President Trump continued his campaign against voting by mail in a prime-time speech on Thursday, making more false accusations of fraud even after a whirlwind of court orders, including one from the Supreme Court, halted his attempts to curtail the practice before November’s midterm elections.
Here’s a look at what Mr. Trump and the Republican Party have said about mail voting, and where things stand for voters today:
Trump’s beef with mail voting is unfounded
For years, Mr. Trump has made unfounded claims that mail voting is “cheating,” “corrupt” and “horrible,” even as he has voted by mail in multiple elections, including in 2018, 2020 and most recently in March. On Thursday night during a prime-time address, he said “mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt.”
Election officials as well as a large body of research indicate that there is no evidence for Mr. Trump’s claims of widespread fraud. An election fraud database maintained by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, includes just under 300 cases of proven “fraudulent use of absentee ballots” over a 43-year period, from 1982 to 2025. And in 2025, the Brookings Institution found that fraud accounted for only four out of 10 million mailed ballots.
Mr. Trump has admitted that combating fraud is not the only reason to target the practice. In March, he told Republican lawmakers that passing a strict voter identification law cracking down on mail ballots, which Democrats now use more than Republicans, would “guarantee the midterms” for his party.
Republicans embraced mail voting before Trump
Before the 2020 election, it was Republicans, not Democrats, who more often benefited from mail voting programs.
In the late 20th century, mail voting “was considered a Republican vote,” said John C. Fortier, an elections expert at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, who wrote a book on the history of absentee voting.
Without late arriving mail ballots, George W. Bush may have lost the 2000 election. In 2005, Georgia Republicans passed laws to make it easier to vote by mail. In 2008, the Republican Party’s platform called for enhanced mail voting for troops stationed abroad. In 2012, the Republican Party in Utah filled out absentee ballot applications for every Republican in the state, said Ricky Hatch, a Republican election official from Utah. And in 2018, the Republican Party of Palm Beach County, Florida, celebrated on social media that Florida Republicans were outvoting Democrats by mail in the run-up to that year’s midterm elections.
Even as Mr. Trump has ramped up his attacks on absentee voting, some Republicans continue to try to court voters by promoting mail voting. In 2024, Turning Point Action, a conservative group founded by Charlie Kirk, successfully pursued less reliable voters in Arizona in part by promoting mail voting. And some Republicans in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania are investing in voting by mail as they head into the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump’s attempts to target mail voting have so far been quashed by the courts
Since returning to the White House, the Trump administration has tried various approaches to curtailing mail voting. Nearly all have been stymied by the courts.
In late June, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law allowing for late-arriving mail-in ballots to be counted. The Trump administration and the Republican National Committee had hoped to overturn the law, which had been adopted by Mississippi’s Republican-led legislature. If the court had ruled in the Trump administration’s favor, election rules in at least 18 states and territories could have been upended, potentially disqualifying hundreds of thousands of mail ballots.
Around the same time, federal judges in Massachusetts and Washington struck key parts of Mr. Trump’s executive order in March that sought to place significant restrictions on mail voting. In the order, Mr. Trump called on the Department of Homeland Security to compile state-by-state citizen lists to help determine voter eligibility, and on the Postal Service to verify voters based on lists provided by states.
Before a judge partially blocked Mr. Trump’s order, the Postal Service complied with the president by releasing a proposed rule that would restrict mail voting. The proposal sought to withhold mail-in ballot services in states that refused to hand over voter data to the federal government. The proposed rule was blocked by a judge in Washington earlier this month.
It is unclear if the Trump administration will appeal the decisions to block elements of that executive order.
In March 2025, Mr. Trump signed a separate election-related executive order that also sought to limit mail voting. That order was almost universally blocked by courts in October.
Even as defeats mount in the courts, Mr. Trump continues to push Congress to pass a strict voter identification bill that would curtail mail-in voting, among other things. So far, that has been held up by recalcitrant Senate Republicans.
Where things stand for citizens who want to vote by mail
Every state allows some voting by mail, but some require a specified reason or make ballots available only at voters’ request.
With Mr. Trump continuing to push for changes to mail voting, court battles ongoing, and Postal Service delays generally affecting mail deliveries, election officials from both parties are advising voters to request and submit their absentee ballots early.
Scott McDonell, a Democratic election official in Dane County, Wis., is telling voters in his district to mail their ballots two weeks before Election Day. “We’re really trying to prepare people for the reality that the Postal Service is just not reliable,” Mr. McDonell said.
Mr. Hatch, the Republican election official from Utah, a universal mail-in voting state, is also encouraging voters to vote early, and if possible to put their absentee ballots in drop boxes.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty out there,” Mr. Hatch said, adding that “we’ll see what happens, but for sure you can rely on your state and local election officials. They have the authority, and they will help make sure that you get what you need in order to cast your ballot.”
