The Supreme Court quite sensibly decreed twenty years ago that we shouldn’t mess with voting processes too close to an election. The Justices have never told us exactly how close is too close, but now we know at least this much: after ballots have already gone out to voters is, in fact, too close.

In an unsigned decision on Monday, the Court blocked implementation of President Donald Trump’s March 2026 executive order on mail-in ballots, which bears the deceptively benign title “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.” Had the Court permitted Trump to proceed on his plan, it would have caused chaos around the 2026 midterms. Instead, the status quo, and some modicum of sanity, will prevail (for now).

Because the decision is unsigned, we don’t have an exact vote count. But it doesn’t take a genius to subtract the two noted dissenters — Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — and conclude almost certainly that the remaining seven Justices comprise the majority. That cross-ideological grouping — featuring Chief Justice John Roberts, all three conservatives nominated by Trump (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) plus the three liberals (Elana Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson) — offered few words to explain their decision; the majority opinion plus a concurrence from Kavanaugh consume all of one page. But the Justices said enough to plainly convey their meaning.

“The equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor” the Trump administration’s position, the Court’s majority wrote. Translation: if the federal government tried to enact Trump’s mail-in ballots Executive Order before Election Day, the consequences on the ground — the “equities” — would be disastrous. Kavanaugh added, “local election........

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