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The Atlantic reports courts will not likely let President Donald Trump destroy mail-in voting, but that won’t stop him from gumming up elections.

The president appears to have taken his most recent idea for ending mail-in voting from Russian authoritarian Vladimir Putin, who told him “you can’t have an honest election with mail-in voting,” according to a Fox News interview with host Sean Hannity.

Days later, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would ban “MAIL-IN BALLOTS” in an “EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” He later said in an Oval Office press conference that: “We’re going to end mail-in voting. It’s a fraud.”

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Such an order would have little legal power, writes Atlantic reporter Quinta Jurecic. “The American system for administering elections is highly decentralized: The work of deciding how people should vote and of helping them do so is largely carried out at the state and local levels, with the federal government playing only a minor role.”

Banning mail-in ballots is a presidential power that doesn’t exist, but Jurecic said Trump can still make an “enormous mess” by “MacGyvering” a clumsy workaround. The Justice Department could threaten state and local election officials with “baseless investigations” in an effort at intimidation.

“Prosecutors would encounter the small problem that no criminal statutes obviously apply to an election official legally handing out mail-in ballots. But the risk of a criminal investigation, even a meritless one, could still frighten election administrators,” Jurecic said.

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Trump’s “hatred of mail-in ballots dates back to 2016,” said Jurecic, when he complained of Colorado’s shift to all-mail voting. He also tried to claim that “fraudulent” mail-in votes stole his presidency — an idea that become a key claim of the Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

But his animosity is knocking up against Republican voters’ increasing use of mail-in voting in their own elections, and Jurecic, adding that Trump’s advisors “may have to struggle to contain him.”

“The risk created by Trump’s attacks on mail-in ballots is less that Trump will actually succeed in limiting access to the franchise and that such limitations will actually tilt the playing field toward Republicans, and more that the president will … kick up enough doubt and confusion that a significant number of Americans no longer trust an election’s results,” Jurecic said.

Read the full Atlantic report at this link.