‘He’s absolutely spot on’: Former Republican AG backs Nick Brown’s fight to preserve mail-in voting

Former Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna said Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to allow President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail-in voting to move forward could create chaos ahead of the November midterm elections and praised current Attorney General Nick Brown for leading the legal fight against it.

“It’s unfortunate that the Supreme Court didn’t leave the stay in place that the lower court had put there to block this from happening,” McKenna said in an interview on “Seattle’s Morning News.”

The high court on Monday lifted an injunction imposed by a federal judge in Boston that had barred the government from enforcing provisions of the executive order, signed by Trump in March, in the 23 states and the District of Columbia that challenged its legality. The order directs the U.S. Postal Service to draft rules governing which mail-in ballots it will accept and deliver, a move critics say amounts to federal interference in state-run elections.

McKenna, a Republican who served as attorney general from 2005 to 2013, said the court’s majority allowed the order to proceed because the challenging states could not yet demonstrate concrete harm, given that the Postal Service has not finalized its new rules. But he called the states’ concerns legitimate.

“The states are pointing out, ‘We’ve got elections coming up, and we’ve got to get ballots in the mail,'” McKenna said. “I think they are raising legitimate concerns.”

McKenna supports AG Nick Brown

He singled out Brown, a Democrat, for what he called strong national leadership on the issue.

“Our Attorney General Nick Brown has done a really strong job of leading on this issue nationally and speaking out, and I think he’s absolutely spot on where the law is concerned,” McKenna said. “The Constitution puts the states in charge of elections.”

McKenna said the administration is seeking a “workaround” by asserting federal authority over the Postal Service to influence ballot delivery — an approach he rejected as improper. He drew a parallel to the administration’s separate effort to compel states to turn over their voter rolls for comparison against a national database, ostensibly to identify noncitizens.

“This is all part of a concerted effort by the administration to reduce mail-in voting,” McKenna said. “They think that somehow will help them in the midterm elections. Considering that plenty of Republican voters like the convenience of mailing in their ballots, I’m really skeptical of that.”

On the question of whether mail-in ballots have been linked to widespread fraud, McKenna was unequivocal.

“There’s no evidence that mail-in ballots lead to fraud, except in very isolated cases,” he said, adding that former Secretaries of State Sam Reed and Kim Wyman, both Republicans, and current Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, have all affirmed the security of the system.

Looking ahead, McKenna predicted the states would return to court once the final version of the Postal Service rule is issued. He warned that if the legal fight is not resolved quickly, it could disrupt elections across the country, including absentee voting for military personnel stationed overseas.

“If that doesn’t happen, there’s going to be a real problem,” McKenna said. “It’s going to throw our election system into chaos this fall.”

Manda Factor is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. Follow Manda on X and email her here. 

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