End to vote by mail would hurt GOP more than help it
By Mary Ellen Klas / Bloomberg Opinion
If President Donald Trump were to issue an executive order to abolish mail-in voting, as he announced he would on social media on Monday, it would almost certainly be unconstitutional. It would also be baffling; because eliminating vote-by-mail would probably hurt Republicans more than it would help them in next year’s midterm elections.
Trump has been thrashing about for months looking for ways to manipulate the midterms. He is so afraid that Republicans could lose Congress that he persuaded Texas Republicans to conduct a mid-decade redistricting to carve out five additional GOP congressional districts. He ordered the Department of Justice to create a federal database of information on voters, presumably to hunt for illegal voting and serve as a precursor to federal control of state elections. And now he’s attacking the mail-in ballot, which Trump has long claimed, without evidence, cost him the 2020 presidential election.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump wrote in an error-filled post on Truth Social. Not according to Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which says that election rules “shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” What’s more, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that statewide vote-by-mail systems are constitutional, upholding a 1998 ballot initiative that adopted the practice in Oregon.
Trump’s lengthy post also claimed that “Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-end-to-vote-by-mail-would-hurt-gop-more-than-help-it/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Back in 2011, the Texas GOP passed a voter id law that was later largely gutted in court. Part of that voter id law excluded vote by mail ballots from the voter id requirements because at the time, the GOP was relying on vote by mail for voter turnout. The GOP base is older than the Democratic base and tended to vote by mail more that Democrats. In 2010, the GOP had 4 times the number of voters who voted early in the GOP primary compared to Democratic voters. The Democratic Party started to push vote by mail for our eligible voters who may not have had the proper id. Here is a post about the push by the Texas Democratic Party on vote by mail https://www.democraticunderground.com/107814375
Over the years, the Texas Democrats have narrowed the gap in vote by mail ballots. Now trump thinks that Democrats are using vote by mail more that republicans and that appears to be true in some states.
I note that trump has encouraged vote by mail and has voted by mail
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
Link to tweet
trump may be backing off on abolishing vote by mail
White House changes course after Trump vows executive order to 'end' mail-in voting
— Climate, Ecology, War and More by Dr. Glen Barry (@bigearthdata.bsky.social) 2025-08-20T23:18:15.426048+00:00
->Roll Call | #NoDecency #TrumpFascism | More info from EcoSearch
https://rollcall.com/2025/08/20/white-house-changes-course-after-trump-vows-executive-order-to-end-mail-in-voting/
But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday, just over 24 hours later, signaled that the administration had ditched the president’s approach.
“The White House continues to work on this, and when Congress comes back to Washington I’m sure there will be many discussions with our friends on Capitol Hill, and also our friends in state legislatures across the country, to ensure that we’re protecting the integrity of the vote for the American people,” she said. “And I think Republicans generally and the president generally wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections.”
Asked what changed so quickly, and whether Trump had received a legal ruling from within the administration that his office lacked the authority to make such a dramatic election change, a White House spokesman merely lobbed accusations at Democrats and repeated Trump’s 2024 campaign platform on the issue.
I would like to hear this from trump. No matter what trump will be changing his minds on this issue