‘The Supreme Court needed to hear from North Dakota’: Sec. of State Howe reacts to blocked mail ballot mandate

BISMARCK, N.D. (KFYR) - Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that blocked new federal restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of November, North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe is detailing why the proposed rules were an administrative impossibility for local election offices.

The nation’s high court rejected an emergency request by the Trump administration to enforce newly finalized U.S. Postal Service regulations. The proposed rules would have required election offices nationwide to implement standardized envelope designs, register voters through an online federal portal, and physically bring mailings to postal counters for piece-by-piece verification.

Howe joined an amicus brief alongside dozens of other state and local election officials—many of them fellow Republicans—urging the justices to keep existing election rules in place for the midterms.

“The reason I signed it, the Supreme Court needed to hear from North Dakota how the timing of this would impact North Dakota voters,” Howe said. “In 2024, in the general election, 92,000 North Dakotans voted by mail. And so if the Supreme Court was going to make a decision that would impact our ability to administer the vote-by-mail process, they needed to hear we couldn’t make that happen in that short amount of time so close to the election.”

The operational impact would have fallen heavily on local county governments. In North Dakota, 37 of the state’s 53 counties operate primarily through vote-by-mail, often staffing just a single physical polling location on Election Day.

Howe explained that if mail-in voting had been disrupted weeks before the election, counties would have been forced to scramble for additional polling venues and recruit extra poll workers—all without the necessary budget.

“Counties haven’t budgeted this year for increased election costs,” Howe said, noting that counties must also operate under a state-mandated 3% property tax cap. “So now then asking the counties 40 days prior to the election, while they’re also trying to follow that 3% property tax cap, you can see how that would be another impossibility to comply with.”

Howe also pointed to technological hurdles, noting that the specialized barcode tracking mandated by the Postal Service is not currently available to North Dakota election offices, and the proposed federal voter portal had not undergone sufficient testing.

“I was not convinced at this stage in the game that that portal would function properly. It’s my understanding it hadn’t been tested,” Howe said. “I know North Dakota’s process with each of the 53 counties, and that process does work.”

Howe stressed that existing state safeguards already protect the integrity of mail ballots. In North Dakota, voters must submit an application with valid identification before receiving a ballot, which local county auditors verify against the state’s central voter file.

While the Supreme Court’s ruling halts the mandate for 2026, Howe noted that advanced mail-tracking technology—similar to package tracking used by private couriers—could be explored for future election cycles if given proper preparation and legislative backing.

“Is that something the North Dakota legislature could look forward to in the upcoming session of funding? Sure, that would be a possibility,” Howe said.