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mail-in voting
The Postmark Plot: The Latest GOP Strategy to Suppress Your Vote
Under a new Trump rule, instead of postmarking letters when they’re received, Post Offices will now postmark them when they get “processed,” which may happen days later, potentially impacting millions of mail-in ballots.
Jan 03, 2026
It’s not just a brand new year; it’s a midterm election year. And the stakes this coming November are mind-boggling, so, of course, Republicans are starting to do everything they can to rig the election.
Just a week ago, for example, President Donald Trump’s Postal Service changed the rules about getting your mail-in ballot postmarked so it’ll be counted. Instead of postmarking letters when they’re received, Post Offices will now postmark them when they get “processed,” which may happen days later.
In the 2024 presidential election, the feds estimated that around 104,000 mail-in ballots nationwide weren’t counted because they were postmarked late; with this change, the number this fall and for 2028 could be in the millions.
Meanwhile, Republican secretaries of state are enthusiastically purging voters from the rolls as they get ready for this fall. Remember, reporter and economist Greg Palast found, using official federal and state numbers, that in 2024:
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
You’d think we each have a right to vote, rather than voting being just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways.
Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled, for example, that we have a right to own a gun. As a result, before a state or local government can take away your gun, they must first go before a judge to prove the necessity of doing so.
But, Republicans on the court tell us, Republican secretaries of state can eliminate your right to vote without even telling you; how does that make sense?
After all, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment.
The 19th Amendment references “the right of citizens of the United States to vote…”
The 24th Amendment starts, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”
The 26th Amendment is all about “the right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote…”
Additionally, the Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, says that Congress can make federal laws that overrule state laws restricting or regulating voting:
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…
And, sure enough, Congress did just that in 1993 when it passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes referred to as the Motor Voter Act because, among other things, it provided for the option of instant voter registration when a person gets a driver’s license in every state in the union.
Now known as 52 U.S. Code § 20501, this law of the land opens with:
The Congress finds that—
(1) the right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right
(2) it is the duty of the Federal, State, and local governments to promote the exercise of that right and
(3) discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups, including racial minorities.
And it wasn’t a particularly contentious law when it was passed: every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it (Rockefeller missed the vote) as did all but two Republicans.
So how did we get from the Constitution repeatedly asserting a “right to vote” and Congress passing a law that unambiguously proclaims that right, to the current state of affairs where states regularly and methodically deprive citizens of their “right” to vote and instead claim that it’s merely a privilege?
As I lay out in The Hidden History of the War On Voting, much of the blame rests with the most conservative and regressive of our federal institutions, the Supreme Court.
The first real test of the NVRA came in 2018, when Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, went on a voter-purge binge (that hit Black, student, and elderly neighborhoods particularly hard) and was sued by the A. Phillip Randolph Institute for violating Ohio citizens’ constitutional right to vote.
Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda, and they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to suppress the vote and thus rig the system.
In a bitter 5-4 decision, the Republican majority ruled in Husted v Randolph that purging voters because they failed to return a junk-mail-like postcard was entirely legal.
It’s a practice that was called “caging” back when Karl Rove’s guy was allegedly doing it, and it was illegal then but has, since that court ruling, spread to pretty much every Republican-controlled state in the nation.
They’ll identify a part of the state that they consider particularly “prone to fraud“—in other words, filled with a lot of Black and brown people—and mail postcards that look like junk mail into those precincts. When people failed to return them, they are automatically removed from the voting rolls. In most cases they don’t even know they’ve been purged until they show up to vote and are turned away.
Justice Samuel Alito’s decision was particularly biting, claiming that the arguments made by the citizens who’d lost their right to vote were “worse than superfluous” and their argument that they shouldn’t have to regularly check in with the secretary of state’s office to stay on the voter rolls represented logic “no sensible person” could agree with.
Sensible or not, in his dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that around 4% of Americans move every year. Yet, he wrote:
The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters—nearly 20% of its 8 million registered voters—as likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll...
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was even more scathing:
“Congress enacted the NVRA against the backdrop of substantial efforts by States to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters,” she wrote, “including programs that purged eligible voters from registration lists because they failed to vote in prior elections."
“The Court errs in ignoring this history and distorting the statutory text to arrive at a conclusion that not only is contrary to the plain language of the NVRA but also contradicts the essential purposes of the statute, ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.”
She then quoted the “right to vote” NVRA preamble noted above, and, essentially, accused the conservatives on the court of helping Republicans in the states they controlled engage in massive racial and economic discrimination in the voting process:
[This decision] entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate… Ourdemocracy rests on the ability of all individuals, regardless of race, income, or status, to exercise their right to vote.
The “right to vote” took another hit when the State of Florida’s Supreme Court ordered a recount of the 2000 presidential election but five Republicans on the US Supreme Court ignored the 10th Amendment (“states’ rights”) and stopped the recount.
That was a good thing for George W. Bush, because when the Florida vote was later recounted by a consortium of newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post, they found, as the Times noted on November 12, 2001:
If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won...
Nonetheless, Chief Justice William Rehnquist dismissed all the nation’s concerns about the court flipping the 2000 presidential election in that totally partisan 5-4 decision, writing in his opinion:
[T]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.
Which casts us in a pretty terrible light. As Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) points out:
The constitutions of at least 135 nations—including our fellow North American countries, Canada and Mexico— explicitly guarantee citizens the right to vote…
Instead, Raskin notes, because of five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court, we’re in the company of countries like Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, and Pakistan.
Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda, and they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to suppress the vote and thus rig the system.
That’s why they’ve already successfully passed previously unthinkable major voter suppression laws in 18 states and have them pending in many more. They’ve changed the law in Georgia and several other states so that they can now throw out the votes from entire neighborhoods or cities where they don’t like the outcome; all they have to do is vaguely assert a “suspicion of fraud.”
Unless enough of us stand up, speak up, and get active to regain control of Congress this fall and push legislation protecting American voters, Republicans will continue to eviscerate the voting right they’ve now turned into a privilege until it becomes completely meaningless.
Between the massive gerrymandering effort the GOP has launched nationwide and the Post Office’s changes that’ll hit Blue states with high levels of mail-in voting (some only have mail-in voting), the next few elections are going to be a real challenge for Democrats.
Additionally, as you’re reading these words, millions of voters are being purged from the rolls in Red states, particularly in Blue cities with significant minority populations.
As a result, this fall we’re going to have to show up in absolutely overwhelming numbers just to get squeaker victories in these now-heavily-rigged Republican-controlled states.
Unless enough of us stand up, speak up, and get active to regain control of Congress this fall and push legislation protecting American voters, Republicans will continue to eviscerate the voting right they’ve now turned into a privilege until it becomes completely meaningless.
And that will signal the end of America as we know it.
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With Baseless Fraud Claim, White House Says Trump Preparing Anti-Voter Executive Order
Asked to provide evidence supporting her claim of voting fraud in California, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded, "It's just a fact."
Nov 04, 2025
President Donald Trump is drafting an executive order aimed at rolling back voting rights, a measure that may include attacks on mailed ballots, a top administration official said Tuesday.
"The White House is working on an executive order to strengthen our elections in this country and to ensure that there cannot be blatant fraud, as we've seen in California with their universal mail-in voting system," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
“Like any executive order, of course, any executive order the president signs is within his full executive authority and within the confines of the law," she added.
Asked by a reporter what is her evidence of electoral fraud in California, Leavitt replied without evidence that "it's just a fact."
LEAVITT: It's absolutely true that there's fraud in California's electionsQ: What's the evidence of that?LEAVITT: It's just a fact
[image or embed]
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) November 4, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Leavitt's remarks came hours after Trump baselessly attacked California’s vote-by-mail system in a post on his Truth Social network.
“The Unconstitutional Redistricting Vote in California is a GIANT SCAM in that the entire process, in particular the Voting itself, is RIGGED,” Trump alleged without evidence. “All ‘Mail-In’ Ballots, where the Republicans in that State are ‘Shut Out,’ is under very serious legal and criminal review. STAY TUNED!”
Trump has previously vowed to ban mail-in ballots, a move legal experts say would be unconstitutional.
The White House's announcement also came as Americans voted in several high-stakes elections, including California's Proposition 50 retaliatory redistricting proposal; the New York City mayoral race between progressive Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa; gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia; and a crowded contest for Minneapolis mayor highlighted by democratic socialist state Sen. Omar Fateh's (D-62) bid to unseat third-term Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey.
The announcement also followed a federal judge's permanent blocking of part of Trump’s executive order requiring proof of US citizenship on federal voter registration forms.
Democracy defenders have repudiated Trump's attacks on mailed ballots and claims of voter fraud—a longtime right-wing bugaboo unsupported by facts on the ground.
"Voting by mail as permitted by the laws of your state is legal," ACLU Voting Rights Project director Sophia Lin Lakin says in a statement on the group's website about Trump's order from March.
"In his sweeping executive order, Trump tried to bully states into not counting ballots properly received after Election Day under state law by threatening to withhold federal funding," she continues. "A federal court has temporarily blocked this part of the executive order."
"Trump’s effort to target mail-in voting is a blatant overreach, intruding on states’ constitutional authority to set the rules for elections," Lin Lakin adds. "It threatens to disenfranchise tens of millions of eligible voters and would no doubt disproportionately impact historically excluded communities, including voters of color, naturalized citizens, people with disabilities, and the elderly, by pushing unnecessary barriers to the fundamental right to vote."
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Fear and Loathing in the Preseason: Democracy on Thursday Night
Three days. Three moves. Ballots declared scams. Registration ruled improper. Maps tilted. The point isn’t just to block opponents. It is to shred the idea that there are fair rules at all.
Aug 23, 2025
It’s preseason football. The games don’t count, but the plays do. August is when coaches test the roster, run experiments, and flash just enough of the playbook to hint at what’s coming. Starters run a series or two. Rookies play like their careers depend on it. Veterans jog through familiar routes. Preseason is rehearsal and preview, a low-stakes glimpse of how the coach plans to run the real game.
That’s also what American politics looked like this week. US President Donald Trump was the coach. His team was on the field. And nothing he called was random. These weren’t scattered plays. They were practice runs for one central move: Erase the idea of neutral rules, brand every referee a cheat, and make only one result possible.
On Monday, he declared mail ballots and voting machines a scam and promised to federalize state elections with the stroke of a pen. His Truth Social post read like a coach screaming the scoreboard itself was rigged. Mail ballots? Fraud. Voting machines? A “total disaster.” His cure-all: government-issued paper ballots with watermarks, counted by hand, supposedly faster, cheaper, flawless. But the real twist was his insistence that states are “merely agents” of the federal government, bound to obey his executive order. That isn’t just trash talk. It is a constitutional mugging. Elections have always been state-run under federal guardrails. Trump wants them president-run, with states reduced to clerks.
The deeper move is psychological. Mail voting has been around since Union soldiers cast ballots during the Civil War. Voting machines have been in use for more than a century. Neither exotic. Neither inherently insecure. Yet Trump brands them counterfeit by definition. He isn’t accusing Democrats of bending rules. He is saying the rules themselves are a scam. Once the scoreboard is declared broken, only he can decide the final score.
In American democracy, the season has already begun, the field is tilted, the scoreboard is broken, and the refs have been run off.
The next day brought a subtler drill, but the same logic. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, the Department of Education barred colleges from using federal work-study jobs for voter registration, even if the work was nonpartisan. Registration, they argued, was “political activity.” Political activity cannot be paid with federal funds. Which wipes out the kids at folding tables in student centers, the ones passing forms in dorms, the reminders before deadlines. Without them, colleges are still technically required to hand out forms, but the mandate is toothless. The memo even lets schools withhold them from students they “reasonably believe” are ineligible, like international students. In practice, discretion becomes exclusion.
This isn’t mobs storming the field. It is the authoritarianism of memos: quiet, technical, bureaucratic. A faceless letterhead does what the riot could not. Clipboards become contraband. Neutral acts—handing out a form, reminding someone of a deadline—are suddenly reclassified as dirty tricks. The players who kept the drive alive are ruled out of bounds, whistled for fouls that do not exist.
By midweek the action shifted to Austin. Texas Republicans, at Trump’s demand, rammed through a new congressional map. Democrats tried to deny a quorum by fleeing the state. They were threatened with arrest and ended up sleeping on the House floor. “I want to cry, but I am too angry,” said state Rep. Nicole Collier (D-95), exhausted and furious. The maps weren’t surprising, but they were ruthless: Communities of color carved into ribbons, cities lashed to rural strongholds, Republican dominance welded in place for years. Gerrymandering is an old sport. What’s new is how openly it is played as loyalty to Trump. Gov. Greg Abbott congratulated his party for “staying true to Texas.” Democrats called it dictatorship by district. Both were right. The field itself had been tilted until one team always played uphill.
Three days. Three moves. Ballots declared scams. Registration ruled improper. Maps tilted. The point isn’t just to block opponents. It is to shred the idea that there are fair rules at all. Once the referees are branded cheaters, every loss looks stolen and every victory feels like divine justice. That is how a system loses the ground it plays on.
We’ve seen this game before. After Reconstruction, Black political participation itself was cast as fraud. The sight of Black officeholders was derided as “Negro domination.” Literacy tests and poll taxes were marketed as neutral “integrity measures,” though their purpose was exclusion. Everyone knew the score was rigged. The trick worked anyway because neutrality had already been redefined as corruption.
The pattern repeats. In the 1960s, psychiatrists described civil rights activism as “protest psychosis.” In the Soviet Union, dissidents were diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia.” In Hungary, Viktor Orbán branded NGOs as “foreign agents.” Different fields, same tactic: Erase the baseline of neutrality so only raw power remains.
What makes this moment distinct is the speed and coordination. In 72 hours, Trump called the game crooked, the Department enforced it on paper, and Texas locked it into law. History shows that once neutrality is redefined as fraud, procedure alone cannot fix it. Reconstruction faltered not only because of violence but because federal enforcement was itself declared illegitimate. Jim Crow endured not only because of poll taxes but because Black citizenship itself was rebranded as a scam. Once the field is said to be broken, every call looks rigged.
And the breakdown isn’t just on the field. It is in the stands. Pew finds nearly half of Republicans now say mail ballots are fraudulent by definition. Trust in voting machines has cratered. Gallup reports confidence in federal institutions at record lows. Even basic registration drives—students handing out forms, neighbors reminding each other of deadlines—are increasingly seen as partisan cons. Some call this polarization. It is worse. Polarization assumes the same field, however bitterly contested. What is dissolving now is belief in the field itself.
Trump’s conditioning drill is simple: Teach the fans to boo the refs before kickoff, and every call looks crooked. A loss feels stolen. A win feels ordained. That isn’t healthy mistrust. It is training people to believe the scoreboard only works when their side is ahead.
And that is the whole horror of preseason. You think it is rehearsal. You think the game has not started yet. You think this is just your team practicing, that things will get better once the season starts, that you will pull it together. But in American democracy, the season has already begun, the field is tilted, the scoreboard is broken, and the refs have been run off. The loudest man on the sideline is calling the score, daring anyone to say otherwise.
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