Getting Rid of Mail In Ballots

By John R. Lott Jr.

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” President Trump declared Monday in a Truth Social post. Later that day, he promised an executive order “to end mail-in ballots because they are corrupt. You know we are the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, just about, the only country in the world that uses them because of what happened, massive fraud all over the place.”

Trump has remained consistent; even before the 2020 election, he warned: “There is a lot of dishonesty going on with mail-in voting.”

Trump doesn’t need to hedge about voting rules abroad. Poland was the one other country that considered conducting its 2020 presidential election by mail during the pandemic, but even it abandoned the attempt. Countries don’t use the kind of mass mail-in voting now used in eight states – where states automatically send ballots to all registered voters, who then mail them back. That system differs from absentee ballots, which require a request and traditionally demanded a reason, such as being out of town on Election Day.

Appeals Court Unanimous in Pivotal Ruling on Undated or Misdated Mail-in Ballots

Carlos Garcia, 08/26/25

The ruling orders Pennsylvania to honor mail-in ballots that are undated or misdated.

The Republican National Committee was dealt a blow by a unanimous decision of the Third Circuit Appeals Court in the RNC's effort to discard undated and misdated ballots in Pennsylvania.

The three-judge panel said in the 55-page ruling that the affected ballots needed to be counted and failing to do so was unconstitutional. Pennsylvania voters are required to write the date on the envelope for their mail-in ballots.

'Discarding thousands of ballots every election is not a reasonable trade-off in view of the date requirement's extremely limited and unlikely capacity to detect and deter fraud.'

"The date requirement imposes a burden on Pennsylvanians' constitutional right to vote," the court ruling reads. "And it culminates in county election boards discarding thousands of ballots each time an election is held. The date requirement will not protect against the vast majority of attempts at voter fraud."