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President Trump is ramping up his war on mail-in voting ahead of the midterms with a new call to ban the practice with an executive order.
The new effort comes as Trump pushes red states to redistrict in an effort to give Republicans an edge in their battle to retain and grow their majority in the House of Representatives.
Trump sees mail-in voting as a practice that gives an edge to Democrats. He’s blamed his loss in the 2020 election to former President Biden in part on mail-in voting, which hit an all-time high that cycled amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“If you have mail-in voting, you’re not going to have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting and the Republicans have to get smart,” Trump told reporters during a Monday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that veered into the topic.
But whether a ban on mail-in voting will help Republicans is a matter of debate within the GOP.
Some think mail-in voting can help their party.
“It wouldn’t be good for Republicans,” said one Republican operative. “I think we’ve done a lot of really great work the past couple of years, especially last cycle, in terms of restoring the trust in our election process.”
“I haven’t talked to anyone who is on board with this,” the operative said.
Publicly, Republicans are offering support for Trump’s proposal.
“President Trump is absolutely right, we need safe and secure elections,” the Republican National Committee said in a statement.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in a post on the social platform X wrote that she “strongly” supports the president’s move.
“Elections have been stolen for decades with this practice that is ripe for fraud,” Greene wrote. “Save America by saving our elections!!!”
There was plenty of mail-in voting in 2024, when Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election.
Republicans in that cycle stepped up efforts to assuage skepticism among GOP voters over mail-in voting. Trump and the party announced the launch of “Swamp the Vote USA,” a widespread get-out-the-vote initiative.
“Republicans must win, and we will use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country,” Trump said in the initiative’s launch video. “Whether you vote absentee, by mail, early in-person, or on election day, we are going to protect the vote. We make sure your ballot is secure and your voice is heard. We must swamp the radical Democrats with massive turnout. The way to win is to swamp them, if we swamp them with votes they can’t cheat. You need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible. We have got to get your vote.”
The strategy appeared to pay dividends when Republicans made sweeping gains across the country. According to data from the Election Lab at the University of Florida cited in The New York Times, Pennsylvania’s share of mail-in voters who are registered Republicans jumped from 24 percent in 2020 to 33 percent in 2024. Trump ended up winning the critical state by just less than 2 points in 2024 after he lost it in 2020 by a similar margin.
The party also saw significant gains in red states like Florida where Republican leaders have touted the practice. More than 3 million voters cast their vote by mail in Florida last year. Trump won the state by 13.1 points last year, up from just over 3 points in 2020.
“It is proven to work to make this push for mail-in voting and restore trust in our election process,” the unnamed GOP operative said. “I don’t see the point in taking a step back from that.”
When asked about Trump’s latest push to ban the practice, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said on Tuesday that he believes Trump was referring to states that send mail-in ballots to voters.
“What he means by vote by mail, I think, just in my conversations, is the states like California and Nevada and others, where they just send all these ballots out into the ether,” DeSantis told reporters, noting that in Florida, voters need to request a mail-in ballot.
“I think what Florida has is absentee voting,” the governor added.
This would not be the first executive order Trump has signed cracking down on mail-in voting.
In March, the president signed an executive order that would have directed states to require proof of citizenship when individuals register to vote. The order also directed the attorney general to target states that count absentee or mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day. Many states count mail-in and absentee ballots if they are postmarked by Election Day.
But that executive order faced legal roadblocks. In June, a judge blocked part of that executive order, arguing that the president does not have the authority to interfere with state election rules.
Trump argued in a Truth Social post on Monday that states are an “agent” for the federal government in counting and tabulating 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,” the president wrote.
However, data shows that there has actually been a downward trend in mail-in voting in the years after the pandemic.
According to data released last month by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, mail-in voting accounted for 30.3 percent of turnout in last year’s election.
That figure marks a decrease from the 2020 presidential election when mail-in ballots made up 43 percent of the turnout. However, the data from 2024 is still higher than pre-pandemic levels.
The unnamed GOP operative predicted that if there is some kind of ban on mail-in voting, it would negatively impact Republicans and Democrats. The operative was also skeptical of whether Trump would even go through with a ban.
“I do think President Trump says a lot of things, some really great things, and sometimes it’s in a way where he’s gauging to see where people stand on it,” they said. “I don’t see a lot of Republicans getting on board with this.”
