PRESS ADVISORY: Secretary of State Candidate Sen. Ryan Braunberger discusses SCOTUS decision

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

September 16, 2026

WHO: Sen. Ryan Braunberger, Candidate for North Dakota Secretary of State

WHAT: On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked President Trump’s executive order on mail-in voting.

WHERE: Community Room, Northport Library Branch – Fargo Public Library, 2714 North Broadway, Fargo, ND 58102

WHEN: Thursday, September 17, 2026 at 11:00 am

WHY: The Trump-Vance Administration has worked to gut USPS, and rural Americans are the ones who suffer. This executive order would have disproportionately affected rural voters.

35 of 53 North Dakota counties are Vote-by-mail counties, and nearly half of North Dakota counties only have one polling place open on Election Day. In vote-by-mail counties, the county auditor mails an absentee ballot application to all eligible voters. In absentee counties, voters must request the application for an absentee ballot from their county auditor. In 2024, 44,407 North Dakotans voted by mail, and 47,149 voted absentee.

Earlier this month, a whistleblower outlined that the online system USPS was attempting to build to screen ballots was fundamentally flawed. They wrote, “As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state — effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

CONTACT:

Laura Dronen

Dem-NPL Communications & Digital Director

laura.dronen@demnpl.com