President Donald Trump vowed to crack down on mail-in ballots ahead of next year’s election, announcing early Monday that he would begin the “movement” by signing an executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”
Trump has opposed mail-in voting for years after blaming his loss in the 2020 presidential election on the increased use of mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic. He has pushed unproven claims about widespread voter fraud after his election defeat but his post Monday showed a renewed effort to change election systems across the country.
Trump incorrectly claimed “we are now the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting,” suggesting other countries eliminated the method “because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” Several other countries utilize mail-in voting as of 2025, such as Canada, Germany and Switzerland, among others.
Trump also suggested he would seek to discontinue the use of “Inaccurate,” “Very Expensive” and “Seriously Controversial” voting machines and replace them with paper ballot voting. He argued the traditional effort would be strongly opposed by Democrats, who he accused of cheating using mail-in ballot methods.
The president said he would soon sign the executive order, arguing that states “must do” what the federal government says.
In a high-stakes Oval Office meeting Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump spoke for several minutes about his plan and said the executive order was being written by lawyers.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, joined Trump’s calls to eliminate mail-in voting, posting several times over the weekend to make it “easy to vote” but “hard to cheat.”
Lee even went so far as to suggest that voting must be done in person and on Election Day — despite local laws in Utah allowing voters to cast their ballots by mail in the two weeks leading up to the election. The Utah senator carved out some exceptions, but said in-person voting should be required for most voters.
“The President is correct that universal mail-in voting is rife with opportunities for interference, errors, and fraud,” Lee told the Deseret News in a statement. “We can restore public confidence in election integrity by only allowing mail-in ballots in special cases — such as overseas service members and their families — and requiring most people to show up in person on Election Day with proof of identity and citizenship.”
Utah was an early adopter of laws allowing voters to cast their ballots by mail. Beginning in 2012, counties throughout the state could opt in to the system — and by 2019, all counties implemented a mostly-mail system, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Local officials have long defended Utah’s mail-in ballot process, and Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson doubled down on that stance on Monday.
“The constitutional right of individual states to choose the manner in which they conduct secure elections is a fundamental strength of our system,” Henderson said in a statement.
Trump and other Republicans have had mixed messaging on mail-in voting over the last several years. While only a handful of states had utilized the method a decade ago, that changed when the country adopted mail-in ballots on a national level during the 2020 election due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The method has remained popular in recent election cycles, with roughly 30% of those who voted in 2024 doing so by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. While it’s less than the 43% who voted by mail in 2020, the agency said generally mail-in voting has remained more widely used than before the pandemic.
Trump initially opposed mail-in voting, warning it would lead to substantial fraud and what he coined as a “Rigged Election” — a phrase he frequently repeated after losing to Joe Biden in the 2020 race. He spent months railing against the process while Democrats launched a widespread campaign encouraging mail-in ballots, ultimately leading to a surge in voter turnout.
Republican leaders later changed their tone on mail-in ballots during the 2022 midterm elections in response to Democrats’ strong performance. The Republican National Committee launched the “Bank Your Vote” initiative, hoping to match Democratic enthusiasm seen in the election cycle prior — although Trump continued to rail against mail-in ballots, resulting in mixed messaging from GOP leaders.
Trump then embraced mail-in voting during his 2024 campaign, telling voters at one point that “absentee voting, early voting and Election Day voting are all good options.” The then-candidate occasionally expressed skepticism about the method, but encouraged mail-in ballots overall.
It’s not entirely clear what the motivation is behind the most recent about-face from Trump, although it could ignite some major changes in how states conduct elections in next year’s midterms as Republicans fight to defend their slim majorities in Congress.
Utah has already made crucial changes to its election operations in recent months, with Gov. Spencer Cox signing a bill in March eliminating the previous grace period reserved for postmarked ballots that arrive after Election Day. The state also approved a bill that would no longer allow voters to be automatically eligible for mail-in ballots, instead requiring them to opt in to the method every eight years.
If they fail to opt in, the voter must cast their ballots in person.
Half of Utah voters still prefer the state’s previously universal mail-in voting system, according to a recent poll by the Deseret News in June. The other half are divided over the state’s revised mail-in voting system, with those sentiments largely split along party lines.