A voter drops off her ballot on Nov. 5, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

President Donald Trump has launched a new flurry of attacks against his old enemy: mail-in voting. He said on Aug. 18 that he was planning an executive order to end the practice, without elaborating on where the authority to do so came from.

Trump has held a vendetta against voting by mail, which he blames for his embarrassing defeat in 2020. But the policy arguments surrounding vote by mail don’t change the reality that the president cannot determine state election laws through executive order.

Despite the comforting endorsement of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Trump’s plans to end mail-in voting by executive order should worry anyone who cares about a limited federal government. Congress' complacency makes it clear that the Republican Party still puts Trump above conservatism.

Trump won’t stop lying about mail-in voting

Trump hates voting by mail, mostly because he gets to blame it for his embarrassing 2020 loss to Joe Biden. Trump claims that mail-in voting is abused by Democrats and can be subject to fraud. I’m sympathetic to parts of his argument in favor of one single Election Day, driven primarily by in-person voting, but his arguments against mail-in voting are completely disingenuous.

Mail-in voting is not inherently bad, and there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 or any other modern election. Moreover, until 2020, neither party had a distinct advantage in mail-in ballots.

However, the pandemic election drew sharp partisan lines over the practice, and Trump told his supporters that their vote wouldn't count if they voted by mail. In that election, 60% of Democrats reported voting by mail, compared with just 32% of Republicans.

Afterward, 74% of Republicans expressed concern about fraud in mail-in voting. In 2024, GOP leaders had an uphill battle to combat the damage that Trump did to their voters’ confidence in voting by mail.

The Republican Party and friendly organizations spent millions to promote mail-in voting in the lead-up to the 2024 election, and it appears to have made a dent in the deficit Trump created in 2020. In that election, even Trump at times begrudgingly endorsed absentee voting in the interest of boosting his turnout.

Nonetheless, Trump couldn’t keep his mouth shut and continued to undermine the GOP’s efforts.

The president is doing so to the extreme now, threatening to end mail-in voting by executive order, thrusting the debate around election integrity back into the national spotlight. His efforts only serve to create more headaches for those tasked with mobilizing voters for the 2026 and 2028 elections.

Trump cannot end mail-in voting with his pen

“We’re going to end mail-in voting," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "It’s a fraud."

He also said his administration is creating an executive order aimed at that purpose. Trump’s threat to eliminate mail-in voting by executive order is anti-constitutional garbage. Any authority he claims to regulate elections himself is brazenly unconstitutional.

In case you think I’m being hyperbolic, here is the plain text of the Article I elections clause: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The text leaves little room for interpretation, and certainly not enough to find any presidential authority for regulating elections at his whim.

There are things that Trump could do by lobbying Congress to act on his behalf, but he lacks the filibuster-proof majority to impose his will on Americans.

This is the type of abuse of power that would send Republicans into a frenzy if threatened by President Biden. It is extremely disappointing that elected Republicans have remained mostly silent on Trump’s ridiculous plan.

Conservatives should worry not just about Trump’s unconstitutional plan, but also about the fact that nobody in positions of power has the spine to call him out on it.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump doesn't have the authority to change voting. Doesn't seem like he cares. | Opinion

Reporting by Dace Potas, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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