On August 25, 2025, President Donald Trump dramatically escalated his campaign to reshape U.S. elections, vowing to eliminate mail-in voting and voting machines—a move that has alarmed election officials, legal experts, and civil rights advocates across the country. Despite the president’s repeated claims of widespread fraud and his pledge to issue sweeping executive orders ahead of the 2026 midterms, constitutional scholars and state officials say Trump simply does not have the authority to make such changes on his own.
Trump’s latest salvo came in a post on his social media platform, where he declared, “I will do away with both mail voting and voting machines,” and promised a new executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm elections.” The statement, reported by the Associated Press, was laced with familiar falsehoods—such as the claim that the U.S. is the only country to use mail voting, despite the fact that Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom all employ similar systems. About a third of American voters, including many in Republican-leaning states like Arizona, Florida, and Utah, already cast their ballots by mail.
The president’s post was quickly followed by news of a controversial appointment: Heather Honey, a Pennsylvania activist and self-styled election investigator whose flawed research was cited by Trump in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, was named deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). According to Democracy Docket and ProPublica, Honey’s new position did not exist under previous administrations and places her at the center of federal election policy.
Honey’s path to DHS has been marked by controversy. In 2020, she misrepresented incomplete Pennsylvania voter data to falsely claim the state had more votes than voters—a claim Trump repeated in his January 6, 2021 speech before the Capitol riot. Honey was also involved in the Arizona Senate’s 2021 partisan audit, which ultimately reaffirmed President Biden’s victory and found no evidence of fraud. In 2022, her organization Verity Vote issued a report claiming Pennsylvania had sent 250,000 “unverified” mail ballots, but state officials said her interpretation misrepresented how ballot applications are processed and verified.
The appointment of Honey, a protege of conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell, has sparked warnings from voting experts and state election officials. “We are witnessing a dangerous trend: the elevation of known bad-faith actors like Heather Honey,” said Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state, in a statement to ProPublica. “When the agency gives a platform to individuals who have actively worked to erode public trust, it becomes harder to view DHS as a reliable partner in election security.”
Honey’s lack of federal experience and her history of spreading debunked conspiracy theories have fueled concerns that her role could undermine the delicate relationship between federal agencies and the states that actually run U.S. elections. “Heather Honey’s past misleading claims about vote counts in Pennsylvania, among other things, have helped fuel false conspiracy theories about stolen elections,” Larry Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice told ProPublica.
Experts say the timing of Honey’s appointment is significant. Since returning to office, Trump has gutted many of the programs created to protect U.S. elections from foreign interference. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), once a bipartisan bulwark against cyber threats, has seen hundreds of employees cut, and its former director Chris Krebs is now under federal investigation—a move Krebs described to CNN as political retribution. The Justice Department has also rolled back programs aimed at combatting foreign influence, with Attorney General Pam Bondi citing a need to “free resources to address more pressing priorities.”
David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, warned, “The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal. DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.” Becker, speaking to both AP and ProPublica, added that “it’s going to really harm DHS’s credibility overall.”
In addition to Honey, Trump’s administration has met with other prominent election conspiracy theorists in 2025. Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, said he met with the president twice in two months, and Seth Keshel, whose 2020 election modeling was widely dismissed, presented his research to White House staff in May. These developments coincide with the Department of Justice demanding complete state voter lists, raising alarms about voter privacy and the potential misuse of sensitive data.
Trump’s push to centralize election authority in the executive branch flies in the face of longstanding Republican support for states’ rights. The U.S. Constitution gives states the authority to determine the “time, place and manner” of elections, while Congress can “make or alter” rules for federal contests. The president, however, is not granted any such power. “The president has very limited to zero authority over things related to the conduct of elections,” Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, told the Associated Press.
Indeed, when Trump issued a wide-ranging executive order earlier this year requiring documented proof-of-citizenship to register to vote, courts swiftly blocked the measure, ruling that only Congress can set federal election rules. Washington and Oregon have sued to challenge Trump’s attempts to set mail ballot deadlines, arguing that the president lacks the authority to dictate such requirements.
Despite these legal setbacks, Trump has continued to attack mail voting and voting machines, claiming “MASSIVE FRAUD” without evidence. An AP review after the 2020 election found fewer than 475 potential fraud cases in six battleground states—far too few to alter the result. Most U.S. voters already use paper ballots, which provide an auditable record and an extra layer of security. Trump’s suggestion that “Watermark Paper” could replace voting machines is unsupported by election experts, who note that watermarks cannot count ballots and would not eliminate the need for tabulation technology.
Honey’s new role at DHS could have far-reaching implications. As deputy assistant secretary, she is expected to help organize government responses to foreign election threats and assess the security of election infrastructure—tasks that typically require access to classified intelligence. Former DHS officials told ProPublica that someone in Honey’s position would normally serve as a top subject-matter expert and liaise with the White House and National Security Council. Yet Honey’s critics argue that her history of promoting misinformation makes her uniquely unsuited for such responsibilities.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has reportedly threatened to withhold $28 million in federal grants from states unless they change their voting rules to align with the president’s priorities, according to NPR. Such pressure tactics, combined with the centralization of power in the executive branch and the sidelining of career experts, have left many observers worried about the future of American democracy.
With the 2026 midterms on the horizon, the battle over how—and by whom—U.S. elections are run is far from settled. As the president doubles down on his efforts to reshape the electoral landscape, the fundamental tension between federal authority and states’ rights has come roaring back to the center of American politics. Whether this new era will bring greater security or deeper division remains to be seen, but the stakes for the integrity of the nation’s elections have rarely been higher.
