Key keywords: Donald Trump, U.S. Supreme Court, mail-in voting, 2024 U.S. presidential election, voting rights, election integrity, absentee ballots, swing states, ballot harvesting, election administration Former U.S. President Donald Trump filed a formal petition with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, asking the nation’s highest court to overturn lower court rulings that blocked a series of strict mail-in voting restrictions he and Republican state legislators have pushed for in three critical swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona. The petition marks the latest step in Trump’s years-long campaign to roll back expanded mail-in voting access, which he first claimed led to widespread fraud during the 2020 presidential election, despite dozens of bipartisan audits, state election official reviews, and court cases finding no evidence of fraud significant enough to alter election results. The specific policies Trump is asking the Supreme Court to reinstate include requirements that all mail-in ballots be received by election offices by the close of polls on Election Day rather than postmarked by that date, a ban on third-party ballot collection (often called “ballot harvesting” by critics), and stricter signature verification and voter ID rules for absentee ballot requests. Trump’s legal team argued in the 82-page filing that these rules are necessary to protect election integrity, claiming that looser mail voting protocols create gaps that allow for ballot tampering, fraudulent votes, and contested election results that erode public trust in the democratic process. The filing also referenced the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Moore v. Harper, which affirmed that state legislatures have primary authority to set federal election rules, as precedent for the court to side with Trump’s request. The move has drawn fierce pushback from voting rights groups and Democratic leaders, who argue the restrictions would disproportionately disenfranchise groups that are more likely to vote by mail, including senior citizens, disabled voters, college students studying out of state, and low-wage workers who cannot take time off to vote in person on Election Day. The Democratic National Committee released a statement calling the petition “a transparent attempt to tilt the 2024 election in Trump’s favor by stripping millions of eligible voters of their right to participate.” Recent polling data shows 61% of Democratic voters plan to vote by mail in 2024, compared to just 32% of Republican voters, a gap that means the proposed restrictions would likely benefit Republican candidates if implemented. Legal analysts note that the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority is fairly likely to take up the case, with a ruling expected as early as mid-2024, just months before the November general election. The outcome could have a dramatic impact on the election result, as the three swing states targeted in the petition were decided by margins of less than 3 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020, with tens of thousands of mail-in ballots making up the difference in each state.