Breaking down Trump's fever dream on mail-in voting
We should demand better from our president.
By Stephen Richer
Early yesterday, President Donald Trump posted another fever dream theory about mail-in voting.
I often wonder if I should bother seriously analyzing such posts. It’s a bit like assessing my 3-year-old nephew’s painting as if it’s a Monet, when, in fact, it’s just exactly what it looks like: a sloppy finger painting.
But here I go again. Here’s the post in full:
I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly “Inaccurate,” Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election. We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED. WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do. With their HORRIBLE Radical Left policies, like Open Borders, Men Playing in Women’s Sports, Transgender and “WOKE” for everyone, and so much more, Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS. I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS. THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!! REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON’T HAVE EVEN A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Apologies for the caps lock and the lack of spacing. His decision, not mine.
On to dissection:
1) “Lead a movement…”
To get rid of mail-in voting in the United States, you’d indeed have to start a movement that would pass new laws in all 50 states. Because that’s where election law is set: at the state level.
But Trump seems to quickly tire of movement-building and later decides his goal can be accomplished through “signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER.”
Whoops.
2) “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES”
I have no idea why “inaccurate” is in quotes. You can try to riddle some Da Vinci Code-esque clue out of it. But sometimes insanity is just insanity.
As for “VOTING MACHINES,” Americans have been using machines to tabulate election ballots for many, many decades.
Currently, most jurisdictions use tabulation scanners that read hand-marked paper ballots.
These function the exact same way as the machines used to score the standardized tests we took in high school and college. They simply read which oval is filled in, and they award a vote accordingly. They don’t know candidates. They don’t read writing. They just know oval positions.
These are highly, highly accurate. They have to be to be certified by the United States Elections Assistance Commission.
Machines are fast. They can read nearly a thousand ballots in a minute.
And they are much less expensive than alternative methods.
Of course, tabulation scanners should be tested and audited—by humans!—before and after every election. And they are.
The idea of hand-counting hundreds of millions of ovals with bipartisan human teams is such a stupid idea that politics is the only place dumb enough for it to be taken seriously (imagine proposing hand-counting at a bank). So, it’s just not worth spending more time on.
3) “Watermark Paper”
Watermarked ballots work the same way that watermarks on dollar bills work – they are means of authenticating the paper source.
But watermarked ballots have nothing to do with the tabulation of the ballot. Watermarked ballots still have to be tabulated by machine or by hand.
So, when Trump says that watermarked ballots are faster than voting machines, it makes no sense.
Surprise, surprise.
4) "We are the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting."
This is the type of comment that shows me that Trump and the Trump team simply don’t care about truth. At all.
A five-second Google search would let anyone know this isn’t true.
Many countries use mail ballots. Heck, even countries that have Trump hotels use mail ballots.
Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, the United Kingdom all use mail ballots. And those are just some of the “nice countries” that Trump wouldn’t dismiss off-handedly (although maybe Russia is the gold standard for all things now?)
5) "The States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes."
Again, don’t ask me to figure out the capitalization and quotations.
But this is a heck of a deviation from the long-cherished Republican belief in federalism. This is something we were all (reasonably) shouting about when the Democrats tried to nationalize elections in 2021-2022 with the “We the People Act.”
Apparently, we Republicans no longer care about states’ rights. But the U.S. Constitution does. And Article 1, Section 4, Clause 1 of the Constitution gives states authority over the “Times, Places, and Manner” of election administration.
That’s why, for example, Georgia elections don’t look the exact same as Oregon elections. Because almost all election procedure is determined by state law. It would likely be unconstitutional to wash away all state control.
6) “Radical Left policies… Open Borders… Men Playing in Women’s Sports… WOKE…”
I agree with Trump on a lot of this.
But it has nothing to do with mail voting.
And it doesn’t excuse the obvious falsehoods in the rest of his post.
We should demand better from the most important person in the world.
But, apparently, we don’t.
Stephen Richer, a Republican, is the former elected Maricopa County recorder, responsible for that county's elections. He is chief executive of Republic Affairs, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, and a board member of State Democracy Defenders.
Most of us normies understand that mail-in voting is secure, but where the media is falling down, and indeed Democratic leadership, is in stating that mail-in voting works while rarely describing why. I was just listening to a story on NPR about it this morning... reporting again on Trump's desire to destroy mail balloting, countering only by saying that "mail balloting is secure."
We are doing ourselves a great disservice by not shouting the following from the rooftops, at every opportunity: "Mail balloting his secure because it's *barcode controlled*, tied to individually registered voters." One sentence, just a few words, no long explanation needed (although a bit more description would be helpful sometimes). Nearly everyone in the MAGAverse, and indeed some Independents and Democrats in states that don't use mail balloting, believe that mail ballots can be photocopied by the thousands and that ballot boxes can be fraudulently stuffed. The people at Fox News know this is not true but of course lie through their teeth.
If we're going to advocate for ourselves, and start bringing knives to the knife fight, then we need to speak truth to power here. Saying only that mail balloting is secure is NOT enough. We need to say why!!
Please write a column on what you do agree with in that crap list at the end. I'd like to see you defend your stance and invite discourse about it. Now I wish I could un-read the rest of it.