Donald Trump says he plans to “lead a movement” to “get rid of” mail-in voting and the use of voting machines to process ballots before 2026 midterm elections.
The president — whose false and inflated claims about early voting span more than a decade — once again amplified bogus claims about vote-by-mail ballots and voting machines on his Truth Social account with a lengthy post baselessly accusing Democratic officials of cheating and being “virtually unelectable” without using mail-in ballots.
He said Monday that he intends to sign an executive order “to help bring HONESTY” to upcoming elections.
The president then falsely said that states, which administer elections, are “merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.”
“They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do,” he wrote.
“I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS,” Trump wrote. “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”
In remarks from the Oval Office on Monday, he said an executive order was being “written right now by the best lawyers in the country.”
He suggested that eliminating mail-in ballots would prevent his political rivals from getting elected.
“If you [end] mail-in voting, you're not gonna have many Democrats get elected,” he said. “That's bigger than anything having to do with redistricting. And the Republicans have to get smart."
Nearly a third of all ballots cast in the 2024 election were submitted by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
If Trump tries to implement a total ban on mail-in and absentee ballots, voters in the military as well as disabled voters and voters who cannot show up in person on Election Day wouldn’t be able to cast a vote.
Earlier this year, a federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order that sought to prevent states from counting mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but arrived later.
“Mail-in voting remains a vital safeguard of our democracy. It ensures that voters with disabilities, those without transportation access, and others who rely on its flexibility and access can exercise their right to vote,” the ACLU's Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin said Monday.
“President Trump’s attempts to undermine a safe, proven, and reliable method of voting — that he himself uses — along with his attacks on voting technology, are just another part of his strategy to sow distrust in our elections and prevent voters from holding him accountable,” she added.
Trump continues to falsely insist Joe Biden lost the 2020 presidential election, sowing doubt about the veracity of election results to construct his lie of “stolen” and “rigged” elections.
In 2020, nearly half of Republicans believed that any eligible voter should be allowed to vote by mail if they want to, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. Four years later, only 28 percent of Republicans agreed with that.
Trump’s narrative has also supported his attempts to reverse election results in states he lost, inspired Republican-led legislation in nearly every state to change how elections are run, and was central to his 2024 campaign.
The president elevated those false claims while his own campaign was pleading with Republican voters last year to request mail-in ballots and use the exact same election tools that Trump and his allies have tried to criminalize.
Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee launched “Swamp the Vote,” which used contact information from people who signed up to get campaign updates to “generate new absentee or mail ballot registrations and early in-person voting commitments.”
“You need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible,” Trump said in a statement announcing the plan.
The president’s election lies were also central to criminal cases against him in Georgia and in Washington, D.C, where his claims helped fuel violence at the Capitol on January 6.
Trump’s Truth Social post comes just days after he claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him that the 2020 election was “rigged” because of mail-in voting.
“Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week.
“He said ‘your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump claimed. “He said, ‘mail in voting, every election — no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’ And he said that to me … because we talked about 2020. He said, ‘you won that election by so much.’”
At least 34 other countries allow postal voting, including at least a dozen — such as Canada, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea and Sweden — that allow voting by mail for all voters.
Russia has allowed mail-in voting in some circumstances as recently as 2020.
Asked on Sunday why Trump and Putin had discussed mail-in voting during their summit in Alaska, Russia expert Fiona Hill told CBS News that Putin wants the country to “tie ourselves up in knots between now and the midterms” in 2026.
“Putin wants to sow chaos in the American electoral system,” Hill said.
The Russian president “used his time with President Trump to push that along,” she said. “It’s a pure blatant piece of manipulation and that’s the kind of thing that Putin likes to do.”
