The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Falsely Claims Mail Ballots Are "Corrupt," Calls For Their Prohibition

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

The president also called for changing how ballots are tallied in elections. We unpack the president's claims, and discuss how presidential power is limited when it comes to election administration. This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and voting correspondents Ashley Lopez & Miles Parks. This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics. For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR's Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I can't get over Hurricane Island, though. I feel like it's kind of odd to name a place after a natural disaster now. Especially a place in Maine where there aren't that many hurricanes, typically. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And today on the show, President Trump wants to change the way people vote. Here he is speaking in the Oval Office on Monday. Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots. And we, as a Republican Party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in-valrous.

So today on the pod, we are going to unpack this, the claim that mail-in ballots are corrupt and also talk about how the country votes. But first, Ashley, let us start with the basics. Can President Trump or any president unilaterally get rid of voting by mail? No. The executive branch has absolutely no power in dictating how states run their elections. We have a decentralized system in this country, which, by the way, has been embraced by conservatives up until now. I talked to a lot of legal scholars about this. And this was one of those things where like there was no equivocation. Everybody was like, this is illegal if he were to do this. So, you know, the founders designed the system this way. I mean, this one's one of those cut and dry things where it's like absolutely not. The president does not have a say and how states run their elections. But the president is saying that he's going to sign an executive order. We don't know exactly what that order will say or do. When asked about this fact of how elections work, the White House says, well, we'll also. be working with Republicans in Congress and out in the states. Well, I mean, he mentioned Congress. Like, Congress could change this system that we have, right? That is the only structure that could do this. That is the only branch of government that is allowed to change the way we run our elections and sort of centralize it as opposed to having a decentralized system. But.

Or the state legislatures, right? Because like, we did see that after 2020, where when Trump was really mad about how that election went, we saw many Republicans. Wilkin states then passed laws that seemed completely based on his complaints to either add new restrictions, new security measures on vote by mail, and do other sort of election changes as a result of that. So we definitely could see that before the midterms other states changing election policies. And the interesting thing here is you say a lot of it has already happened in the states where they wanted to do it back in 2020 and the years immediately after that. So let's look at the claim that the president made that mail-in ballots are

corrupt. There's no evidence that that is the case. I will say there when we talk about fraud in elections, the place where it does marginally happen more is in vote by mail traditionally, but it is still a very, very small amount. And there's never been evidence to show that vote by mail systems have been fraudulently tainted to the point that Trump talks about. I mean, I'm talking about like there have been local elections that have been impacted by stuffing a few mail ballots here and there and things like that. So that is not factually. and I will also say states have been continuing developing new security systems that are also pretty interesting. Like nowadays in many states, you can go online and you can track where a mail ballot is when

it's been sent, when it arrives to you, when it gets back to the election official, when it's been counted, things like that. There's a few other things that he said that I think we should just quickly go through. One of the things was that he indicated that the U.S. was the only country that still uses vote by mail, which is not true. There are dozens of countries that offer postal mail. And also, it's been in use in the U.S. worth noting for over 150 years since the Civil War. And the last thing, he said, he wants to get rid of voting machines. That was the other aspect of this to come still waiting on this executive order that's going to somehow eliminate voting machines. It's very unclear what he's talking about there, whether he's talking about people who vote on

machines and don't use paper ballots, which is like roughly 1% of the country, like a very small percentage of the country, doesn't use paper ballots or whether he's talking about the tabulators that are used to count the ballots, which also, I should. note have been found to be much more accurate than hand counting ballots. Yeah. And I think something like in the last election, almost 100 percent of jurisdictions had voting machines that had a paper trail that you could easily audit. And I mean, it's worth noting that we just had an election where voting machines and mail and ballots were used widely. And even the Trump administration itself has said that that was a great and safe election. So, you know, there is a bit of a disconnect there about

like where this is coming from. So, Ashley, why then is the president again? voting by mail? Well, I mean, this has been an effective way for Trump to, you know, raise the specter of concern over vote by mail and give people a reason to not trust the results of an election ahead of people voting. And so, you know, this was effective ahead of the 2020 election and the 2024 election. So I'm not super surprised that Trump is yet again, you know, raising concerns over a way of voting that, by the way, he has used himself. There are some states that are almost exclusively vote by mail. It's that. For a while, it seemed like that's the direction voting was going. It was. And I should also note that Republicans have won in many of these states. I mean, the state that a lot of election officials go back to is Utah, which is almost exclusively controlled by Republicans. And that has been a vote by mail state for years, though I should note that they are changing that system. And it's to be phased out in the future now. But Republicans have won there under all vote by mail systems.

All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break and we'll have more on the politics of all this when we get back. Support for NPR and the following message come from copilot money. Your fitness tracker helps you stay active. Your weather app keeps you dry. But who is helping you stay on top of your money? That's where co-pilot money comes in. It's a sleek, easy-to-use app that gives you a crystal clear view of all your accounts, spending, and budgets, plus customizable categories and savings goals.

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Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. And we're back. And just briefly, I want to get to sort of. the roots of this. Ashley, as you talked about, President Trump for years has had issues with mail-in voting. But the most recent outbreak of this started on Friday. In an interview he did on Fox News with Sean Hannity immediately after his summit with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin said something. One of the most interesting things, 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. I mean, that is just absolutely striking, isn't it? I mean, for years, how many years have we been hearing the establishment across the aisle? I mean, I can just remember hearing Republican leaders for the last decade talk about how Russia's elections were not trusted in that Vladimir.

Putin is like the last person that you would be taking advice on how to run free and fair elections from. And so I, you know, I don't know. It is, it is a striking piece of audio to hear. It's an interesting validator to choose when talking about election security in the United States, given all of the concerns about Russia. And Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, though, to be clear, votes were not changed. It was mostly a social media effort. And this comes as states are already preparing for the midterm elections in 2026. Yeah, I mean, this is all happening at the same time that there is this big fight between state legislatures and governors about redistricting. And, you know, this is not something that was lost on Trump.

I mean, he said the quiet part out loud recently. And he said, yeah, this is about Republicans setting themselves up for the next election. He said many times Republicans have to be smart. That's bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me. and the Republicans have to get smart. We're not going to have a country. I said for a long time, it rallies. You need borders and you need free and fair elections.

Those two things. The thing that is fascinating to me about this push from President Trump is that it, in some ways, comes in conflict with what Republican campaigns have been trying to do. I remember in the last election cycle, there was this whole bank your vote. effort that, in fact, they got Trump to endorse and he made a video, though, maybe begrudgingly. I think that 100% that this is like his rhetoric is at odds with political strategy when it comes to Republicans right now. I think, you know, even before 2020, vote by mail was favored generally by older Republican voters. And so previously, it didn't really make sense to be

anti-vote by mail. But now when you take into account the 2024 electorate, how did Trump win that election. He won it by turning out low propensity voters. And all research, election research, shows that things that make voting easier, vote by mail, voting early, helps low propensity voters. So if Trump makes it harder for those low propensity voters to turn out, guess who is going to be favored by that? Democrats in this current election environment. Yeah. And there's also a larger philosophical thing here that is against the way conservatives have been viewing the way elections are run here. I spoke to someone at a conservative think tank here in D.C. And he said, I mean, Trump should be careful what he wishes for. Just imagine if you federalize elections and the next time

Democrats are in power, they're going to have things like universal mail and ballots. There will be policies that Republicans won't like in there. So if the goal here is to have the president and the executive branch play a big role in how elections are run, I actually don't think that most Republicans would actually like that. Well, and anytime that the president or executive branch has the most preeminent role, then you have this whiplash that we're having in the U.S., where you go from one party to the next, and then all of a sudden, everything changes. I do think it's important, though, to see the bigger picture here because every legal expert that Ashley talked to in the last couple days says there is no way that any executive order like the one he's talking about will hold up in court, it can still serve President Trump's aims, right? I mean, if his entire goal is to delegitimize elections in 2026 or 28, I think that's what a lot of election experts are freaked out about, is this idea that even if courts basically say everything you're requiring.

is unconstitutional. That is a basis for Trump or anyone else to basically say, no, we tried to make the election secure. And those judges or the Democratic legislatures or whoever wouldn't let us. And so you cannot trust these election results. You can do that whether or not your executive order is found to be legal or not. All right. We're going to leave it there for now. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you.