the Department of Homeland Security to come up with a list of US citizens it thinks are eligible to vote. The list would be independent of state voter rolls, yet sent to the states to supersede their own voter registration lists. Instructs the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute state and local officials who provide ballots to those who are “not eligible” to vote. Prohibits the US Postal Service from delivering mail-in ballots to those the administration deems not eligible to vote. The entire executive order is unconstitutional. Voter registration and the maintenance of voter rolls is handled on the state level, not the federal level. The Trump administration has no constitutional authority to tell the states whom can be sent a ballot. It has no constitutional authority to tell the Postal Service whom it can deliver mail to. It has no legal authority to prosecute state officials who follow their own state’s procedures for producing that mail. A group of 23 states sued the Trump administration and, in July, US District Judge Indira Talwani blocked Trump’s unconstitutional executive order. But then Trump appealed to his Supreme Court—and, on Monday, the Republican supermajority dutifully stayed the district court order and allowed Trump to proceed with his election-rigging plans. The unsigned Republican majority opinion says that Trump’s order is not “ripe” for judicial review. Ripe is a legal term that means an issue cannot be adjudicated because it has yet to produce harm. The court is saying that the states haven’t (yet) been hurt by Trump’s executive order, so they can’t sue to stop him. That argument is every bit as preposterous as it sounds. State election officials are being harmed, right now, by the threat of prosecution should they follow their state’s procedures for issuing mail-in ballots. Voters in those states are being harmed, right now, by the confusion Trump is causing over whether they can expect to receive a ballot. Either the court thinks that such harms can be stopped at some point in the future or, more likely, they think that Trump’s attempts to suppress the vote and rig the election aren’t “harms” at all. Moreover, the executive order violates a critical Supreme Court precedent: the Purcell Principle. This doctrine holds that changes to the administration of any election cannot be made “too close” to an election. Reasonable people can debate how close is “too close,” but we should be able to agree that late August is (or should be) too close to an early-November election to change which government agency gets to determine who is eligible to vote by mail.