President Donald Trump wants to make mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines a thing of the past, calling for these voting methods to be replaced with paper ballots.
“Mail-in ballots are corrupt,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
During that meeting, he announced that his lawyers were drafting an executive order to end mail-in voting—a move sure to face challenges in federal court, particularly from states like Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii, where elections are conducted almost entirely by mail.
“You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible … [to] get rid of mail-in ballots,” Trump said.
It’s one of several recent moves by the White House related to federal elections.
Recently, Texas Republicans, at Trump’s urging, have moved to redraw their state’s congressional maps to increase Republicans’ hold on the federal House delegation by five seats.
California lawmakers have responded with a push to increase Democrats’ hold over the California federal House delegation.
Experts say Trump’s most recent move into federal elections law pushes the limits of his constitutional authority, and that any such changes will likely need congressional approval.
Mail-in ballots—ballots delivered to voters and returned by mail—have been used in the U.S. since the American Civil War, when they were made available to soldiers fighting in the conflict. They continue to be the most common method used for voting by American service members stationed abroad.
Mail-in voting is allowed in 34 states, while nine states and the District of Columbia have universal mail-in balloting. In 2024, 100 percent of ballots in Oregon and Washington State were cast by mail.
Since the 2020 election, when mail-in voting reached its highest level ever amid the COVID-19 pandemic, mail-in ballots have seen increasing scrutiny from Trump and some other Republicans over allegations that the system had been abused to enable voter fraud.
“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS,” Trump in a post on Truth Social. “I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS.”
Trump is also eying an end to electronic voting machines, which he called “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial.”
Instead, Trump called for the use of paper ballots, a measure that has long been championed by critics of mail-in and electronic voting.
Trump said that watermark paper is “accurate and sophisticated” and ten times less expensive than voting machines, and “leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”
On Truth Social, Trump argued states “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They 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.”
Experts say they’re skeptical of Trump’s authority to carry out such changes unilaterally.
“The President has no power to dictate to states how they conduct national elections,” Rick Pildes, a political science professor at New York University, told The Epoch Times.
He said such changes likely require congressional approval.
Under the U.S. Constitution’s “Elections Clause,” state legislatures are given broad power to determine the “Times, Places, and Manner” of elections for congressional races, though Congress has the power to “make or alter such Regulations.”
Presidential elections are handled differently, with states historically being given broad authority to determine the process by which their slate of presidential electors are selected.
Though Congress has passed a series of changes to national election law—most prominently legislation like the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act—states have traditionally been given broad discretion over the particulars of how their elections are handled.
Thus, while Congress has broader authority to regulate national elections, Pildes said, it has historically been hesitant to do so.
“Congress has used that power very rarely, given the long-standing primary role state regulation has played in the way we conduct our national elections,” he said.
Michael Morley, a political science professor from Florida State University, was also skeptical.
“Elections are governed primarily by state law,” including “the rules governing absentee or vote-by-mail ballots,” he told The Epoch Times in an email. “Congress has the authority to regulate the manner of voting in federal elections, but has not passed any statutes prohibiting the use of mail in ballots and is extremely unlikely to do so.”
—Joseph Lord and Jackson Richman
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