President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for voting by mail. Despite its popularity among Republicans and Democrats alike, and despite the absence of fraud related to mail-in voting, the president’s crusade continues unabated.
His latest salvo came this month when he promised to issue an executive order to prohibit mail-in voting in the interest of “honesty.” Virginia officials should stand fast in the face of this extraordinary overreach, trusting a state election system that is secure, accurate and more accessible than ever before.
Earlier this month, the president found a new ally for his oft-repeated claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Only hours after meeting with Putin in Alaska this month, Trump trumpeted that the Russian leader, a former KGB officer who is under indictment by the International Criminal Court, agreed with the president’s assertion that he won five years ago.
That echoes Trump’s disastrous 2018 summit in Helsinki when the president took Putin’s word that the Russians had not interfered with the 2016 election. He sided with the Russian leader over the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community and numerous reports, complete with mountains of evidence, that proved Russian meddling.
Trump knows that the 2020 election was securely conducted, exhaustively litigated and fairly decided. Trump’s insistence otherwise fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol at which the president’s supporters, trying to stop the certification of the Electoral College results, injured more than 140 police officers.
Those same lies now form the basis of his crusade against mail-in voting. This month he promised to issue an executive order that would ban the practice, which he called corrupt, claiming that the U.S. is the only country in the world that uses them, which is false.
In fact, mail-in voting is both broadly popular — about 58% of Americans support it, per recent polling — and widely used, with about one-third of all ballots nationwide submitted by mail. Americans think that mail-in access isn’t expansive enough; some 60% believe that ballots should be mailed by default to every eligible voter, as states such as Oregon already do.
It was notable that on the same day Trump issued his latest broadside against mail-in voting, election officials in Virginia once again emphasized that the commonwealth’s voting system is accurate, reliable and secure.
“In Virginia we vote on 100% hand marked paper ballots, our machines are certified at both the state and federal level, and also every machine is tested before every election. Wireless connectivity in machines in polling places is prohibited under state law, and election results are checked three times, and machines are audited, prior to certification,” Virginia Elections Commissioner Susan Beals told the House Privileges and Elections committee last week.
Virginia has, in recent years, expanded the opportunity for eligible residents to vote via absentee ballots, and the public has embraced that option enthusiastically. Importantly, the commonwealth has defied critics who contend, without evidence, that allowing more voting options would increase instances of fraud. To his credit, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is among those who have encouraged more voters to utilize mail-in balloting.
In announcing his future action against mail-in voting, Trump wrote, “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.”
But Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution reads, “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof …” The president cannot unilaterally act to change any state’s administration of elections, no matter what he claims.
That means the power for regulating and administering Virginia’s elections remains with officials in Richmond. They know that mail-in voting is secure, trustworthy and popular with the public, and they should defend against the president’s spurious attacks to end it.
