US President Donald Trump declared a nationwide campaign to eliminate postal voting entirely before the 2026 midterm elections, framing the move as essential to restore “honesty and integrity” to American elections.
During a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Monday, Trump revealed that legal professionals are drafting an executive order to enact the prohibition, which would also target electronic voting machines in favour of watermarked paper ballots.
In a Truth Social post earlier on Monday, the president contended:
“Elections can never be honest with mail in ballots/voting, and everybody, in particular the Democrats, knows this. I, and the Republican Party, will fight like hell to bring honesty and integrity back to our elections.”
Harrison Fields, special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary, defended the initiative, accusing Democrats of having “eroded faith” US elections. Fields outlined broader objectives including mandatory voter identification, blocking “illegal ballots,” and preventing “cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York.”
The initiative carries significant partisan implications, given that Democratic voters have consistently utilised postal voting more extensively than Republicans since 2020. During the 2024 primaries, this pattern persisted across multiple battleground states, with Democrats submitting substantially more postal ballots in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
Historically, postal voting surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching 43% of all ballots cast in 2020 before declining to 30.3% in 2024, according to US Election Assistance Commission data.
Despite Trump’s repeated assertions of widespread fraud linked to postal methods, federal investigations have found scant evidence. The FBI explicitly stated in 2020 it had “no information about any nation state” engaging in mail ballot tampering and noted the decentralised nature of US elections made coordinated fraud exceptionally difficult.
Eight states currently conduct all-postal elections, while 28 permit no-excuse absentee voting. With midterm primaries approaching, the administration’s capacity to override these established systems remains deeply uncertain, foreshadowing a contentious electoral battle extending well beyond the voting booth.
