Mail-In Voting Going Away? Not Likely
NEWS\OPINION BY DOUGLAS WOLF| September 20th, 2025
President Trump has made the statement that he intends to issue an executive order that directs the states to eliminate mail-in voting. Trump is stuck on the 2020 election which he believes he won, but that the election was stolen by the flood of mail-in votes in two states in particular, Pennsylvania and Nevada. Both states mailed ballots to nearly everyone who every registered to vote and many adults who had not. The charge was that Democrats then harvested those orphaned ballots and filled them in for Biden. There is data to support the idea that there was something amiss in 2020, as the total turnout of votes jumped dramatically:
- 2016 total votes: 134 million
- 2020 total votes: 158 million
- 2024 total votes: 155 million
Pollster\Political consultant George Khalaf told the SaddleBrooke Republican club last June that the unexpected jump was explained by voters who decided due to a myriad of factors, primarily the COVID mess, motivated low intensity voters to turn out against Trump as a one-time event. Khalaf did not think it was the saturation of mail-in votes that had tipped the balance. Still, whatever the cause, Biden sat in the White House with creeping dementia, dropped out of the 2024 race at the 11th hour and then pardoned anyone he knew or did business with for 10 years in the past. An unprecedented abuse of Presidential pardon power. Who is the authoritarian?
GOP COMMITS BALLOT SUICIDE IN 2022
In 2022, Arizona GOP voters were told NOT to return mail-in ballots via the post office, but to drop those same ballots at their voting locations the day of the election. This was a very stupid mistake. It caused many voters who regularly received mail-in their ballots to simply ignore voting in total. It also deterred regular GOP voters who took their time to go to the polls and found that they had to wait in line for hours to drop off their ballots to not vote at all. Last, the voting totals were delayed by days after the polls closed because every single mail-in ballot that was not mailed but dropped off at the polling place had to have the voter signature individually visually verified by an election official.
The result was predictable, GOP voters who historically relied more heavily on mail-in balloting did not vote at all and that was more than enough to lose all the statewide races. The available voting data proves this happened.
Saddlebrooke, which has extraordinary turnout rates of over 80%, is a heavy user of mail-in ballots and it would be burden for many residents due to physical ailments and general mobility problems.
EXECUTIVE ORDER?
Now that President Trump has jumped into the issue head on, can he in fact make the states change their voting methods? The general legal consensus is that he cannot. The Constitution says that each state gets to set its own rules for running elections under Article 1, Section 4-click to read the full text of the Article here.
Generally, on the national level about 30% of voters cast their ballot via the mail.
Secretary of State Fontes Gets Shut Down Again
Despite his unremitting efforts to shape election procedures to his liberal leanings, Adrian Fontes has consistently been rebuked by the courts in his efforts. This past week, the judges ruled that Fontes‘ rule on voter intimidation banned any activity around polling places “by a person with the intent or effect of threatening, harassing, intimidating, or coercing voters (or conspiring with others to do so) inside or outside the 75-foot limit at a voting location is prohibited.” By contrast, state law against intimidating voters says it applies to a person doing so “knowingly,” and limits activity only within the 75-foot-radius.
The judges on Tuesday wrote that Fontes‘ rules were so broad they “could conceivably reach any speech related to elections and politics.”
Also, the Recorders in all 15 counties in Arizona are still waiting for Fontes to generate his statutorily required Election Manual that defines the rules and procedures.
