It would most likely be unconstitutional for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order outlawing mail-in voting, as he said on social media on Monday. Eliminating vote-by-mail will likely hurt Republicans more than it would benefit them in the upcoming midterm elections, which makes it even more perplexing.
For months, Trump has been stumbling around trying to find a way to influence the midterm elections. He convinced Texas Republicans to redistrict in the middle of the decade in order to create five more GOP congressional districts because he is so worried that Republicans will lose Congress. He is now criticizing the mail-in ballot, which Trump has long maintained cost him the 2020 presidential election without providing any proof.
In an erroneous post on Truth Social, Trump stated, “Remember, the States are just an agent for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.” Not in accordance with Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which states that each State’s Legislature shall prescribe its own election laws. Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1998 ballot initiative that introduced the technique in Oregon, ruling that statewide vote-by-mail systems are constitutional.
Without resorting to this thoroughly debunked mail-in scam, Trump’s lengthy statement also asserted that Democrats are essentially unelectable.
Republicans benefited from mail-in voting for many years. Following George W. Bush’s close victory over Al Gore in 2000, the practice was started. No-excuse absentee voting rules were established by Republican lawmakers nationwide in an effort to persuade their constituents to vote early. The strategy was so effective that in-person and early voting became the focus of Republican states’ efforts to combat alleged election fraud in the last ten years by enacting stricter voter identification laws. According to Michael P. McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, Republican lawmakers specifically excused postal voters because they knew their constituents were using mail votes more frequently than Democrats and didn’t want to put themselves at a disadvantage.
However, since losing Colorado to Hillary Clinton in 2016, when that state held its first all-mail election, Trump has become fixated on mail-in voting. Numerous conspiracy theories concerning extensive vote fraud were created by Trump. When he failed in 2020, he spread those assertions across the nation, and they have since been ingrained in Trump’s reputation.
McDonald explains how the epidemic changed the Republican mail-in balloting advantage in favor of Democrats in his book on the 2020 election. Trump objected to Democratic-run states’ efforts to offer secure mail-ballot choices because he didn’t want to acknowledge that the pandemic necessitated such safety measures. Regarding their personal safety, however, voters had other preferences, and in 2020, a record 43 percent of all ballots were sent in by mail. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission said that even though the percentage fell to 30% in 2024, it was still higher than it was before the pandemic.
It’s challenging to determine Trump’s precise intentions with his post. In blue states like Colorado, California, Vermont, and Washington, where ballots are delivered to all eligible voters even if they haven’t asked to vote by mail, it might be aimed at them. At the very least, that would make sense. However, a cursory examination of recent voting patterns demonstrates how it could backfire.
According to McDonald, Republicans benefited from mail-in voting before 2020 because a large portion of their voters were older white voters, members of the armed forces, business travelers unable to vote in person, or voters who lived in rural areas where voting in person was inconvenient. Republicans can be harmed if those mail-in ballots are indeed eliminated.
Additionally, a New York Times data analysis revealed that Republicans achieved nearly universal gains in mail voting during the 2024 election, despite Trump’s belief that Democrats are voting by mail in greater numbers than Republicans.
Trump claims in his article that he will spearhead an effort to eliminate mail-in votes and voting machines that do not utilize paper ballots. However, Republicans should be equally concerned as Democrats if he intends to make it happen by breaking the Constitution to tamper with the midterm elections. The president is not attempting to defeat exclusively Democrats or eradicate fraud. He wants to increase his authority.
Former Miami Herald capital bureau chief Mary Ellen Klas now writes politics and policy columns for Bloomberg Opinion.
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