What is mail-in voting?

Rather than go to a local polling place to cast a ballot on election day, voters can ask their local elections office to mail them a ballot. This can either be returned to a drop box, or by postal mail. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have conducted at least some elections entirely by mail.

The process is different in each state. At least 13 states demand an “excuse” to vote by mail, requiring voters to attest that they are infirm, away from home or otherwise unable to cast a ballot in person. Some states require a ballot to be mailed by election day, while other states require a ballot to be received by election day.

What has Trump got against it?

Donald Trump falsely attributed his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden to fraud propagated through mailed ballots. Trump, his officials and supporters argued that changes made amid the Covid pandemic to expand mail-in voting in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania were unlawful.

Trump claimed at the 2020 RNC convention that expanded mail-in voting was “the greatest scam in the history of politics”.

His initial argument against the legality of the pandemic expansion of mail-in voting has since shifted over the ensuing years onto a broader crusade against mail-in voting as a practice.

Ballots arriving by mail at elections offices are typically counted last. The process of opening envelopes and verifying voter information can be laborious, stretching vote counts into hours or – in the case of states that vote almost exclusively by mail – days.

Though Republican voters have increased their use of mail in voting in recent elections, Democrats have generally been more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. As election night unfolds and mailed ballots are counted, Democratic margins often widen.

Trump has taken this observation and weaponized it with disinformation, baselessly alleging that unscrupulous elections officials add fraudulent votes to the mail-in ballot count, or that Democratic activists steal voters’ identities and cast ballots in their name, if not simply forging ballots outright.

Is Trump’s claim of voter fraud by mail substantiated?

No.

As Trump has amplified claims of fraud, academic and legal observers have increasingly put his allegations to the test – and found no real support. A UCLA Voting Rights Project brief from April 2020 found only 31 credible cases of voter impersonation out of a billion votes cast.

A look at fraud cases last year by the Brookings Institution noted: “An average total mail voting fraud percentage across the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections of only 0.000043%, or about four cases of mail voting fraud out of every 10 million mail votes.”

Mail-in voting fraud is rare. To do so on a significant scale, someone would have to be able to pick up dozens, or hundreds, of ballots from individual addresses of registered voters. That fraudster would also have to be quite certain that none of those voters would then show up to vote on election day, discovering that someone had tried to vote in their place.

A single case of a stolen mail-in ballot prompts an investigation – a large scale pattern would draw in state and federal authorities. There is little opportunity to industrialize the process.

The UCLA report notes that mail-in fraud has occurred, however. It highlighted a 2018 North Carolina ninth district case where a Republican operative improperly collected and possibly tampered with absentee ballots. The state overturned the election result. This suggests that current safeguards can catch a meaningful attempt at mail-in voting fraud at scale.

What is the Trump administration trying to do to mail-in voting?

The president began a full-throated attack on mail-in voting in August, vowing to lead a nationwide effort to ban the practice. In March, Trump issued an executive order requiring the US Postal Service maintain a list of eligible voters and block mailed ballots to anyone not on that list, wresting the power of election administration from state officials.

He has tried, so far to no avail, codify the change into law via the Save America Act in the US Congress.

The US Postal Service issued rule-making guidance to implement the executive order earlier this year, but federal courts issued an injunction blocking the rule from going into effect.

How have voting rights advocates responded?

Trump’s executive order was met by federal lawsuits almost instantly. The most important lawsuit is moving through the first circuit, where a three-judge panel upheld a preliminary injunction on Thursday against Trump’s order.

The injunction by US district court Judge Indira Talwani blocks the US Postal Service from implementing a rule blocking mailed ballots to voters that did not meet the Post Office’s standard.

What happens now?

The Trump administration has asked the US supreme court to lift the injunction against the president’s executive order, arguing that the US Postal Service rules regulate mail, not voting. The supreme court blocked the initial injunction against the postal rules last month, describing the case as “not yet ripe” for purposes of legal review. That no longer appears to be the case.

But the court must also consider the “Purcell principle”, a legal doctrine that bars courts from allowing election rules to change too close to an election out of concern that local election officials will be confused or unable to adapt. Because ballots for military service members have already begun to be mailed, any change at this point might affect some voters.

Meanwhile, a whistleblower came forward last week, describing the Post Office’s proposed process for blocking unapproved mail-in ballots as deeply unworkable and unlikely to become functional before election day. Even if the Trump administration wanted to block mail-in ballots they didn’t like, it’s not clear they would be able to do so.

Is it safe to use the mail to vote?

Well, Trump votes by mail.

All but three states have worked with the post office to create a tracking system for ballots, so that voters can know exactly where their vote is. Election mail is flagged for special handling by the post office, cognizant of deadlines.