Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order to eliminate mail-in voting and voting machines before the 2026 midterms, days after Vladimir Putin told him US elections were rigged because of postal ballots.
“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” Trump wrote in the lengthy Truth Social post Monday morning, also targeting “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES” which he claimed cost “Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper”.
The announcement followed Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska on 15 August, when the Russian president allegedly told him that the 2020 election “was rigged because you have mail-in voting”, according to Trump’s subsequent interview with Sean Hannity.
Voting machines are a horrible idea. You can change all the votes with just a single person’s effort in a foreign country.
Mail-in voting and early-voting are important, especially with voter suppression. In Australia the conservative LNP tried to argue against early voting because they “hadn’t even released the costings yet” as if they weren’t supposed to release them months beforehand.
Concerned that Putin is who he’s listening to on this. Putin is trying to earn Trump’s trust by giving him information he’s already primed to believe (true or not) and based on this it seems it was very effective.