Trump says he wants to get rid of mail-in ballots

ERIC LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

An official picks up mailed ballots in Scranton, Pa., in November 2024. President Trump has claimed mail voting was a source of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, although his former attorney general said his assertions of widespread fraud couldn’t be proven.

President Donald Trump said today that he would lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots and would sign an executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Trump has long opposed mail-in voting and said it was a source of fraud during the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to former President Joe Biden. William Barr, the attorney general at that time, said in 2020 that Trump’s assertions of widespread fraud couldn’t be proved.

Trump has maintained his opposition even after Republicans in the 2024 election made significant gains in mail voting when the party encouraged its supporters to make use of the practice.

Writing on Truth Social today, Trump said: “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”

Trump also wrote that he wanted to get rid of voting machines, which he described as inaccurate and expensive. He claimed, incorrectly, that the United States was “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.”

His social media post did not elaborate on what the executive order would say. It was also not immediately clear whether the Trump administration could stop the use of mail-in voting, which is largely entrusted to individual states.

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Trump argued in his post that states were “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,” Trump said.

Trump’s latest comments came after he said that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had discussed the issue during their summit Friday in Alaska. Trump said in an interview with Fox News that the Russian leader had agreed with him that the 2020 election had been rigged in favor of Biden. “He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump quoted Putin as saying.

Trump claimed in his Truth Social post that Democrats were “virtually Unelectable” without mail voting. In past elections, Republican skepticism about mail-in ballots and early voting had given Democrats an advantage. In some races in 2020, Republican candidates who led in early vote counts saw those advantages shrink — and in some cases evaporate — after mailed ballots were counted.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

See more:National newsPolitics

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