Trump's mail-in meltdown
Today, Explained
This episode of 'Today, Explained' examines President Trump's ongoing campaign to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterms, highlight
Key takeaways
- Trump's push to eliminate or restrict mail-in voting is rooted in unfounded claims of widespread fraud, which experts confirm does not exist at scale.
- The executive order requiring states to upload voter lists to a new post office web portal has serious technical flaws and lacks proper testing, risking catastrophic failure during elections.
Main topics
- Trump's campaign against mail-in voting
- Executive order on mail ballot logistics
Notable quotes
"Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots." – Donald Trump
Conclusion
While Trump's attacks on mail-in voting are largely driven by false claims and political strategy, they pose real
Transcript preview
Speaker 7 (0:01) The president of the United States is throwing a two-day midterm pep rally in Dallas, Texas this week. Let's see what he had to say last night. If Speaker 6 (0:10) 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. Speaker 7 (0:40) 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 butting heads over gerrymandered maps there. And don't even get us started on what's going on with mail-in voting on today's Explain from Vox. Speaker 2 (1:00) Megan Rapinoe here. This week on Why Are You Like This, I'm talking with Vice President Kamala Harris. We talk about her thoughts on public service, how D.C. has shaped her, and we find out if she's planning to run for president in 2028. Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Speaker 7 (1:21) 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 BetterHelp 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 explained. That's betterhelp.com slash explained. Speaker 6 (2:03) Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and meet the press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS. And today Speaker 4 (2:11) explains your Speaker 6 (2:12) one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Speaker 8 (2:18) I'm Patrick Marley. I'm a reporter with The Washington Post. I cover elections and voting. Let Speaker 7 (2:23) 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 Speaker 8 (2:33) 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 you believe. Speaker 7 (2:57) 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 futzing with our election systems, especially as they pertain to mail-in voting? Speaker 8 (3:24) Well, as you know, Donald Trump has had a lot of concerns and thoughts about elections since even before he became president. Speaker 6 (3:32) Remember, we're competing in a rigged election. This is a rigged election, folks, OK? And I'm afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest. The election is rigged. It's rigged like you've never seen before. Speaker 8 (3:46) And mail voting in particular has been a fixation of his. He has. called for its outright elimination in some cases. Speaker 6 (3:54) End mail-in voting. It's a fraud. Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real Speaker 8 (4:02) democracy with mail-in ballots. Most recently, in March, he signed an executive order that would change how mail voting is conducted and put up a lot of logistical hurdles, I guess you could say, that would make states and 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. Speaker 7 (4:32) Tell us the specifics. Who gets them? Who doesn't? Speaker 8 (4:34) 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 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 9,999 eligible voters who don't have any issues with their addresses or their names. And the entire batch would be blocked. Speaker 7 (5:39) OK. 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 Speaker 8 (5:47) 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,