DOJ seizes on Utah ballot dumping case to attack USPS court rulings, push Trump’s anti-voting agenda

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice Tuesday used the indictment of a former Utah postal worker accused of throwing away hundreds of mail ballots to attack court rulings blocking Trump’s anti-mail voting efforts and promote a broader slate of restrictive voting policies.

At a press conference announcing the case, Acting Deputy Attorney General R. Trent McCotter quickly moved beyond the allegations against the former U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employee, using the case to defend Trump’s anti-mail voting order, criticize a federal judge who blocked it and argue that states should adopt stricter voting rules.

Federal prosecutors allege that the former Utah postal worker discarded more than 300 ballots that were supposed to be delivered ahead of the state’s June primary. Prosecutors said the ballots were thrown into a dumpster in a parking lot, and some voters later complained they never received them. 

The defendant indicated he did not have a political motive, according to officials at the press conference, and the investigation remains ongoing.

But McCotter invoked the alleged misconduct to defend a sweeping USPS rule issued last month at the direction of President Donald Trump’s March election executive order.

“To address the chronically abused mail-in ballot system, the Postal Service recently issued a regulation that would have required mail-in ballots to have special tracking and design features,” McCotter said. “Unfortunately, but entirely predictably, that regulation was blocked by a judge in Massachusetts. In fact, she blocked the rule before it was even issued. That was reversed, but she issued another injunction. And the litigation extended for so long that that regulation will not go into effect before the 26 midterms.”

The rule went substantially further than simply tracking ballots. It required election officials to redesign ballot envelopes, place voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcodes on outbound and return envelopes, submit those designs to USPS for review and upload voter information to a new federal ballot-mail portal. Ballots that failed the verification process could be rejected by USPS.

The rule remains blocked after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in after it was halted by a federal judge in Massachusetts. While the Supreme Court did not address the legality of the rule, a majority of the justices indicated in their decision that the Trump administration is likely to lose.

McCotter did not mention the Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday. Instead, he singled out the Massachusetts judge, saying it was “really unfortunate” that the rule had been blocked.  

A separate federal judge in Washington D.C., also halted the USPS from implementing or enforcing the entire rule earlier this month, finding that the Postal Service likely exceeded the authority Congress granted it.

It’s unclear how exactly the proposed USPS requirements would have prevented the conduct alleged in Utah. 

The ballots had already entered the Postal Service system when the employee allegedly set them aside and discarded them. McCotter argued that the rule’s tracking requirements could nevertheless have helped officials discover missing ballots faster.

From there, McCotter used the press conference to advance several other pieces of the administration’s election agenda.

He criticized states that do not require photo identification at the polls, claiming those laws make fraudulent voting easier, and attacked automatic voter registration systems tied to driver’s licenses. 

“Unfortunately, several states have actually made it easier to cheat. Many states do not require photo ID to vote, which not only encourages fraudulent voting, but then, as a matter of proof, makes it more difficult to identify fraudulent voting after the fact,” McCotter said. “Other states automatically register to vote anyone who gets a driver’s license, again, ensuring that individuals are improperly added to the voter rolls. Some states apparently still don’t even know the basics.”

He also highlighted prosecutions involving alleged noncitizen voting and said the department intends to bring “many more.” 

Voting by noncitizens is extremely rare and does not happen in numbers sufficient to tip an election.

When a reporter noted Tuesday that the number of illegal voting prosecutions represented a minute fraction of the more than 150 million votes cast in the 2024 presidential election, McCotter simply pointed back to the discarded Utah ballots and said thousands of other cases had been referred for investigation.

“There’s about 300 ballots right there. But also, remember that, these are the cases we’ve been able to develop so far. There’s thousands of more, thousands more in the chute,” McCotter said. “Remember, folks, voting fraud is real.”