America's Talking - Dems Oppose Trump’s Bid to End Mail-in Ballots, Voting Machines

Episode Date: August 24, 2025

(The Center Square) – Casting a ballot may look different for millions of American voters in the 2026 midterm elections if Republican-led states follow President Donald Trump’s wish to abolish mail-in voting and electronic voting machines. In a lengthy social media post Monday, the president announced he is planning to “lead a movement” to end mail-in ballots and voting machines, beginning with issuing an executive order in the near future. Trump said the changes would restore election integrity and “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He called mail-in voting a “SCAM” that can enable “MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD” and labeled paperless voting machines "Inaccurate," “Expensive” and “Seriously Controversial.”Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_e05e42cb-de76-41c1-8ae5-a483eb322b96.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire service. President Trump said this week that he wants to abolish mail-in voting in electronic voting machines. Trump said the changes would restore election integrity and, quote, help bring honesty to the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats said he can't do that. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square's congressional reporter, Therese Boudreau. Teres, tell us more about what Trump said this week. Yeah, so Trump posted a very long post on truth social, the social media platform, and he said that he is going to lead a movement, beginning with an executive order, to abolish

mail-in-voting and electronic voting machines. And so obviously there's been a lot of, you know, surprise, or maybe not surprise, more like upheaval about that. He argues that, that, mail-in voting is insecure. He claims that it has led to massive fraud. There's no proof of that, but that's, you know, a talking point that he's been on for a while. So he says it's less secure.

And then for the voting machines, the electronic voting machines, which there are some to where voters, they're not very common. There's about 98% of polling locations have a kind of machine. if they do it all where you put the paper ballot that a voter filled out in the machine and it counts it. But there are some voting machines where it's all completely electronic. And there actually have been security concerns with that in the past by the U.S. Elections Commission. Again, no proof of fraud, but basically, hey, this isn't the most secure way to do it. And so he wants to target both of those.

and there's been some agreement among Republican lawmakers for him, but it's unclear how exactly he would do that, because he can't just put out an executive order saying, hey, all states and localities can no longer do mail and voting or electronic voting machines, because the Constitution's elections clause says that states and localities, local governments, are the ones who can essentially figure out how they want to carry out the elections process. So the times, manner, and places, it says,

are what the states can dictate on their own. So it's unclear how Trump will be able to do that, but apparently he's going to start the process with an executive order. Terrez, while some states have had widespread mail-in voting for over a decade, it really expanded nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous to that, there was absentee voting for people who just couldn't get to the polling place on Election Day for veterans who were stationed overseas or elsewhere, things like that. But really, it was 2020. The 2020 election is when mail-in voting expanded, and most states have not really gone back from that. Trump says that, as you mentioned, Trump says that that can lead to widespread fraud, ballot dumping. someone gathering a bunch of ballots and putting them in there, there have been samples of that occurring and people being arrested across the country,

but not widespread. So I can see the arguments here both ways. But if the elections clause, as you pointed out, says that it's in the state's hands to determine how the voting, even if an executive order from President Trump isn't going to work, can Congress do anything about that? Or what happens next, I guess? Yes, they can actually. So Congress can pass a law. The Constitution says that changes how things are done with the election. So basically Congress can pass a law telling states that they can't do mail in ballots or mail-in voting. But and that's not going to happen, though at least with this 119th Congress. Because even though Republicans do have control of both chambers, there's no way they're going to pass the. the filibuster in the Senate.

Republicans have 53 people in the Senate. They need 60 votes. And Democrats have come out on social media and elsewhere saying that, you know, there's no way this is going to get past them. They're not going to let any ban or restriction on mail and ballots or voting or electronic voting machines pass Congress. So it really does raise the question, okay, how is it going to work then? You know, there could be some Republican states, especially those that have already been wanting to crack down on the massive expansion of absentee and mail-in voting, like you said, that happened during COVID and then kind of remained in a lot of states after COVID. So he could, you know, I mean, this is all just speculation, but maybe he could sign some executive orders saying that states who do this, you know, are eligible for a special election.

fund or something like that, you know, have more of like an incentive. Or there could just be some, you know, red states who do it so that, you know, it makes President Trump happy or maybe they've been wanting to do this for a while. So this gives them, you know, a good precedent and a good excuse to do that. It really, it's difficult to see how this could be, if there's any kind of change like this, how it could be anything other than voluntary on the state's part. because again, there's given the given the president's lack of power

in this and given the makeup of Congress, it just doesn't seem possible that states and municipalities who do not want to do this are going to do this. Again, which is maybe why President Trump said he's going to quote, lead a movement.

You know, so it might be a really big, you know, pressure campaign. We could see a lot of stuff. He didn't really give a bunch of details. The majority of the post was about you know, the scam that it is, you know, but he said, or the, you know, the massive fraud that's been enabled, all, you know, all of these, all of these claims that, that he's made. But it is, it is interesting because, um, the electronic voting machines, like I said, there are a lot of bipartisan concerns with those. The U.S. Elections Commission actually unanimously voted in May to recommend that all, um, polling places have some kind of, of paper trail, that they don't just use fully electronic voting machines that you can't trace any ballots. You don't have people hand-filling things. You don't have, you know, something,

some ballot going into a machine. It's all just electronic. They recommend that, just against that, because it's just difficult to track at that point. So yeah, we'll see. It's, you know, he makes, President Donald Trump makes announcements like this all the time or he just put something on social media and says we're going to do this. And then, you know, we all just wonder, all right, let's try to figure out how he plans to accomplish that. But, yeah, in the coming weeks, see what that executive order is about. Teres, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.