President Donald Trump has reignited his campaign against mail-in voting, vowing to end the practice in the United States before the 2026 midterm elections. His pledge, announced on August 18, 2025, comes amid renewed claims of electoral fraud and follows a high-profile meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, where Trump alleges Putin questioned the integrity of American elections due to mail-in ballots.
Trump, speaking during an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and in posts on his Truth Social account, declared, "We're going to stop mail-in ballots because it's corrupt." He elaborated that an executive order "is being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots." According to Axios, he also targeted what he called "Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES," stating his intention to overhaul the election process ahead of the next major vote.
These statements mark a dramatic return to Trump's earlier rhetoric about mail-in voting. While his campaign encouraged absentee and mail-in voting in 2024—especially for Republicans affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina—Trump has long maintained that mail-in ballots are a source of widespread fraud. As reported by Los Angeles Times, he told Fox News' Sean Hannity that Putin allegedly said, "Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting." Trump claimed the Russian leader further insisted, "You won that election by so much, and that's how [Biden] got it."
However, these assertions have been repeatedly debunked by bipartisan officials and independent experts. Following the 2020 election, then-director of the nation's cybersecurity agency, Christopher Krebs, called the vote "the most secure in American history," according to CBS News. Multiple audits and investigations—including some conducted by Trump supporters and Republican secretaries of state—found no evidence of fraud that could have altered the outcome of the 2020 race.
Trump’s renewed focus on mail-in voting and voting machines comes as part of a broader push to tighten election laws. In March 2025, he signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to prevent mail-in ballots received after election day from being counted and attempted to impose a proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration. Courts have since blocked these sweeping changes on constitutional grounds, though a provision requiring the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to shift its guidance on voting machines—banning certain bar codes and QR codes—has been allowed to proceed, as noted by the Los Angeles Times.
Despite Trump’s assertions, the U.S. Constitution clearly assigns the authority to regulate elections to the states, with Congress able to alter state regulations. The president has no direct power to prescribe or govern election procedures. As Axios explains, Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution states that the "times, places and manner of holding elections for Congress shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof," with Congress holding the power to make or alter such regulations. Steve Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, described Trump’s claims of presidential authority over elections as "bluster," noting, "the Constitution gives precisely zero power over elections to the President."
Nevertheless, Trump has insisted that states are merely "an agent" for the federal government in tabulating votes and must comply with presidential directives. In his social media posts, he wrote, "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." This position has drawn sharp criticism from state officials and voting rights advocates. Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read accused Trump of "actively working to corrupt our elections," arguing, "Mail-in-voting is the best way to protect everyone’s right to vote, especially rural folks, elderly people, and hourly workers. Mail-in-voting meets citizens exactly where they are: in their living rooms and around their kitchen tables."
Trump’s comments have also included several factual inaccuracies. He claimed that the United States is the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting. In reality, more than 30 other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark, offer some form of postal voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. In the U.S., 28 states allow any voter to request a mail-in ballot, while the remainder require a documented reason such as illness or military service. The practice surged during the pandemic, with about 43% of voters casting their ballots by mail in 2020, and even after a decline in 2024, mail-in ballots still accounted for over 30% of votes—about 46.8 million ballots nationwide, as reported by the Election Assistance Commission and CBS News.
Trump has also alleged that mail-in ballots are inherently fraudulent, citing claims such as people in California receiving multiple ballots. But Debra Cleaver, founder and CEO of VoteAmerica, told CBS News that widespread voter fraud is "a myth," explaining, "The outgoing ballots have a barcode, and then when you send your ballot in, you put it in a return envelope and that barcode has to match the barcode that was sent out in order for the ballot to be counted."
David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, added in a statement to CBS News that eliminating mail voting "is an incredibly bad idea that would make our elections much less secure and vulnerable to interference." He further warned that "requiring states to eliminate or replace the voting machines that confirmed the election of this president, just 15 months before a midterm election and less than a year before primaries, is not possible and would result in chaos."
Trump’s push to end mail-in voting and overhaul election machinery has sparked debate not just over voting rights, but also over the separation of powers and the integrity of American democracy. The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Putin attempted to influence the last three U.S. presidential elections in Trump’s favor, adding another layer of controversy to Trump’s decision to cite Putin’s advice as a rationale for his new executive order.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields summarized the administration's position, stating that Trump "wants to secure America's elections and protect the vote, restoring the integrity of our elections by requiring voter ID, ensuring no illegal ballots are cast, and preventing cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York."
With the 2026 midterms approaching, the nation finds itself once again at the crossroads of heated debate over how Americans cast their ballots and who gets to decide the rules. As legal challenges continue and state officials push back, the outcome of Trump’s latest campaign against mail-in voting remains uncertain—but the controversy is sure to shape the political conversation for months to come.
