Already, Democrats and left-leaning groups are pushing to make voting by mail easier and to educate voters about how to properly cast remote ballots. Republicans are fighting voting rule changes in 17 states, going to court 40 times, drawing on a recently doubled legal budget of $20 million. At the RNC and Trump campaign, 12 staff attorneys and several dozen more outside lawyers are working on the issue across the country, according to an RNC official.

Republicans have intervened to do just that in numerous states. In Iowa, they sued to prevent third parties from filling out personal information on absentee ballot requests. In Minnesota, they tried to prevent ballots from being sent to inactive voters. And in Nevada, the Trump campaign on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the state over a plan to send ballots to active registered voters this November.

“This unconstitutional legislation implements the exact universal vote-by-mail system President Trump has been warning against for months,” said Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser for the Trump campaign.

Republicans have already won some battles. A Democratic super-PAC and other left-leaning groups agreed to drop a lawsuit over voting rules in Florida after a judge refused to order changes immediately, including a request that the government cover postage costs for mail-in ballots. Another lawsuit seeking to extend the state’s absentee ballot deadline was dismissed in Pennsylvania

“All politicians are paranoid about potential fraud in their campaigns. And sometimes rightfully so,” said Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor of North Carolina, who blamed fraud when he lost his 2016 reelection bid by 10,000 votes out of more than 4.6 million ballots cast. “He knows states like Michigan and North Carolina — like last time — could be close.”

Republicans aren’t the only ones taking action on mail-in voting. Democrats and outside groups on both sides of the issue have similarly taken to the courts over voting rules — more than 160 lawsuits have been filed nationwide, according to election experts.

The potential problems with mail-in voting are varied and numerous. Voting rolls that determine who receives a ballot could be inaccurate, ballots could be sent to the wrong address or lost in the mail, or voters may have their ballot tossed out for not following directions, for not having a proper signature or for having a name that doesn’t exactly match information on file with election officials.

Democrats have argued these concerns can be addressed through funding, tweaks to the rules and voter education. Conversely, Republicans have cited them as reasons to limit mail-in voting.

“They’re absolutely exaggerating and overstating the fraud. It is not a rampant problem,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, deputy director at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program, where he focuses on voting rights and elections. “It is not the existential threat that the president says it is.”

But states that allow voting by mail have spent years building the infrastructure necessary to handle both the outgoing and incoming ballots, said Hans von Spakovsky, who manages the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Election Law Reform Initiative.

“We’re only three months from the election,” said von Spakovsky, a former member of the Federal Election Commission. “To think states could do this by November is impractical.”

Trump, impatient with the slow nature of lawsuits, suggested last week that the November election be postponed, though he later claimed he was merely trying to highlight the possibility of fraud after he faced a backlash from even members of his own party. Only Congress can change the date of the election.

Since then, Trump has mused to aides about what executive orders, if any, he could sign to curb voting by mail.

“I have the right to do it,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We haven’t gotten there yet. We’ll see what happens.”

Yet even conservatives allies, including von Spakovsky, are skeptical Trump has the authority to intervene in elections. John Yoo, a senior Justice Department attorney under former President George W. Bush, agreed. Yoo has been advising the White House recently on unilateral actions Trump could take on immigration, health care and taxes. But he said it didn’t appear Trump could take significant executive action on mail-in voting

Some suggested Trump could try to stop local officials from counting remote ballots after Election Day and direct the Postal Service to not deliver certain ballots to voters using an emergency declaration, according to one of the people.

Paul Steidler, who studies the Postal Service at the right-leaning Lexington Institute, said the president can’t directly order the postmaster general to do anything, noting the Postal Service chief actually reports to a board of governors.

“He can’t order anything directly,” Steidler said. But others argued the postmaster general, a Trump ally and Republican fundraiser, might still be influenced by Trump’s statements.

Trump said Monday the Postal Service isn’t prepared for the onslaught of ballots. “How can the post office be expected to handle?” he asked. But Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the Postal Service Board of Governors on Friday the agency will do its job. “We will do everything we can to deliver election mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards,” he said.

Election experts said a more likely option for Trump would be sending federal officials into states under the guise of ensuring every vote is counted, citing the 15th Amendment or the Voting Rights Act.

Any of the moves would be immediately challenged in court.

“It would certainly be unprecedented to attempt to control any aspect of the election process,” said Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at the New York University School of Law and leading expert on election law. “The courts would scrutinize any action closely.”

But Sullivan said he would’ve gladly considered alternative options if he had been informed that his order was too onerous. He told a Justice Department attorney, arguing on behalf of USPS, that he believes the leadership of the Postal Service is to blame.

“It’s your clients. Each and every one of them, starting at the top of the food chain,” he said. “I don’t want you to keep falling on the sword.”

The Postal Service has come under scrutiny for slipping delivery times since DeJoy, a prominent Republican donor, was installed to lead the agency earlier this year. Democrats worried that the changes he implemented were intended to influence mail-in balloting, which states turned to in order to facilitate voting amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sullivan, who is overseeing a civil rights suit related to the Postal Service, demanded testimony from senior officials at the Postal Service later Wednesday afternoon, and DOJ offered Kevin Bray, the Postal Service’s lead official responsible for mail processing. Sullivan, though, indicated he thought DeJoy may ultimately be required to deliver testimony.

“The postmaster’s going to have to be deposed or appear before me,” Sullivan said, adding, “I’m not going to forget it.”

Sullivan had ordered the Postal Service to conduct sweeps in a slew of facilities across the country to identify and expedite undelivered ballots. In response to the order late Tuesday, the Postal Service acknowledged it didn’t comply with Sullivan’s order.

“As discussed above, the Inspection Service was not able to conduct specific sweeps at specific times of the day, as this was not operationally possible to implement in the limited time available,” he said. “Our understanding at the hearing was that the Court did not intend for the Postal Service to make operational changes on Election Day, but rather to confirm that the existing processes were functioning as anticipated.”

At the heart of the court fight is USPS data suggesting that thousands of ballots received by the Postal Service were not scanned to indicate they had been delivered by Election Day.

A Postal Service spokesman, though, said this data does not suggest those ballots remained undelivered in USPS facilities.

“The assumption that there are unaccounted ballots within the Postal Service network is inaccurate,” said the spokesman, David Partenheimer. “These ballots were delivered in advance of the election deadlines. We employed extraordinary measures to deliver ballots directly to local boards of elections. When this occurs, by design, these ballots bypass certain processing operations and do not receive a final scan. Instead, they are expedited directly to the boards of elections.”

USPS indicated that sweeps were conducted of the facilities and identified only “a handful of ballots” that hadn’t been delivered.

Plaintiffs in the case, including the NAACP, urged Sullivan to issue an order to ensure that USPS follow through on the court-ordered sweeps to ensure that ballots in states with extended deadlines — like Texas and Pennsylvania — are delivered on time.