President Trump promised Monday to work to end mail-in voting and said work is already underway on an executive order to ban it before the 2026 midterm elections, although the Constitution does not give him this power.<\/p>\n
“We, as a Republican Party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots<\/a>,” he said during an Oval Office\u00a0 meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a>. “We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots.”<\/p>\n Why does Trump want to ban mail-in ballots?<\/p>\n “Mail-in ballots are corrupt,” the president said. He suggested the method is susceptible to voter fraud, claiming in California, “it’s so corrupt, where some people get five, six, seven ballots delivered to them.” He has often insisted<\/a> mail-in ballots can be tampered with or enable people to vote multiple times.<\/p>\n But soon after the 2020 election, Debra Cleaver, founder and CEO of VoteAmerica<\/a>, a nonpartisan voter information site, dismissed<\/a> the idea of widespread voter fraud as “a myth.”\u00a0<\/p>\n “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,” she explained to CBS News.<\/p>\n After that election, the director of the nation’s cyber security agency, Christopher Krebs, called the 2020 vote “the most secure in American history.”<\/p>\n In 2024, when Mr. Trump won the presidential election, the U.S. Census Bureau said<\/a> nearly a third of ballots nationwide were cast by mail.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump’s impending executive order to stop mail voting \u2014 would it be legal?<\/p>\n In a social media post earlier in the day, the president said of the impending order that it would “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”\u00a0<\/p>\n He claimed that the states “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” and that “[t]hey 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.”<\/p>\n But Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution<\/a> says it’s the states that have the authority to regulate elections, not the president, and this may be changed only by Congress.<\/p>\n Trump claims U.S. is the only country that uses mail-in voting. Is that true?<\/p>\n Mr. Trump also claimed, “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting” and argued, “You will never have an honest election if you have mail-in. And it’s time that the Republicans get tough and stop it, because the Democrats want it. It’s the only way they can get elected.”<\/p>\n In fact, more than 30 other countries allow voting by mail for some or all voters, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance<\/a>, an intergovernmental advocacy group based in Sweden. Canada<\/a>, the United Kingdom<\/a>, Switzerland<\/a>, Germany<\/a>, and Denmark<\/a> are among them.<\/p>\n Mail-in voting in the U.S.<\/p>\n In the U.S., mail voting is widespread: 28 states<\/a> allow any voter to request a mail-in ballot, while the rest require a a documented reason such as illness or military service.\u00a0<\/p>\n