Trump wants to change voting. The Constitution was designed to protect it from people like him

President Donald Trump has big plans for redesigning the way states hold elections ahead of the 2026 midterms, calling for a nationwide end to mail-in ballots and voting machines on Monday. The U.S. Constitution stands in his way.

In a new post on his social network Truth Social, Trump wrote that he was “going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” as well as voting machines, which he called “Highly ‘Inaccurate'” and “Seriously Controversial.”

“ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS,” Trump wrote without providing evidence supporting his claims. 

Presidents aren’t given power over state election law. The “Elections Clause” in Article I Section 4, leaves “the times, places, and manner of holding elections” for the U.S. House and Senate up to the states, and only Congress is given power “make or alter” these rules.

The Elections Clause is one of the Constitution’s many built-in mechanisms for separating and checking power, and already, federal judges have blocked parts of a past Trump executive order that would have imposed federal rules over elections.

Undermining election integrity

Trump’s attacks on election infrastructure—from mail-in ballots to ballot drop boxes— have forced local elections officials to find new ways to build trust. Maricopa County, Arizona, gave tours of its tabulation and election centers ahead of the 2024 election, while in Ada County, Idaho, officials now publish every ballot online.

Ironically, voting records show Trump has himself voted early, and after opposing early voting measures and calling them fraudulent ahead of his 2020 election loss, he paid lip service to early voting in 2024. A Republican “Swamp the Vote” initiative in 2024 asked Trump supporters to pledge to vote early or request a ballot in an effort to boost early turnout, and it worked. Now he wants to ban mail-in ballots entirely.

Trump falsely claimed in his social media post on Monday that the U.S. is the only country with mail-in voting (at least 40 countries allow people to vote by mail), and he said he would sign an executive order ahead of next year’s midterm election to make the changes. Eight states and Washington, D.C., allow for all-mail-in elections, and an additional 15 states allow for mail-in elections in some circumstances and jurisdictions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Hollow legal ground

Trump’s apparent legal argument for having the power to end mail-in voting as president, as laid out in his post, is that states are “merely an ‘agent'” for the federal government in counting and tabulating votes, and the president is the ultimate authority of the federal government. 

“They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them,” Trump wrote.

Like his push for Texas to adopt new congressional districts that are gerrymandered to help Republicans, Trump’s latest election proposals are about letting the president decide policy that’s actually left up to the states, and giving the executive branch power to shape the legislative branch that was designed to act as one of its checks. Rather than a separation of powers, it’s a consolidation.