Today, Explained - Trump's mail-in meltdown

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

Restricting voting by mail is President Trump's latest obsession ahead of the 2026 midterms. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh and Dustin DeSoto, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact checked by Gabriel Dunatov and Ariana Aspuru, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. An election worker sorts ballots at a polling location in San Francisco. Photo by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast⁠.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The President of the United States is throwing a two-day midterm pep rally in Dallas, Texas this week. Let's see what you had to say last night. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history, we've never had anything like what's happening. But because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend. to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. Okay, so let's add buying votes to the list of midterm shenanigans. We just had dueling rulings in Missouri.

The rhyme makes it sound fun, but the Supreme Court and a lower court keep budding heads over gerrymandered maps there and don't even get us started on what's going on with mail-in voting on today, Explain from Vox. I'm Mitch Purse. this week on Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I'm sitting down with Mr. ACL for the world's greatest athletes. Dr. Riley Williams is the medical director for the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Liberty, and a team physician for USA basketball. He's also the surgeon who repaired my very own ACL. We talk about how he became one of the world's top surgeons, why women's sports

are seeing more ACL tears, and what knee injuries you should be most afraid of. You can hear it all here by listening to Confessions of an elite athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Getting better at something is hard, whether it's running, gardening, playing an instrument, or anything else worth doing. You need to commit to the process it takes practice, patience, a willingness to be vulnerable. But it's also really rewarding once you get there.

But anyway, BetterHelp is saying that better is a feeling defined by you. And for BetterHelp, it's a better help therapist who really gets you. It's a focus on global emotional well-being with thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries. It's progress. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's better help.com slash explained. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Mr. Press is crooked and so is ABC and CBS. Today explained.

Your one-sided crooked network. Let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. I'm Patrick Marley. I'm a reporter with the Washington Post. I cover elections and voting. Let me ask you this. First and foremost, is there now or has there ever been a significant issue with fraud in our mail-in voting specifically? I mean, voter fraud exists. It does happen. It does not happen in a large scale. It doesn't happen at a level that can swing, certainly presidential elections. there are cases of fraud throughout the years in individual races where it has been significant,

but it's not happening anywhere at the scale that Donald Trump would have your belief. Right, because if you were a close follower of the president of the United States, you would think that mail-in voting, fraud is up there with immigration and the fact that D.C. doesn't have an arch in terms of importance. What has he been up to in terms of futsing with our election systems, especially as they pertain to mail in voting? Well, as you know, Donald Trump has had a lot of concerns and thoughts about elections since even before he became president. Remember, we're competing in a rigged election. This is a rigged election, folks, okay? And I'm afraid the election's going to be rigged.

I have to be honest. The election is rigged. It's rigged like you've never seen before. And mail voting in particular has been a fixation of his. He has called for its outright elimination in some cases. End mail-in voting. It's a fraud. Mail-in ballots are corrupt.

Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots. Most recently, in March, he signed an executive order that would change how male voting is conducted and put up a lot of logistical hurdles, I guess you could say, that would make states in the post office do some new processes that would determine who would get a mail ballot. And there's a significant risk that a number of people who would qualify for mail ballots would not be able to get them. Tell us the specifics. Who gets them, who doesn't?

So what they want is for every state to upload onto a web portal to the post office, a list of all voters in a state who are eligible to receive ballots. Then when the states would take in their actual physical ballots to a mail facility to be mailed, they would scan barcodes on the outside of these envelopes and compare that to the list of voters who had been provided by the state to the post office. And if they found even one mismatch, according to a whistleblower, who has submitted a report to Congress, if they found even one mismatch in a batch of ballots, they would hold even one mismatch in a batch of ballots, they would hold back the entire batch of ballots and send it back to the state or the county to rectify.

And so you could theoretically have a situation where you've got one ballot where an address has changed or there's been a name change that doesn't match what the post office has most recently. In a batch that also has 9,99 eligible voters who don't have any issues with their addresses or their names. And the entire batch would be blocked. Okay. And you mentioned a whistleblower. Why is there a whistleblower? Is this not all happening, I don't know, out in the open? Well, first of all, everything is on hold right now because of courts. So what Trump has tried to do has been halted by the courts. It's on a rocket ship to the Supreme Court probably. And we'll get an additional ruling between now and the election probably very soon. So everything's on hold. In the midst of the litigation, some unnamed person who is a federal official aware of what the post office is doing. submitted a whistleblower report to Congress, and that document is public, although we don't know who the person is. They say that there has not been adequate testing of this online portal that I was

talking about, that things have been very rushed, and that they see a lot of technical flaws that could result, as they put it, in catastrophic failure. Okay, so this unknown whistleblower says that this attempt to make our elections more legitimate and safer could actually result in, sorry, catastrophic failure? Catastrophic failure of this online portal to which states are supposed to upload their lists of voters. So in other words, a complete breakdown, potentially, because they believe it hasn't been tested fully. It has not been made available to the states as of this time. That there would be this giant hiccup backlog inability for states to get their voter rolls in or for, you know, somewhere along the line for the post office to not be able to access the list when it needs.

to or compare it to the ballots that it has and that that would gum up the works. What's going on with the Supreme Court? You said that this is sort of being held up right now, but sort of sounds like it's also going ahead right now. So help us understand that. Well, the president signed it and then there were a bunch of lawsuits almost right away, a group of Democrats sued, states led by Democratic officials sued, voting rights groups sued. These are in different courts. They get through in a federal district court in Massachusetts, and Judge Indira Talwani finds that this is going to be a problem

and blocks key provisions of the executive order that would prevent the post office from doing this. That gets appealed, and it makes it in August to the Supreme Court. The question before the Supreme Court at that moment is not, is this system okay, can they do this? The question is, was the judge, right to block it at this stage. And the Supreme Court said, yeah, this decision was rendered too early. The states don't quite yet have the right to sue. And so allowed the administration to move

forward, implementing the executive order. Then things just went right back to the lower court. The administration took further steps to advance it. It became clear that it was at a point where the states would have standing to sue. And she blocked it again essentially on, you know, similar grounds that this was going to be very disruptive and that it was not ready to go for the midterms. And now Trump is trying to get it back to the Supreme Court for them to put it in place for the midterms. It sounds very messy. That's messy. Sure.

Welcome to election litigation. I mean, this is the new world of elections. It's just, you know, a lot of changes, a lot of challenges, a lot of stuff going to the courts at the last minute, and then holding an election and then having a bunch of more legal fights. Like, that's the new reality of democracy in America. So if ballots are already out in some states and the Supreme Court makes a decision, let's say, I don't know, later today, that recalls them, how much does that affect what the voter experience in, you know, Missouri or, you know, Kansas or wherever? Yeah, so first of all, I don't think you could say that any ballots would be recalled.

North Carolina is the first state that needs to mail ballots in the country. It had to do it last week because it has a state law that says mail ballots must go out 60 days before an election to any voters who requested it. So 40 or 50,000 people had requested ballots, you know, tens of thousands of ballots got put in the mail. I know at least a few jurisdictions of Wisconsin have started mailing ballots to voters. So there are ballots out there. Now, let's say tomorrow or today the Supreme Court said that Trump could implement this plan. So it could be that the court would say those ballots are fine and any future ballots have to fall under these new rules. Honestly, we would probably have more litigation over what would happen to those particular ballots.

But I think that's maybe less of a concern than the tens of millions of other ballots that would clearly fall under this new rule and that the states would have to comply to get those out the door. Okay. And is there anything further to say about the president? I mean, it seems sometimes, you know, he catches a lot of heat for being more concerned with his ballroom than the issues voters care about, be it inflation or the price of gas or, you know, the amount of debt this country has. But on the other hand, he seems very concerned, maybe not with those issues, but with the integrity of our elections themselves. Like, what is that about? I don't know. It's a long time fixation of his. It is something he's been very concerned about and rail about.

I think anybody who even glancingly follows politics knows that he has many concerns about elections and the way they're run and wants to see big changes. He himself uses mail voting. He recently voted in Florida's primary by mail ballot. But he wants to see serious restrictions on that. You know, a challenge for him is that the Constitution says states run elections. and it does give Congress the power to step in and regulate them, but it doesn't have any explicit authority for the president. So he's trying to do a lot of things that many legal scholars say he just doesn't have the authority to do.

Mail-in voting conspiracies feel like the president's new big lie. Remember the one about how he won the 2020 election? But it turns out the big lie is alive and well in 26. And that's next up on today, Explain. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running.

Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business. Support for the show comes from article. And for all those of you who are like, can't wait to read, not so fast. Have you ever looked around your home and realized you've had some of the same furniture for years? And you're not even sure if you like it anymore. Article can help you update your home, the curated range of quality furniture and affordable price. Whether you're like a mid-century modern man or a coastal gal or a Scandi-inspired type or some mix of all of the above,

you can find beautiful pieces at just the right price for you and your space. Claire White has tried it. Claire. I got a really beautiful new desk set up from Article, and the pieces are amazing, but the best part about it was the White Glove Delivery Service that they provided. I was able to schedule a time that worked for me. They had some really incredible folks come to my house.

I was able to schedule it on my own time. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more to claim visit article.com slash explain, and the discount will be automatically applied. Checkout, that's article.com slash explained for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. Support for the showday comes from Found for all those of you feeling lost. Found gives business owners one place for banking, bookkeeping, and contract your payments with Found. All your businesses moving parts can finally work together.

It auto categorizes your expenses, captures receipts, come here, receipts, and lets you see what you're earning, spending, and saving. You get visibility into your profit and loss. so you can make calls about your business with confidence. You can take back control your business today. Don't wait. You can open a found account at found.com. It's found.com. Found is a financial technology company,

not a bank, banking services, are provided by lead bank member FD-F-D-F-O-U-N-D.com. Found does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice, optional subscriptions to Found Plus for $35 per month, $350 per year, or Found Pro for $80 per month, or $720 per year. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but other fees such as transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read, found fee. Schedule.

You've got mail. Fraud. Today explained us to show Andrew Kaczynski is the guest. He's a senior reporter at CNN, and he recently reported on the 2020 election deniers running for big, important roles in 2026. The interesting thing is that we talked about in this article that we did on five, the five most. key swing states, governor's races. We're talking Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Georgia. These are all states that Trump won 2016, Biden wins 2020, then Trump wins 2024. And what we had talked about was how in each of these of the five most important states,

there are candidates running for governor who, in four of the cases, just outright denied the results of the 2020 election. You'd have 61,000 votes that on it by a timestamp come into Donald Trump. And then the next thing you know, at the exact, almost just within a minute or so, the exact same number goes to Biden and then a subtraction goes to Donald Trump. Who won the election in Arizona? Donald Trump. We don't know. We know that he won.

How are these candidates in these five races faring? Does it look good for any of them? Well, with the caveat that we've seen some pretty big polling misses already in two of these states, most of these candidates are behind in the polls. But, you know, there's always the caveat that these are states that Trump won in in 2024 and 2016. So they're going to be their true battlegrounds. So, you know, anything could really happen in them. And how much is their. dispute lie about the 2020 election coming up in their races?

Not a ton, but what we did see was when we did this story pointing out that in, you know, at least in four of the key states, these are candidates that outright denied the election. When we reached out to three of them, they immediately gave us statements saying they would accept whoever won in their states in 2028. They would certify the winner. They said that Biden did win in 2020. So we've seen, you know, election denial is kind of a liability. It would seem for these candidates, especially because just give you the example of Michigan where John James has been down by like seven or eight or five or six in some of the polls.

You know, he was somebody who originally, he got elected in a swing seat in 2022 as a member of Congress after he had two failed Senate runs and he was like, yeah, of course, Biden won in 2020. And then when he ran this time, he actually went the other direction when he maybe was trying to get Trump's endorsement. There's a rally where he said that Trump won Michigan three times, which obviously

did not happen. Well, again, thank you, Mr. President, for coming back to Michigan where you've won three times. So you have a situation where, you know, it is probably a liability, but a couple of these, you know, candidates are running from him. But at least two of them, Andy Biggs

and John James didn't say that Biden won in 2020, didn't say they'd certify the winner and didn't really give us a comment at all on that, but three of them said they would certify the winner. Do you see this as part of like a broader effort on the part of this administration or the Republican Party more broadly to sort of legitimize the big lie

into our institutions, into even election administration, which there's been lots of reporting about? Or is it just a coincidence? Are there so many election deniers now that, like, inevitably some of them are going to be running for office in key battleground states? Yeah, I think it's more the latter, which is just that we had all these people who, like, 20, I mean, I'll give you the example of Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin. It's just, it's just like election denial in 2020. It was so through the Republican Party.

You looked at that amicus brief in the Texas lawsuit that tried to throw out the results in those five. key swing states before the election. You had like 100 members of Congress, I think, that like signed on to that, including Andy Bags and Tom Tiffany, who are both running in this cycle. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin, claiming they made unconstitutional changes to their laws before the 2020 election. When you diluted and changed wrongfully your laws on how to vote instead of going through the legislative process, et cetera, what you did is you actually watered down the votes of

states that were following their laws to the letter. It was just so thoroughly embedded in the Republican Party in 2020 and Trump had such a stranglehold over the party. But in 2022, many of those big election denier proponents that he backed, like they did lose. So I do think it's more of a liability for these candidates. But, you know, it's also part of why. Trump supports a lot of them, you know? So what you're saying is there's a bunch of proponents of the big lie, people who have propelled the big lie narrative running for office in key states. They're not crushing it, but they're contenders.

And the big lie isn't a part of their focus. But obviously what that suggests is that dormant in all of these key elections is the possibility that when these candidates lose, they themselves will deny the results of the election. Does that feel like something that is concerning voters at this point? Or are people just mad about their gas prices? People are mad about the gas prices. Like Trump, I mean, dude, like Trump campaigned on what were his big things?

Like, no new wars and lower prices, right? And what do we have? Also trans. Everything is true. Trans. Everything's transgender. Everybody transgender. That's all you hear about. Trans, no wars, lower prices. And we have a war that, like, dude, like, he was the no war candidate. Like, he was running in 2016 against, like, even though, like, dude, I've covered this so much. But, like, he said he opposed Iraq. He didn't oppose Iraq. He was on record supporting it. But, like, he lied and said that he did.

And that was a big part of his appeal was, like, we don't want dumb American. foreign interventions. And like, it's almost like we have extremely high prices on everything that he said we'd bring down. They've gone up and we have a war. So like he's at 20% with independence. And those are the people who are going to decide the election. And being so tied in with Trump is like not a great thing in some of these states, especially in Michigan with like Mike Rogers. Like, you know, they're talking about his, you know, Abdul El-Saiyad's ties to Hassan Piker. But like, it's a much bigger liability that Mike Rogers is so tied in with Trump, you know? Like, he's the president.

We've got a lot of candidates who deny the results of the 2020 election running for office in 2026. We've got people who deny the results of the 2020 election administering our elections in various key battleground states. We've got the Supreme Court fighting with lower courts about what maps they can use. We've got the president trying to redraw the rules around mail-in voting. There's probably things I haven't even mentioned. What do you think this all amounts to for President Trump? Is this about the midterms? Is this about 2028?

Is this just a pastime of his? It's a past time. Like that's it all runs through the fact that he thinks or is lying that he won in 2020, you know? And this is all just a part of it. It's all part of the same, you know, delusions about. mail-in voting or fraud or this or that and it's like you know like Arizona like I'll give you there's an example of like Andy Biggs who's running for governor in Arizona he was a huge huge stop the steel proponent and he was like you know the governor could have like decertified the results and

if they wanted to that couldn't obviously happen and it's like that's what Trump likes he likes candidates who, like John, John James, who said it at a rally with Trump, he won Michigan three times. Like, Trump just likes that. Trump likes the candidates who lie and say that he won in 2020. It's just like a pastime of his for trying to find this fraud that doesn't, like, obviously it exists. Like, obviously people do commit voter fraud and very low, like, levels, but like never has it been shown that it ever is on a large scale or enough to, like, change the election. being said, though, it's a past time that could have real tangible consequences in these 2026 midterms

and potentially even in the 28 presidential election. Do we have any sense of whether the frustration people have with Donald Trump and his real policies can overcome all of the shenanigans we're seeing around our elections so far this midterm season? Yes. I think if we have really close races in House, Senate, Governor, that's where I think some of this stuff could come into play with people denying the election, saying they won, trying to throw out ballots or this or that, you know what I mean, like election fights, like that's where things could get into a shit show. But I do think everyone was worried Trump would deny the 2024 election, right, if he lost, but then he won, so we didn't talk about it. If, like, Democrats, like,

so well that we're actually seeing, like, their poll that showed Sherrod Brown up eight points in Ohio. Like, if that poll, like, that doesn't need to be accurate. But if he's up by, like, four points in Ohio, like, then it's going to be a really bad year for Republicans. And I don't think we'll be talking about this if they win by, like, pretty, like, good-sized margins or it's as big of a wave as we say. And obviously, Trump can say whatever he says, but, like, the results will be the results.

It's like that. Andrew K. CNN before him, it was Patrick Marley from Wapo. I'm Sean Ramosferm from Vox. Today Explained was made by me and Harima Wagdi and Dustin DeSoto and Miranda Kennedy and Gabriel Dunitav and Arianna Spuru and David Tadishore. More tomorrow.