Key keywords: Donald Trump, U.S. Supreme Court, mail-in voting curtailment, 2024 U.S. presidential election, election integrity, voting rights, absentee ballot eligibility, state election administration, swing state election rules On Monday, former U.S. president and 2024 Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump filed a formal petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the nation’s highest court to rule in favor of his efforts to roll back recently expanded mail-in voting regulations in six key swing states, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin. The legal push comes after lower federal courts upheld rule changes implemented by state election officials and Democratic-led legislatures in those states over the past three years. The revised rules include extending the deadline for mail-in ballots to be received as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, waiving the requirement for voters to provide a valid excuse to request an absentee ballot, and loosening signature matching requirements for submitted mail ballots. Trump’s legal team argues in the 87-page petition that these rule changes violate the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which grants state legislatures, not executive branch election officials, the sole authority to set election rules. The team also claims that lax mail-in voting protocols create elevated risks of voter fraud, ballot tampering and illegitimate vote counting, which they say could undermine the integrity of the 2024 presidential election, widely projected to be a rematch between Trump and incumbent Democratic president Joe Biden. As of 2024, more than 40% of U.S. voters are expected to cast their ballots via mail in the general election, according to data from the nonpartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Voter demographic surveys show that mail-in voting is disproportionately used by voters over the age of 65, voters with physical disabilities, low-income voters who cannot take time off work to vote in person, and active-duty military personnel stationed outside of their home states. Democratic party officials and voting rights advocacy groups have slammed Trump’s petition as a blatant voter suppression effort, noting that multiple independent studies of past U.S. elections have found that the rate of confirmed mail-in voter fraud is less than 0.0001%, with no evidence of widespread fraud that could alter the outcome of a statewide or national election. The Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority, is expected to decide whether to take up the case by the end of June 2024, as most swing states will begin accepting mail-in ballot requests by mid-July. Legal analysts note that the court’s ruling could have a dramatic impact on 2024 election turnout, with some estimates suggesting that a ruling in favor of Trump’s curtailment request could lead to as many as 1.2 million valid mail-in ballots being rejected nationwide.