Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson, dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision to stay a preliminary injunction against implementation of President Trump's executive order on mail-in voting, wrote that allowing the plan to proceed could "foment chaos" ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. You’ll never guess what happened next.Following a weeklong litigatory blitz involving myriad motions by multiple plaintiffs in two jurisdictions, the United States Postal Service's final rule—issued at 9 p.m. on the Friday before the Monday on which the Supreme Court ruled the challenge wasn't ripe for review because there was no final rule—got its day in court on Sept. 3."I don't think anyone can be accused of slow-walking anything," Judge Indira Talwani says upon taking her seat on the bench at the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse overlooking a drizzly Boston Harbor. She's hearing combined arguments in League of Women Voters of Massachusetts v. Trump and State of California v. Trump on revised motions for a preliminary injunction that would supersede the temporary restraining order (TRO) she has already put in place. The Justice Department has already appealed the TRO to the First Circuit (this despite TROs being generally understood to be unappealable), and its opening move in the hearing evinces a similar need for speed: Rule today, its lead counsel says, or we’re going to take the appeal all the way to the Supreme Court.Judge Talwani provides a spoiler for what to expect from the hearing—or rather, what not to expect. She never rules from the bench, she says, and she doesn’t plan to today. The administration, as promised, appealed the TRO to the Supreme Court before close of business, in a highly irregular and possibly impermissible step.The desire to move fast in order not to break things permeates the rest of the proceedings. This is no surprise. The election is under 70 days away, and some states are slated to send out mail-in ballots this very week. Both sides have cast a loss under these circumstances as causing them irreparable harm: the plaintiffs because they may be forced to comply with unlawful rules that will disenfranchise voters, and the defense because they may be unable to implement lawful rules that they claim will enhance election integrity.There’s a certain irony to this. The government had previously insisted that it wasn’t too early for the merits to be considered. Now, suddenly, it seems to have become too late.The Proof Is In the Voting: Jurisdiction and StandingThe hearings begins in earnest with the question of jurisdiction. Judge Talwani wants to know whether there’s any disagreement that the 23 plaintiff states and the District of Columbia now have standing with respect to at least some of their claims, and there’s not. But the defense does challenge the standing of the seven plaintiff organizations, a collection of voting rights groups with members in all 50 states.Judge Talwani says she understands the argument that the members of these groups already represented by plaintiff states may not have standing, but what about members from the 12 states who are intervening in the matter on the side of the government? She has declarations—many, many declarations—from individuals in those states concerned that this late rolled-out program will mean that even though they’re properly on the voter rolls, they’ll be prevented from actually voting: because, say, one barcode in a batch of 10,000 ballots doesn’t match up with what appears in the portal USPS plans to assemble of state-submitted lists of mail-in voters. This risk of disenfranchisement doesn’t suffice?The answer to her question comes from the counsel for the intervening states, and it remains constant at various points in the hearing: The states “believe they can comply” with the order, so from their perspective there’s no risk of disenfranchisement in their states, and the burden should be on the plaintiffs to prove that there is that risk—not on them to prove there isn’t. This is convenient, considering these states have provided only a single declaration, of a single page, from a single state, Missouri, actually attesting that it will be “possible to implement this rule” for the upcoming midterms.Judge Talwani has other reasons to be dubious. One of them, she will note later in the hearing, she won’t take into advisement because it isn’t officially in the record: This is a letter released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) days before, in which a whistleblower claims that the USPS’s development of the Federal Ballot Mail Portal to which states are supposed to submit their voter lists has been “sloppy,” “haphazard,” and even a “shitshow.” This, coupled with a zero percent rate of tolerated failure, could result in large batches of ballots being sent back to states when only one of them was flagged—perhaps falsely—as noncompliant. Judge Talwani also doesn’t engage the parties on the portion of the whistleblower letter that suggests the continued development of this system while her injunction was in place was in violation of her order.What she does address, and what is already before her, is the lack of detail available on how this portal is supposed to function. Does it work like a party invitation website, she wants to know, such that states can upload entire spreadsheets rather than submit voters one-by-one? The lawyers for the defense indicate, somewhat uncertainly, that it’s a “yes” to the spreadsheets. When states submit their ballot designs for review—step one—when can they expect to hear back?Judge Talwani concedes that she was incorrect in her TRO to say there was no estimated timeline; it turns out that USPS has referred to a “historical practice” of two days. But “you want me to go on historically,” when there is no actual deadline in the rule, and there have never been 10,000 separate designs from 10,000 separate jurisdictions submitted all at once, and assume two days?Yes, says the Justice Department lawyer.Returning to standing, Judge Talwani would still like to understand why voters who are worried that their ballots will be turned away don’t have it. The counsel for the intervening states replies that the “injury is too speculative.” When won’t it be too speculative? Apparently, when evidence emerges that a state actually can’t comply—never mind that this evidence may only emerge following vote failure. And by the way, the defense says, limit the standing to voters in the states where that evidence has been established.Finally, Judge Talwani probes the government’s position that at least some portions of their complaints have to be routed through the PRC (NB: the Postal Regulatory Commission, not the People’s Republic of China, lest there be any confusion). She’s curious whether, even if it’s ultimately the PRC’s responsibility to address the merits, district courts may enter preliminary injunctions absent any legislation stripping them of jurisdiction—essentially, to provide time-sensitive review where otherwise it would be foreclosed.The Justice Department lawyer’s answer that the proper Article III authority in that situation would be the 1st Circuit does not persuade her, because, well, “circuit courts don’t give out injunctions.” So, after telling the plaintiffs that the PRC couldn’t hear a complaint until the rule was out, now the defense is telling them that they must go to the PRC despite the fact that it won’t provide any sort of response for 90 days—which is 20 days after the election? “That is your position?”Yes, says the government. Okay, then.The plaintiffs affirm and expand on the idea of foreclosed review. The counsel for the groups also addresses the original subject of the standing discussion: stressing that they’ve shown, in the “voluminous briefing” Judge Talwani wryly notes she has received, that there is a substantial likelihood members in every state will suffer irreparable harm—not only in states that have deemed it impossible to comply with the rule. One reason for the problem: As of yet, “the portal does not exist.”