Prior to next year’s midterm elections, President Trump declared Monday on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he intends to “lead a movement” to eliminate the nation’s mail-in ballots and voting machines.
He intends to sign an executive order prohibiting states from using mail-in votes and possibly certain voting machines. Without providing any proof, he claimed that voting machines are “highly inaccurate,” more costly, and less trustworthy than paper ballot counting.
Trump stated, “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 because they’re corrupt,” when meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Thursday at the White House. And since the Democrats desire it, it’s time for the Republicans to take a bold stance and put an end to it. It’s their only chance to win an election.
Prior to the 2024 presidential election, Trump himself encouraged his followers to cast their ballots by mail; nevertheless, after the 2020 election, Democrats have been much more likely than Republicans to do so. Since GOP-led states have increased limitations on this voting technique, that difference has only widened in previous elections. However, legal experts assert that Trump lacks the legal power to dictate to states how their elections should be conducted.
According to Florida State University College of Law professor Michael Morley, who spoke to NPR, Congress, not the president, has the authority to control federal elections under the Constitution.
“There’s really nothing that the executive branch can do on its own in terms of direct mandates,” he stated.
Richard Hasen, a law professor at UCLA, stated that Congress would have to take action to alter the president’s legal authority.
“Unless the president has some theory under which he could try to ban certain kinds of voting machines or tried to ban mail in ballots by enforcing some existing federal law, he would need the cooperation of Congress,” Hasen stated, “which I think he’d be unlikely to get to have any kind of federal interference with how the midterm elections will be run.”
The creator and executive director of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, David Becker, claimed that the Founders purposefully excluded the president from election-related decisions.
“Hamilton foresaw, and made clear inFederalist 59that a democracy must diversify power of elections in order to protect itself from an overzealous executive, and therefore power over elections would reside with the several states,” he said in a statement to NPR.
According to Matt Germer, director of the governance program at the right-of-center R Street Institute, a think tank based in Washington, it would also be logistically challenging to change the way states conduct their elections as the midterm primaries approach.
For starters, any executive order will probably be the subject of litigation, which may take some time to resolve. Before voting, states would then probably need to enact new legislation or put new voting procedures into place.
“In some places, I think things like restricting voting by mail mechanically would just mean forcing more people to come in and vote in person,” Germer stated. “And they need to make sure that they invest the resources in an in-person voting to maybe account for that.”
Officials would need to locate additional polling stations, he said. Additionally, he stated that those voting locations would require the training of volunteers.
“It would be a huge undertaking and I think realistically it’s highly unlikely that he could end voting by mail or end the use of very particular voting machines in time for 2026 now,” Germer stated.
Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute, which promotes the widespread use of mail-in voting, stated that eliminating mail-in voting in such a short period of time would be practically difficult. However, she stated that she thinks the overall goal is to “destabilize” the elections that would take place the following year.
“Efforts to eliminate this are ignoring the facts and really are just trying to undermine confidence in our elections overall,” she stated. “This is yet another power grab of federal overreach into the states’ rights to run their own election.”
Hasen claimed that since Trump has attempted to tamper with elections in the past by attempting to alter the 2020 election results, which he lost, “it would not be surprising” if he attempted to do so once more in a significant election.
“And so now is the time to take preparations on the part of states and parts of courts and others to ensure that the elections that we conduct in 2026 will be conducted with fairness and integrity,” Hasen stated.Copyright 2025 NPR
