President Donald Trump vowed to eradicate mail-in ballots and “controversial voting machines” via an executive order ahead of the 2026 midterm elections Monday in an early-morning rant on social media.

“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,” Trump wrote in an online post on his social media platform Truth Social. “The mail-in ballot hoax, using voting machines that are a complete and total disaster, must end now!”

Trump has long been a critic of mail-in voting, arguing that the practice is fraught with fraud, despite no evidence supporting his claims. He aggressively attacked mail-in voting in the lead-up to the 2020 election, rhetoric that led to significant party splits by vote methods, with Republican voters leading in Election Day voting, and Democrats, in mail-in voting.

In his Monday morning rant, Trump also falsely claimed that the United States was “the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting,” despite dozens of nations regularly using the practice — and with less restrictions than in the United States.

Trump went on to pressure state leaders not to oppose his “movement” to eradicate mail-in voting, declaring that states were “merely an agent” of his office, and should do what the office of the presidency “tells them.”

“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,” Trump wrote.

“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.”