Trump has issued his most ominous warnings to date on mail-in voting

President Donald Trump has often shown how far he’ll go to try to flout the will of voters. That’s what makes his new renewed obsession with mail-in ballots so sinister.

Trump falsely claimed in a Truth Social post Monday that voting by mail is a “scam” that allows Democrats to cheat. He promised an executive order to also target another safe election tool — voting machines — and inaccurately claimed he had the authority to dictate how elections are run before the 2026 midterms.

Surprisingly, it seems that he was partially following the counsel of Russian President Vladimir Putin, an authoritarian who ruined Russia’s democracy after the Soviet Union and meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won.

Trump’s fixation on mail-in voting is not new. His suspicion was sent into overdrive after he lost the presidency in 2020 in an election that saw an expansion of mail-in ballots to help keep voters safe during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As early as the second quarter of 2020, the president realized that a large turnout threatened his chances of winning a second consecutive term. In interviews and on social media, he made incorrect claims that postal balloting would enable fraud and that foreign governments may tamper with mail-in voting. He used Twitter in June of that year to warn a “RIGGED ELECTION” and the “Election disaster of our time.”

Many leading Republicans at the time did not agree with his warnings, which were viewed as a strange eccentricity. Given that Democratic voters were historically more likely to use postal voting, they also irritated GOP strategists who were pressing their supporters to use mail-in ballots amid the health crises.

His remarks, however, are more concerning in hindsight and in light of Trump’s reluctance to accept the outcome of the 2020 election: They signaled a historic attempt to overturn the outcome of a free and fair presidential election.

They also intend for his most recent comments on the subject to be regarded seriously. They raise concerns about the upcoming presidential election and the midterm elections, especially when combined with more recent attempts to influence future elections. Since Trump lacks the Constitutional power to dictate election rules in the states, he may also be laying the groundwork to claim a Republican loss in the midterm elections — often a rite of passage for incumbent presidents — is illegitimate.

Once more, Trump is undermining elections by abusing his power.

Trump has intensified his efforts to utilize his executive authority and the prominence of his position to sway the midterm elections in favor of Republicans and to weaken democracy in general since he came back to power.

Given the present slim Republican House majority, Trump directed Texas Republicans to launch an unprecedented midterm redistricting campaign in an attempt to gain five additional GOP seats by 2026. The move set off a similar move by Gov. Gavin Newsom to draw new Democratic seats in California, which may trigger a nationwide partisan redistricting wave that could further damage democracy.

By offering hundreds of pardons and commutations to supporters convicted and imprisoned for the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, an attempt to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory the previous November, the president has also rewarded those who carried out his dirty work in attacking elections.

Trump’s followers, including many who had previously vehemently opposed federal power, have demonstrated a similar disrespect for each state’s people’ ability to select their own leaders.

The deployment of National Guard troops and active-duty US Marines to Los Angeles amid protests against Trump’s immigration policy was described by Homeland Security Secretary and former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem in June. In order to “liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership” of its elected Democratic members, she stated that they intended to remain. Although the troops essentially only protected government buildings and did nothing of the type, the deployments and her rhetoric were consistent with Trump’s dictatorial stance.

More recently, Trump has sent military reservists and federal agents into the streets of Washington, DC, as part of an anti-crime crackdown. In a show of power against a city that has regularly and resoundingly voted against him in national elections, he is now bringing in National Guard men from Republican states. There are worries that he would use this as a model for Democratic cities across the states.

In light of all of this, it is important to be concerned about the potential for Trump to try to thwart or undermine states’ rights to conduct their own elections, especially those who send delegations that are primarily Democratic.

Putin’s suggestions about mail-in ballots

Trump vented about mail-in voting during an Oval Office appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. “Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots,” the president said, firing off a torrent of falsehoods about voter fraud.

Putin, an adversary of the United States, may have planted the seeds for his most recent outburst against mail-in voting during their summit meeting in Alaska last week.

One of the most intriguing things that Vladimir Putin stated, you know. “You have mail-in voting, so your election was rigged,” he stated. Immediately following the summit, Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News, “It is impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”

Trump said that Putin informed him that he had won the 2020 election by “so much” and that if he had been elected president in 2022, there would not have been a conflict in Ukraine. ” “And you lost it because of mail-in voting,” he added. The astute Vladimir Putin stated that mail-in voting cannot be used to hold an honest election.

It took only two days for Trump to launch an early-morning online tirade against mail-in voting and to initiate a new attempt to halt it in the United States.

Still, Trump’s capacity to do more than try to discredit mail-in voting is questionable.

Several of the criminal prosecutions he received for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election served as a reminder that presidents have no official role in conducting federal elections.

According to the Constitution, “each state’s legislature shall prescribe the times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives.” It does provide Congress the authority to change election-related rules at any moment. This is one potential route for Republicans to change state election laws. But since they lack 60 votes in the Senate, they’d have to outlaw the filibuster to do so, an unlikely scenario since this could open the way to untamed Democratic power the next time their rivals control the chamber.

However, Trump’s intention to go beyond an executive order was hinted at Tuesday by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“I’m sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill. And also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we’re protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,” Leavitt said.

Despite the fact that mail-in voting is one of the simplest ways to cast a ballot, she stated, “I think Republicans generally, and the president generally, want to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections.” “And the fact that the Democratic Party could oppose common sense is absolutely astounding.”

Multiple studies by academic institutions, think tanks and vote protection organizations have shown that mail-in voting is secure.

Daniel Dale of CNN created a thorough new fact check refuting the president’s assertions that the states “must do” what the president and federal government want them to do and that Democrats cheat by using mail-in voting. Coincidentally, the latter assertion represents a basic misinterpretation of what a federal republic is.

Generally speaking, Dale observes that “there has been a tiny quantity of ballot fraud representing a minuscule percentage of votes cast” in US elections.

Any attempt by Trump to alter voting procedures through executive order would be faced with swift legal challenges. Furthermore, since Republicans have been overtaking Democrats in the percentage of early voting by mail and in person, it is unclear that state legislatures run by Republicans would all follow suit.

As a rallying cry, Democrats are already indicating that they would oppose the president’s most recent attack on mail-in voting.

More than 80% of Arizona voters cast mail-in votes, according to Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, who noted on X Tuesday that earlier warnings about Republican attempts to sway elections were becoming a reality. For years, I have been warning about this. He wrote, “The canary is dead.”

Additionally, Katie Porter, a contender for California’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, is already using Trump’s comments to raise money. “Donald Trump is trying to steal the 2026 midterm election in plain sight,” she wrote in a mailing Tuesday.

That may be getting ahead of where things currently are. However, there are warning flags, not least after Trump joked at his Monday meeting with Zelensky that Ukraine’s elections are suspended for the duration of the war, as required by law.

You claim that elections cannot be held during a war? Let’s just assume that in three and a half years, there won’t be any more elections if we end up at war with someone. “Well, that’s good,” Trump remarked.

His joke might have been more hilarious if it had come from any other president.