President Donald Trump’s proposed executive order to, in his words, “get rid” of mail-in ballots will likely face opposition from an unlikely source: Republicans.
Republicans are quietly pushing back on Trump’s proposal, announced Monday on Truth Social, after spending time and money since the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic, encouraging GOP voters to use mail-in absentee ballots.
One well-placed Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Trump’s proposal, described it as a “big surprise,” telling the Washington Examiner it would be “counterproductive to what Republicans have been working really hard for over the past couple of years.”
“I don’t think there’s really a good way to spin it, to be completely honest,” he said.
The strategist pointed to Trump’s home state of Florida, where 3 million voters voted by mail-in ballot last year, as one in which Republicans have closed the mail-in ballot “gap” between the parties. Last year, 35% identified as members of the GOP and 42% as Democrats.
“If it becomes more of a formal effort where we actually see it getting some steam, then I do believe it will probably be Republicans in the ecosystem who will push pretty hard against this and just present the facts to the White House and the president of why that might be a bad idea,” he added.
University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden agreed Trump’s proposal “might end up hurting his party’s election chances” as the president and the White House prepare for next year’s midterm elections. Those preparations range from promoting the One Big Beautiful Bill, including Vice President J.D. Vance’s Thursday trip to Peachtree City, Georgia, to mid-decade redistricting in Texas and potentially Indiana.
“Historically, Republicans have been more likely to vote by mail,” Burden told the Washington Examiner. “The pattern got upended during the COVID pandemic in 2020 when Democrats became heavier users of mail ballots. But the differences in how Democratic and Republican voters cast their ballots have been ebbing since 2020, so new limits on mail balloting could actually create more challenges for the GOP.”
American Enterprise Institute senior fellow John Fortier was more circumspect than Burden. Fortier told the Washington Examiner there was “this enormous spike” in Republican mail-in ballot use during the 2020 COVID election, but that the trend decreased last year to be “a little higher than 2016 but certainly far lower than 2020,” with “a lot of Republican states that eased things for COVID going back to what they had done before.”
Regardless, Republicans in 2024, “as a political strategy, said we should use absentee ballots where they’re available,” according to Fortier.
“Whatever the law is, wherever it is, we shouldn’t just tie our hand behind our back, we should use those laws,” he said.
Aside from the political consequences of Trump’s proposal, University of Georgia political science professor M.V. Hood III underscored constitutional concerns.
“Federal courts have recognized the ability of state legislatures under the time, place, and manner clause to essentially establish wholesale election codes,” Hood told the Washington Examiner.
Hood, director of the University of Georgia’s Survey Research Center, contended Congress can “add to those regulations,” but it would be “dubious” for a federal court to get rid of mail-in voting completely.
Although American Enterprise Institute’s Fortier shared Hood’s concerns about Trump’s proposal through executive order, he argued Congress has more power over congressional elections, which has been demonstrated through, for example, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Help America Vote Act after the 2020 election between former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Al Gore.
Fortier, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s director of governmental studies and the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project’s principal contributor, also asserted that Trump could introduce reforms to mail-in ballots “perhaps through executive enforcement” by the Justice Department or other lawsuits.
“They’re going to have a hard time pushing at the heart of vote by mail, but I do think that they care about things around the edges, like making sure that the signatures are checked or there’s proof that you are who you are, that you get your ballot in by Election Day, that you don’t have people, as third parties, bringing lots and lots of ballots back from people who are voting by mail,” he said. “Short of passing a federal law, which wouldn’t go through Congress because of a filibuster, the president, on his own, being able to do this is not realistic.”
Democrats have similarly criticized the constitutionality of Trump’s proposal. Democratic National Committee spokesman Marcus Robinson, for instance, called it “legally baseless” and a threat to “the voting rights of millions of Americans, including military families and voters abroad.”
“Trump is so terrified he is going to lose the midterms that he is attempting an illegal redistricting scheme, and now he’s attacking mail-in voting even though he encouraged his own supporters to vote by mail in the last election,” Robinson told the Washington Examiner. “As always, Trump is trying to find a way to blame everyone else for his inevitable failure. Democrats will continue working to ensure every eligible American can cast their ballot and have it counted.”
Trump previewed his administration’s legal argument for his proposal, emphasizing “States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.”
“They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do,” he wrote.
When pressed by the Washington Examiner, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said, “Democrats have eroded faith in our elections with reckless laws, such as unfettered mail-in voting, illegally changing laws to benefit their voters, and slow-walking the counting of votes far past Election Day.”
“President Trump wants to secure America’s elections and protect the vote, restoring the integrity of our elections by requiring voter ID, ensuring no illegal ballots are cast, and preventing cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York,” Fields said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added during her briefing Tuesday that Trump and his aides continue “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.”
“Republicans generally, and the president generally wants to make it easier for Americans to vote and harder for people to cheat in our elections,” Leavitt told reporters. “This is a priority for the president.”
In his post, Trump promised to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” He claimed too, inaccurately, that the U.S. is the “only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.”
“WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” he wrote.
Still, Republican lawmakers are still evaluating the proposal to ditch mail-in voting entirely.
Ben Kindel, a spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, told NBC News that the Republican still backs mail-in voting but said, “We look forward to reviewing the details of what the president is proposing.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), when asked if he supported Trump’s efforts to eliminate mail-in ballots, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that “Elections are regulated by the states according to the Constitution.”
Bacon, who will retire from Congress after his term is up, represents a purple district in Nebraska, where banning mail-in voting could be consequential. Over 30 states, including Nebraska, allow mail-in voting.
“I care about Nebraska’s election laws, and we do elections great,” Bacon said when pressed on whether states should change their mail-in voting laws.
Trump’s proposal comes after the president signed an executive order in March to implement national election integrity measures, including preventing foreign nationals from undertaking election interference, strengthening voter citizenship verification, prosecuting non-citizen voting, requiring voter-verifiable paper ballot records, and ensuring state compliance with federal law.
For AEI’s Fortier, there has been increasing skepticism regarding voting machines and a preference for paper since the 2000 election, particularly among Republicans.
“Some of the people now are saying, ‘Well, even though that’s a protection, we should not even use the machines to scan them and count by hand,” he said. “The idea of counting by hand first as the primary method would just bring our elections to a standstill; we’d slow down the counting tremendously.”
But the author of Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils, who said there was also probably an argument that a hand count would be “actually not more accurate,” added: “Maybe a softer version is to say, ‘Well, every vote should have a piece of paper, which most do now, right? We moved that way, but not everyone. So maybe there’s a little bit more to do.”
Burden, the University of Wisconsin’s Elections Research Center director, agreed that “counting paper ballots by hand is not faster or more accurate.”
“Ballots in the U.S. contain many races and different combinations of jurisdictions to cover the federal, state, and local races that apply to each voter,” he said. “The many combinations of races on ballots makes counting them by hand essentially impossible. To do so would be much more expensive, take much longer, and be less accurate than counting by machines.”
Trump’s renewed interest in mail-in ballots comes before next year’s midterm elections and after his summit last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.
“Vladimir Putin said something, one of the most interesting things,” Trump told Fox News last week. “He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.’ He said mail-in voting, every election – he said, ‘No country has mail-in voting. It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.’”
Trump then defended his proposal before his bilateral meeting on Monday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.