{"id":2938,"date":"2026-04-01T09:09:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T09:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2938"},"modified":"2026-04-01T09:09:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T09:09:36","slug":"trump-signs-executive-order-to-limit-mail-ballots-and-create-a-national-voter-list-heres-what-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=2938","title":{"rendered":"Trump signs executive order to limit mail ballots and create a national voter list. Here&#8217;s what you need to know."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump on Tuesday signed\u00a0an executive order\u00a0aiming to give his administration expansive new control over states\u2019 mail-in ballots \u2014 one week after he voted by mail himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t have honest voting, you can\u2019t have, really, a nation,\u201d Trump said during the signing ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>To address what the president described, without evidence, as \u201cmassive cheating,\u201d the new order prohibits individual states from sending ballots to any resident who does not appear on a new federal list of eligible voters compiled by his administration.<\/p>\n<p>All states allow some form of mail-in voting, but only eight \u2014 Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont and Hawaii \u2014 plus the District of Columbia automatically send ballots to every eligible voter. Those are the states seemingly targeted by Trump\u2019s new order.<\/p>\n<p>Whether the president eventually succeeds in restricting mail-in voting remains to be seen. His latest order is likely to be\u00a0challenged in court. Under the Constitution, states administer federal elections. Only Congress \u2014 not the White House \u2014 can override state election laws.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, the new order represents an escalation in Trump\u2019s ongoing war against voting by mail. Here\u2019s everything you need to know to understand the president\u2019s campaign against the practice \u2014 and how it could affect the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"ok-for-trump--but-not-the-rest-of-america\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">OK for Trump \u2014 but not the rest of America?<\/h2>\n<p>In August 2025, Trump vowed on social media to \u201clead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,\u201d claiming, without proof, that \u201cELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST\u201d if Americans cast their votes by mail.<\/p>\n<p>Yet when the time came for Trump to cast his own vote in last week\u2019s special election in Palm Beach County, Fla., he chose to do it \u2026\u00a0by mail.<\/p>\n<p>Just like\u00a0he did in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Asked about his vote, Trump said he had availed himself of Florida\u2019s mail-in option \u201cbecause I\u2019m president\u201d and \u201cI had a lot of different things\u201d to do.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know what, because I\u2019m president of the United States,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House. \u201cAnd because of the fact that I\u2019m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(According to the New York Times, Trump \u201cspent the last two weekends in West Palm Beach during the early voting period, which started on March 14 and ended on Sunday\u201d \u2014 and \u201chis polling location is within a 15-minute drive of both his residence and his golf club.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI decided that I was going to vote by mail-in ballot because I couldn\u2019t be there, because I had a lot of different things,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cSo I was away mostly, in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The president hasn\u2019t abandoned his outspoken opposition to mail-in voting \u2014 at least not for other people. \u201cMail-in voting means mail-in cheating,\u201d he said during an appearance in Memphis earlier this month. \u201cI call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The same day, the Supreme Court heard a challenge to a Mississippi law that allows officials to count ballots postmarked by Election Day even if they arrive slightly late \u2014 a challenge backed by the Trump administration. The court\u2019s conservative majority \u201cappeared poised to reject\u201d the law,\u00a0according to the New York Times.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the president has prevented Republicans in Congress from negotiating with Democrats to end the partial government shutdown by\u00a0demanding that they use the standoff as leverage\u00a0to pass legislation\u00a0called the SAVE Act\u00a0that would stiffen voter identification requirements and complicate mail-in voting.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed,\u201d Trump\u00a0declared on social media earlier this month.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"caas-figure\">\n<div class=\"caas-figure-with-pb\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"caas-img-container caas-img-lightbox\" data-lightbox-src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/sk4XynV4pB4V22XSSPoMkA--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI0MDA7aD0xNjAwO2NmPXdlYnA-\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/gettyimages-2267715571.jpg\"><span class=\"caas-img-wrapper\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"caas-img caas-lazy has-preview caas-loaded\" src=\"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/6ZFeouq4sRGQRAdsnxqwDA--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MDtjZj13ZWJw\/https:\/\/d29szjachogqwa.cloudfront.net\/images\/user-uploaded\/gettyimages-2267715571.jpg\" alt=\"President Trump speaks in the Oval Office.\" data-caas-lazy-loading-init=\"1\" \/><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"caption-wrapper caption-aligned-with-image\">\n<div class=\"caption-wrapper caption-aligned-with-image\"><\/div>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"caption-collapse\" data-id=\"m-1\">President Trump speaks in the Oval Office.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"what-is-mail-in-voting\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">What is mail-in voting?<\/h2>\n<p>Americans started voting by mail during the Civil War, when several states passed laws allowing soldiers to cast absentee ballots. Federal law now requires all states to send absentee ballots to voters serving in the military or living abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Nonmilitary, in-country voters first got a chance to vote by mail in the late 1800s \u2014 if they provided a good reason why they couldn\u2019t go to their polling place on Election Day, like work or illness. In the 1980s,\u00a0California became the first state to allow absentee voting\u00a0for any reason, including convenience.<\/p>\n<p>Today, there are basically three kinds of mail-in voting: absentee ballots that require an excuse; absentee ballots that don\u2019t require an excuse; and universal vote-by-mail ballots, which are automatically sent to every voter in a given state. Absentee ballots need to be requested; universal vote-by-mail ballots do not.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"how-many-states-allow-mail-in-voting\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">How many states allow mail-in voting?<\/h2>\n<p>Every state\u00a0allows at least one of these three forms of mail-in voting. Forty-two states require voters to request an absentee ballot. Fourteen of those states require voters to explain why they can\u2019t vote in person; the other 28 allow eligible voters to cast absentee ballots by mail without providing an excuse. The remaining eight states \u2014 Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Vermont and Hawaii \u2014 plus the District of Columbia automatically send out universal vote-by-mail ballots to every eligible voter.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"wait-so-how-many-americans-actually-vote-by-mail\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">Wait, so how many Americans actually vote by mail?<\/h2>\n<p>A lot. In the 2024 general election, about\u00a030% of all ballots were cast by mail. That\u2019s 48 million votes. In the 2020 election \u2014 which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic \u2014 the number was even higher: nearly 66 million votes. Since 2000, more than 250 million votes have been cast via mailed-out ballots in all 50 states.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-would-trumps-new-executive-order-do\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">What would Trump\u2019s new executive order do?<\/h2>\n<p>Trump\u2019s\u00a0executive order\u00a0calls for the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to create a list of every U.S. citizen in each state who is eligible to vote, which would then be shared with state election officials ahead of federal elections.<\/p>\n<p>It would also bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending mail ballots to voters who are not on the federally approved list and require mail ballots to be sent in envelopes that meet newly created standards \u2014 including unique barcodes on each envelope.<\/p>\n<p>The order directs the attorney general to prioritize the prosecution of any election officials who violate these new rules and threatens to withhold federal funds from states that don\u2019t comply.<\/p>\n<p>Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council,\u00a0described the order\u00a0as \u201ca crazily unconstitutional effort to seize control of elections from states.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Marc Elias, an election law expert who has challenged a long list of Republicans\u2019 changes to voting in recent years,\u00a0announced his plan to sue\u00a0to block Trump\u2019s order within a few minutes of it being signed.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"why-does-trump-want-to-get-rid-of-mail-in-ballots\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">Why does Trump want to \u2018get rid of mail-in ballots\u2019?<\/h2>\n<p>It all goes back to the pandemic. For decades, mail-in voting wasn\u2019t seen as controversial \u2014 let alone partisan. In fact, Republicans were even more enthusiastic about the practice than Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because they saw it as a safe and efficient way to make voting easier for rural and older voters \u2014 a key part of their base.<\/p>\n<p>In the 2000 presidential election, military mail ballots helped put GOP nominee George W. Bush over the top in Florida; in 2005, Georgia Republicans passed no-excuse absentee voting as soon as they won full control of the state government.<\/p>\n<p>COVID-19 flipped the script. Ahead of the 2020 election, many states passed laws to expand early voting and mail voting. The logic was simple: At a time when millions of Americans were trying to minimize their exposure to the virus, why force them to crowd into a polling place on Election Day? Why not provide some alternatives?<\/p>\n<div class=\"caas-iframe-wrapper\" data-embed-anchor=\"fce44296-24d5-51fd-9271-1a09323b483e\">\n<div class=\"caas-iframe iframe caas-loaded\" data-type=\"iframe\" data-caas-lazy-loading-init=\"1\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/vhEPm\/2\/\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>As polls\u00a0began to show Trump trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by a sizable margin, the incumbent seized on mail-in voting as a preemptive explanation for any unfavorable election outcome. \u201c2020 will be the most INACCURATE &amp; FRAUDULENT Election in history,\u201d Trump wrote online that July. \u201cDelay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???\u201d He described mail-in voting as the \u201cbiggest risk\u201d to his reelection, and both his campaign and the GOP unsuccessfully sued to stop it.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s rhetoric effectively polarized the practice. Democrats (who were already more prone to avoid pandemic-era gatherings) embraced it; Republicans resisted. As a result,\u00a058% of Democrats wound up voting by mail that year; only 29% of Republicans did the same.<\/p>\n<p>Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes, but he\u2019s been blaming election \u201cfraud\u201d \u2014 including supposedly fraudulent mail ballots \u2014 ever since.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"so-is-fraud-a-problem-with-mail-in-voting\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">So is fraud a problem with mail-in voting?<\/h2>\n<p>No. It\u2019s never really been clear what Trump is alleging when he says elections can\u2019t be \u201chonest\u201d if Americans vote by mail.<\/p>\n<p>In 2020, the president was particularly upset when he seemed to be \u201cwinning\u201d early on election night \u2014 only to see Biden catch up and surpass him as the evening wore on. But that effect \u2014\u00a0known as a \u201cred mirage\u201d or a \u201cblue shift\u201d \u2014 is easily explained by the fact that if Republicans tend to vote in person and Democrats tend to vote by mail, Republican votes will tend to be counted before Democratic votes.<\/p>\n<p>At times, Trump has also tried to distinguish between absentee voting and universal vote-by-mail. But the same\u00a0multistep security and verification methods apply to both processes,\u00a0and states that rely on universal vote-by-mail\u00a0haven\u2019t experienced more misconduct because of it. One election expert\u00a0dismissed\u00a0as \u201cnonsensical\u201d any \u201cdistinction\u201d between the two forms of voting \u201cin terms of the potential for fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In truth, fraudulent mail voting is vanishingly rare. According to a\u00a0November 2025 analysis by the Brookings Institution\u00a0\u2014 which relied on an election fraud database compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group \u2014 there were only between\u00a0<em>six and 46 cases<\/em>\u00a0of mail voting fraud in each general election from 2016 to 2022.<\/p>\n<p>That means just 0.000043% of mail ballots \u2014 four out of every 10 million cast \u2014 have been found to be fraudulent during the Trump era.<\/p>\n<p>In general, all of Trump\u2019s allegations of widespread, result-altering election fraud \u2014 claims he has been making since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 \u2014 have been conclusively debunked,\u00a0both in court and by GOP election officials.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-do-trumps-efforts-mean-for-the-midterms\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">What do Trump\u2019s efforts mean for the midterms?<\/h2>\n<p>Over the last five years, many states have already made their existing voting laws \u2014 including those governing mail voting \u2014 more restrictive. These\u00a0states tend to be controlled by Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Trump told a conservative podcaster that he wants Republicans to \u201ctake over the voting\u201d in 15 states in order to \u201cnationalize\u201d the 2026 midterm elections, raising concerns that he may try to defy the Constitution and interfere in ways that would benefit his party. (Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution\u00a0explicitly says\u00a0that \u201cthe Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof\u201d \u2014 not the White House.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have states that are so crooked,\u201d Trump said at the time. \u201cWe have states that I won that show I didn\u2019t win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The president did not explain what he meant by \u201cnationalizing the voting,\u201d nor did he say which states he had in mind.<\/p>\n<p>Trump\u2019s new executive order comes well short of his stated goal of exerting control over elections nationwide. It\u2019s also unclear whether courts will let any of the new provisions in the order stand. If the order is allowed to go into effect, it could potentially give the Trump administration the power to deny certain voters the ability to cast their ballots or challenge votes by people who are not on the federally approved list.<\/p>\n<p>In March 2025, Trump signed a\u00a0separate order\u00a0that would require people to show government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote in federal elections and prohibit states from counting mail ballots that arrive after the polls close on Election Day (even if they\u2019re postmarked in time).<\/p>\n<p>Federal judges have repeatedly blocked that earlier order from taking effect.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPut simply, our Constitution does not allow the President to impose unilateral changes to federal election procedures,\u201d U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly\u00a0ruled in February.<\/p>\n<p>In response, Trump has mostly focused on pressuring Congress to pass the SAVE Act (even as his administration has\u00a0raided county election offices\u00a0and\u00a0demanded state voter files).<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"how-would-the-save-act-affect-mail-in-voting\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">How would the SAVE Act affect mail-in voting?<\/h2>\n<p>As Yahoo\u00a0recently explained, the SAVE Act would not override state mail-in voting rules \u2014 or\u00a0fulfill Trump\u2019s wish\u00a0to ban the practice altogether. But it would make voting by mail harder. That\u2019s because the bill\u2019s new proof of citizenship rules would also apply to voters who register to vote by mail. Anyone registering for an absentee ballot, with some limited exceptions, would still have to go in person to a local elections office to present their passport or birth certificate for their registration to be valid.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, only\u00a0eight states\u00a0require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration. Expanding these standards nationwide would prevent\u00a021 million eligible voters\u00a0from being able to vote, according to an estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice. Only\u00a0half of all Americans\u00a0have a passport. Millions more either don\u2019t have or can\u2019t readily access their birth certificates.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"what-about-the-supreme-court\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">What about the Supreme Court?<\/h2>\n<p>If the Supreme Court rejects Mississippi\u2019s mail-in ballot law when it rules on the case in late June or early July, it could trigger chaos and confusion ahead of the midterms.<\/p>\n<p>Like Mississippi, at least 18 other states and territories \u2014 including 2026 battleground districts in Nevada and California \u2014 count late-arriving ballots (again, as long as they\u2019re postmarked by Election Day).<\/p>\n<div class=\"caas-iframe-wrapper\" data-embed-anchor=\"7f9bc283-035c-588d-866e-ca52da6d9433\">\n<div class=\"caas-iframe iframe caas-loaded\" data-type=\"iframe\" data-caas-lazy-loading-init=\"1\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/rBH37\/1\/\" scrolling=\"no\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>According to\u00a0a recent New York Times analysis, \u201clate-arriving ballots tended to skew Democratic in the 2024 election.\u201d In Virginia, for example, 73% of ballots accepted after Election Day were cast for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. Just 23% were cast for Trump.<\/p>\n<p>It stands to reason, then, that any ban on late-arriving ballots could affect Democratic candidates more than their Republican counterparts. At the same time, recent changes at the U.S. Postal Service have already\u00a0delayed the postmarking and delivery of ballots\u00a0\u2014 especially in rural areas.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"why-does-trump-still-vote-by-mail\" class=\"caas-jump-link-heading\">Why does Trump still vote by mail?<\/h2>\n<p>Presumably convenience. &#8220;As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,\u201d a White House spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>The White House went on to say that Trump has supported \u201ccommonsense exceptions\u201d for mail-in ballots, including &#8220;illness, disability, military, or travel,&#8221; but that he opposes universal vote-by-mail due to it being &#8220;highly susceptible to fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Or as Trump told reporters in 2020, \u201cI can vote by mail because I\u2019m allowed to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Asked on Wednesday to explain how he \u201csquares\u201d the president\u2019s own voting preferences with his opposition to mail-in ballots, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican,\u00a0said\u00a0that \u201csome states have handled mail-in balloting well. I think Florida&#8217;s a great example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Charts by Mike Bebernes<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump on Tuesday signed\u00a0an executive order\u00a0aiming to give his administration expansive new control over states\u2019 mail-in ballots<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-us"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2940,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2938\/revisions\/2940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}