{"id":852129,"date":"2026-09-18T13:06:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/852129\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T13:06:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T13:06:13","slug":"what-trumps-attacks-on-mail-in-voting-mean-for-the-midterms-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/852129\/","title":{"rendered":"What Trump\u2019s attacks on mail-in voting mean for the midterms | Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the millions of Americans who vote by mail \u2013 almost a third of the country<\/a> \u2013 the week began with significant uncertainty that they would be able to easily submit their ballot this fall, thanks to a March executive order from Donald Trump<\/a> that aimed to restrict mail-in ballots. By Monday night, the supreme court restored a measure of order by rebuking the president and rejecting<\/a> his plan \u2013 but Trump\u2019s frothing response portends more danger for the rapidly approaching midterms.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s March order forbade<\/a> the US Postal Service from delivering mailed ballots to anyone the administration deemed ineligible. The Department of Homeland Security, working with the Social Security Administration, would have devised that list of supposedly ineligible, noncitizen voters. On its face, the move appeared plainly illegal. One expert told<\/a> the Guardian\u2019s Sam Levine, \u201cThis is a wholly unconstitutional EO,\u201d because ultimately the federal government cannot set election rules; only states can.<\/p>\n

The plan was full of logistical problems, too. A whistleblower told Congress<\/a> earlier this month that the Postal Service simply didn\u2019t have the ability to implement the system safely, and that the whole plan was \u201cperilously rushed and potentially unlawful\u201d, according to Richard Blumenthal, the senator who handled the whistleblower complaint. State election officials also complained they would be unable to implement Trump\u2019s restrictions this close to an election, even if they were deemed lawful. Alabama, North Carolina and Wisconsin had already begun<\/a> mailing out ballots before the supreme court ruled, and chaos would have reigned there and across the country had the court blessed Trump\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t<\/a> \u2013 and that sent Trump into a furor. In a lengthy post<\/a> on Truth Social, in which he called mailed ballots \u201ccorrupt and out of control\u201d, he singled out the conservative justices who had gone against him on that issue and this year\u2019s ruling<\/a> on tariffs. (Only the justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the mailed ballot ruling; Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both nominated by Trump, did not.) \u201cThese are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,\u201d the president fulminated.<\/p>\n

Supporters of voting by mail rally outside the US Capitol in Washington DC on 15 September. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo\/EPA<\/p>\n

His position is clear: the federal courts, the states that administer elections, the USPS \u2013 all of them should bow to his whims, regardless of what the constitution says. Trump has already shattered legal norms by appointing<\/a> his former personal lawyer to head the Department of Justice and then continuing to treat him as a personal attorney<\/a>. Just this week, in a remarkable scene<\/a> at the White House, the US attorney general, Todd Blanche, served the role of White House press secretary, answering a wide range of questions from reporters on behalf of the president. A day later, a smiling Blanche attended a Trump rally for the GOP Senate candidate Michael Whatley in North Carolina, flashing an enthusiastic thumbs-up<\/a> from the crowd.<\/p>\n

The extraordinary danger of this moment is that a president who believes he is the law, and the law is him, remains intent on disrupting the electoral process. Trump\u2019s claims about mail-in voting are false, as the Guardian\u2019s George Chidi explained<\/a>. The Brookings Institution has found: \u201cAn average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes.\u201d But Trump has been obsessed with the issue since 2020, when mailed ballots \u2013 which are typically counted last \u2013 evaporated his slim lead<\/a> in some key states<\/a> on election night. (Incidentally, Trump has voted by mail<\/a> at least three times since then.) And more Democrats than Republicans vote by mail, so restricting mailed ballots also tilts the playing field towards the GOP.<\/p>\n

State election officials are now working<\/a> to assure voters that they can safely vote by mail this year, as Levine reported this week. But one can safely assume Trump will not stop pushing democracy to the brink.<\/p>\n

Watch this race: Florida\u2019s 27th congressional districtA billboard featuring Florida politicians with roots in Cuba \u2013 Marco Rubio, Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, Carlos Gim\u00e9nez and Mario D\u00edaz-Balart \u2013 on 25 April 2025 in Medley, Florida. Photograph: Rebecca Blackwell\/AP<\/p>\n

Trump won this Miami district by 15 points in 2024, when he aggressively promised a campaign of \u201cmass deportations\u201d. Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar, a Republican representative, easily held the seat, vanquishing her Democratic opponent by 20 points.<\/p>\n

But Salazar is distancing herself from Trump<\/a> this time around. \u201cMr President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,\u201d she says to the camera in a remarkable ad released on Thursday. \u201cIn July, 50% of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy.\u201d She is facing a significant challenge this year from Eliott Rodriguez, a Democrat and former news anchor.<\/p>\n

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Fact checkDonald Trump speaks during a campaign rally with Michael Whatley at the Gastonia municipal airport in North Carolina on 16 September. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s speech address at a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, which the Charlotte Observer described<\/a> in an op-ed as a \u201cdark, divisive\u201d speech, he painted the Tar Heel state as a crime-ridden hellhole. \u201cSo nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIt was like North Carolina, it was beautiful, it was apple pie, right? And now it\u2019s one of the most violent and one of the worst in the whole nation.\u201d (An interesting pitch to voters: your state is the worst.)<\/p>\n

But crime has fallen dramatically in North Carolina. Don\u2019t take our word for it: only hours before Trump\u2019s arrival in Gastonia, North Carolina, the White House blasted out a press release<\/a> correctly noting: \u201cIn North Carolina, crime fell across all four major categories in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, including a 12.4% drop in murders, an 18% drop in robberies and a 23% drop in motor vehicle thefts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the millions of Americans who vote by mail \u2013 almost a third of the country \u2013 the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-852129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}