The all-caps announcement that President Donald Trump will issue an unconstitutional executive order banning mail-in ballots was foreshadowed after his disastrous abbreviated “summit” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Friday.
In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump alleged that Putin said, “Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting … No country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”
When Trump’s lips are moving or his fingers are tapping … he’s lying. It’s hard to know where to begin refuting this latest bevy of lies, but here we go.
The president has no authority over elections
The Elections Clause of the US Constitution grants Congress (and only Congress) the authority to regulate federal elections (and only federal elections).
Executive orders direct federal agencies in their execution of Congressionally-passed law; they cannot supersede Congressional authority. Although Trump has been writing unconstitutional executive orders wily nilly, and the GOP-controlled Congress has refused to exert its agency when he oversteps, any such executive order is prima facie unconstitutional.
For five decades — since the 1986 Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) — all states must send mail ballots to military and overseas voters for federal elections. Each state determines whether and how mail-in ballots (either “absentee,” automatic or by-request) will be handled for its citizens.
Congress passed the 2022 Help America Vote Act after the controversial 2000 election (Gore v Bush) and the notorious Florida butterfly ballot fiasco.
HAVA was passed by the U.S. Congress in 2002 to make sweeping reforms to the nation’s voting process. HAVA addresses improvements to voting systems and voter access that were identified following the 2000 election. HAVA mandates that EAC test and certify voting equipment, maintain the National Voter Registration form and administer a national clearinghouse on elections that includes shared practices, information for voters and other resources to improve elections.
Those reforms included transitioning to computerized voting systems. Eventually, states added a verified paper trail to provide a countable ballot in the case of necessary recounts and so that voters could be assured the computer vote reflected their choice.
Mail-in (postal) voting is secure
Verified paper trails and machine audits render complaints about voting machine accuracy null and void. The rate of voter fraud in the U.S. is minuscule: rates range from 0.0003 percent to 0.0025 percent. Follow the life of a ballot.
The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that the most common form of ballot security is signature verification. Three states (Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma) require absentee ballots to be notarized, thus contributing to voter disenfranchisement.
This screed is the latest volley in Trump’s efforts to rig the 2026 mid-term elections.
It sounds conspiratorial to suggest that Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump behind closed doors to launch an assault on mail-in voting in elections administered by the states, and Trump immediately set about mobilizing federal power to do it… but that is literally Trump’s account of what happened.
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw.bsky.social) August 18, 2025 at 11:51 AM
34 countries allow postal voting
According to the International IDEA, 34 countries — mostly western democracies — allow voters to cast their ballots on paper via the mail. Some allow all voters to do so; some limit the privilege. More than 100 countries allow citizens living abroad to vote by mail.
In the U.S., eight states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington) and Washington, D.C. conduct elections 100% by mail ballot. Only 14 states (guess which side they favored in the Civil War) require voters to provide a reason before they can vote as an absentee voter.
The 2020 election was not “stolen”
Just today, Newsmax settled a suit with Dominion Voting Systems ($67,000,000) over claims it had lied about the 2020 election in its reporting of fraud.
Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle one of the last outstanding defamation lawsuits against a news organization for airing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems – the same voting-technology company that had received a $787 million settlement from Fox News over its election coverage – brought the lawsuit against Newsmax. A trial was scheduled to begin in October.
In the lawsuit, filed in the months after the 2020 election, Dominion accused the cable news network of spreading false claims that the company’s voting technology had been manipulated to help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. Like other right-wing news networks, Newsmax featured Trump allies who promoted these conspiracies, including former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell and supporter Mike Lindell of My Pillow.
There is no need for “watermark paper” ballots
There are no records of a voter casting a vote on a forged ballot. If the voter name on the return envelope is not registered to vote, the ballot cannot be processed. If the submitted ballot doesn’t match the official ballot, it will not be optically scanned and read. There is no “there” there.
Voting by mail is cost effective
There are many advantages to mail-in voting (which includes drop boxes) for voters: convenience, no time pressure, vote on your schedule, and/or no need to take a day off from work.
“The advantages of postal voting include a reduced cost to election day, as less poll workers need to be recruited and trained; less need for multiple polling facilities; increased voter turnout and voter inclusion; the ballot posting process alerts election officials when voter information is out of date and should be updated.”
But there are advantages for counties and states as well:
- No need to warehouse hundreds of computers every year
- For all mail voting, no need to operate two separate systems for voting (about half of all voters now vote by mail)
- No need to train and rely on hundreds or thousands of volunteer poll workers
Trump is a hypocrite
In 2020, both Trump and first lady Melania Trump voted by mail in Florida according to Palm Beach county.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com