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Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

It’s no secret that Donald Trump has an almost limitless view of his own powers as president. He has constantly tested the tolerance of the federal courts for his power grabs by issuing an array of audacious executive orders (191 so far in his second term). One that hit an immediate judicial roadblock was a March 25 order on “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” It sought to impose fresh voter-ID requirements, regulate state voting-machine systems, and ban the postelection receipt of mail ballots postmarked before Election Day. The order reflected several well-known MAGA fables about election fraud (widespread noncitizen voting, rigged voting machines, and stuffed postelection ballot boxes) that Trump first deployed in his infamous effort to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

Two different federal judges put a hold on the March 25 order on grounds that the Constitution very clearly assigns election administration to the states, subject to regulation by Congress with respect to federal elections, leaving no role at all to the president. It seems very unlikely that even a Supreme Court as amenable to Trump’s wishes as the current conservative majority would uphold the fiction that the White House needs to micromanage elections in order to ensure their integrity.

But now Trump has made it known via Truth Social that he intends to pursue a much more general assault on the constitutional scheme for election administration:

I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly “Inaccurate,” Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election. We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED. WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the 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….

Trump continues ranting for quite a bit longer, but his point is clear: He’s promising a second executive order that will seek to ban both voting by mail and the use of election machines to cast and tabulate votes. Again, there is zero constitutional authority for the president to intervene in election administration. His claim that congressional powers over federal elections are held by “the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States” is essentially an assault on the very idea of separation of powers and a charter for an authoritarian regime.

That’s just the most audacious of the lies in this post. The U.S. is not the “only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.” Thirty-four countries do so, with 12 — including Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, and most of the United Kingdom — making it available to all voters. There’s never been any evidence that votes cast by mail (invariably with an array of security provisions and severe penalties for violations) are any more prone to fraud than any other kind of voting. And Trump’s persistent idea that elections where the results are not known “at the end of the evening” are “rigged” in fact short-circuits election integrity and weaponizes the kind of conspiracy-theory-based postelection “rigging” he attempted to pull off in 2020.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this latest assault on any election system Trump does not personally control is his disclosure in an interview with Sean Hannity that he discussed this issue with Russia’s dictator during their meeting in Alaska last week.

“Vladimir Putin, smart guy, said you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” Trump said on Fox News Channel’s Hannity. “He said there’s not a country in the world that uses it now.”

Apparently Putin’s opinion on this subject made a big impression on Trump, since he repeated it on Monday during his Oval Office meeting with one of Putin’s least favorite people, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy:

Trump echoes comments he said Putin made to him last Friday: "Mail in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail in ballots. We as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible we can to get rid of mail in ballots. We’re gonna start with an executive… pic.twitter.com/RpoaXHkFUt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 18, 2025

In any event, the promised executive order, when it arrives, is not going to be any more successful than its predecessor in the courts. What it may signify, however, is a new effort by Trump to use old lies to undermine public trust in the 2026 midterm elections, which his party is likely to lose (unless he can change the landscape by redistricting Texas and other red states). As election-law authority Rick Hasen put it after reading Trump’s rant:

[T]he danger of interference in the midterm elections is real, and this is a dangerous step in this direction. The timing may be connected to trying to distract from the debacle of the Russia-Ukraine war negotiations, but I was expecting more like this and now is the time to be prepared.

Trump will push out more voting misinformation and threats soon enough.

Trump Threatens to Ban Mail Voting, Notes Putin Agrees

Trump Threatens to Ban Mail Voting, Notes Putin Agrees