美 우체국, 우편투표 신원확인 최종 규정 발효

The U.S. Postal Service put into effect on August 21 a 95-page final rule mandating identity verification for all mail-in ballots. Under the new framework, state election authorities must attach each voter’s name and home address to a unique barcode and upload it to a federal ballot mail portal before the Postal Service will even accept the ballot batch into the mail stream. The rule implements Section 3 of the election integrity executive order President Trump signed this past March. Within days of taking effect, however, the rule triggered a dispute over whether it violated an existing federal injunction, escalating into an extraordinary legal fight that reached the Supreme Court just three days later.

President Trump’s March executive order required states to submit citizenship-based voter eligibility lists to the Postal Service 60 days before the midterm election in order for their residents to receive mail or absentee ballots. The newly effective 95-page rule operationalizes that Section 3 mandate. States must link each voter’s name and address to a unique barcode and enter it into the federal ballot mail portal, and postal workers will not accept any mail ballot batch that has not gone through this process. The rule was designed to minimize privacy concerns by keeping sensitive data such as birthdates or Social Security numbers off the portal, and the Postal Service itself does not screen voter eligibility or refuse to mail ballots to voters absent from a state’s list. It functions as a minimal safeguard that transparently tracks the mailing pathway rather than as an eligibility screen. The rule states it will take effect “immediately” for the November midterms once the injunctions blocking it are lifted, a clause that itself raised the legal stakes.

The trouble was precisely that “immediate effect” clause. A coalition of nonpartisan voting rights groups had already secured a nationwide injunction from federal judge Indira Talwani on August 11 blocking enforcement of the executive order. When the Postal Service then put the rule into effect ten days later while declaring it would apply immediately once the injunction fell, those groups filed an emergency motion arguing that issuing the rule itself violated the existing injunction, and the presiding judge did rebuke the administration over the potential violation. There is no evidence anywhere that stronger verification harms voters. Yet the opposing camp has poured its energy into delaying implementation through litigation, invoking administrative burden and privacy concerns as its banner. On the surface it claims to protect voters; in substance it looks more like an effort to keep hidden the loopholes in mail-ballot handling that greater verification would expose. This tug-of-war handed President Trump a partial victory on August 24, when the Supreme Court lifted part of Judge Talwani’s injunction, though a separate lower-court injunction remains in place, leaving full implementation before November still uncertain.

Watching this fight, it is hard not to think of South Korea’s National Election Commission. The United States is now attaching a barcode to every single mail ballot to trace its path, while Korea is in no position to confidently claim that its own identity-verification procedures for mail and absentee voting are any tighter. In the recent June local elections, allegations surfaced in multiple districts of so-called “ghost polling stations,” where the number of ballot papers did not match the number of votes counted. These allegations remain unconfirmed and unproven in any legal sense, but whether the election commission is responding to calls for verification with genuine diligence is a separate question entirely. Such allegations must be sorted out through special investigation and rigorous verification, not treated as established fact. Still, if Korea cannot even muster the minimal will the United States has shown to make its verification process transparent and stronger, that reluctance alone corrodes public trust. The legitimacy of a free democratic election rests not on the outcome but on the transparency of its procedures — a principle Korea has upheld since the founding of the Syngman Rhee government.

The Postal Service’s mail-ballot verification rule and the legal battle surrounding it show that election verification is a baseline safeguard that should be strengthened regardless of political camp. It is also telling that the side most afraid of verification is the one buying time through litigation. South Korea’s election commission, too, should answer controversies like the ghost polling station allegations with transparent verification rather than avoidance. Restoring public trust in the election system is the surest way to hasten a change in government.