Ballot envelopes won’t bear Trump’s stamp

Today is the deadline for printing return envelopes for Montana’s absentee ballots, and county elections officials weren’t waiting for court rulings on President Donald Trump’s mail screening plans.

Envelopes and ballots have been sent to printers in all 56 Montana counties, at least several of which opted not to include barcodes specific to each voter, a key part of the president’s plan to empower the Postal Service to determine which ballots make it to voters.

Election administrators were mostly concerned about Trump’s directives creating uncertainty for voters. 

“It’s causing confusion among the public, and that is going to cause some people to come in and request replacement absentee ballots,” said Nathan Coyan, deputy elections administrator in Missoula County. 

There isn’t an unlimited supply of extra absentee ballots, Coyan said.

In Lewis and Clark County, Elections Administrator Connor Fitzpatrick submitted his printing order for election envelopes without a request for additional barcodes unique to each voter.

Under the Trump plan, each state would be required to produce a list of voters approved to receive absentee ballots. Those lists would be given to the Postal Service, which would in theory deliver absentee ballots only to the listed voters. The plan is spelled out in a USPS final rule published Aug. 27, which indicates that ballots in non-compliant envelopes could be rejected. 

Two dozen states have sued the federal government to block the president’s mail ballot screening plan, while a few other state governments, including Montana’s, have intervened in support of the federal plan. A federal judge in Massachusetts has blocked the Postal Service from rolling out the mail-screening process, concluding that federal restrictions on voting by mail are likely unconstitutional. The Trump administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to override the lower court’s injunction.

Fitzpatrick told Montana Free Press that the Trump-directed envelope design existed previously as a suggested option, but the new postal rules make the envelope changes mandatory. But with the new rule currently under a court injunction, Fitzpatrick and others chose to proceed with business as usual, meaning the general election envelopes for at least Cascade, Gallatin, Lewis and Clark, and Missoula counties won’t comply with the enjoined Postal Service rule. Envelope and ballot specifications are issued by the Montana secretary of state. There’s been no specification change from the secretary of state since the Postal Service posted its mail ballot screening rule in August.

Fitzpatrick said he and Cascade County Elections Administrator Terry Thompson met with the regional postmaster in Great Falls ahead of the printing deadline to see what expectations the Postal Service had, but with the new rule under injunction, the postmaster had no clarity to offer. 

Other election administrators told MTFP that the software program election officials are supposed to upload voter lists to under the new rule hasn’t been provided by USPS. They don’t know whether the system would work, haven’t been trained to use it, and don’t have access to it.

Coyan said voting lists are changing constantly as Election Day approaches and new voters register. The list isn’t static. Coyan said no one has explained how information submitted to the Postal Service by the printing deadline is supposed to be kept current.

In Gallatin County, Clerk and Recorder Eric Semerad said the county’s 2026 ballot envelopes were printed according to specifications last updated by the Montana secretary of state in 2025. In Gallatin County, the main focus was getting the return envelope barcode right so that ballots are properly returned to the county elections office. A barcode glitch in the June primary resulted in some envelopes being addressed to Poplar, at least until the error was caught and corrected with masking tape. It was postal workers who caught the error.

“They are all being done right now. And our ballots are being printed right now, so we can mail them out Oct. 9,” Semerad said.

Should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the injunction issued by the federal judge in Massachusetts, there will be chaos, Semerad said. Counties across the country would have to deal with suddenly disqualified envelopes. Elections officials would need to submit or resubmit lists of approved voters to the Postal Service. But with elections officials in every state already preparing for early voting, that outcome seems less likely.

“There is the possibility that this could become a thing. I think we’re past the reasonable point of that,” Semerad said. “If it is, it’s going to be a huge cost, not just to us, but to probably every single elections administrator in the country. It’s not just a thousands-of-dollars thing. It’s millions, and if you take in every election administrator, it could be billions.”