Trump Urges Republicans to Vote by Mail After Years of Calling It a Scam
Trump Urges Republicans to Vote by Mail After Years of Calling It a Scam
President Donald Trump, who has spent years denouncing mail-in voting as a "scam" rife with fraud, released a pre-recorded video on Saturday urging Republicans to use "every appropriate tool" to vote in the midterm elections — including early and mail voting, the very methods he has long opposed.
"If your state has early voting, do not wait. Go out and vote," Trump said in the video, posted Saturday morning to his Truth Social account. "Vote early, vote by mail, or vote in person on Election Day." He also promoted a Republican Party website offering guidance on voters' ballot options. "The 2026 midterm elections are upon us, and I'm asking every patriot to get out and vote," the president said.
The message lands weeks before the Nov. 3 midterms and reflects a campaign strategy built almost entirely around base turnout rather than persuading undecided voters. "It's all a turnout game," a GOP campaign official told CNN last month. "From day one, the campaign committees and the president's political operation have been sharing data to make sure we're hammering the exact people we need to turn out."
For Republicans, mail voting is already mainstream: nearly a third of U.S. voters cast ballots by mail in the 2024 presidential election, and the Republican National Committee has been actively encouraging the practice — in mid-September it emailed voters that their "mail-in ballot is AVAILABLE TODAY" and urged them to request it now.
The reversal is striking given Trump's history. He has promoted unfounded claims that mail voting is rife with fraud — as recently as July he said "mail-in ballots are inherently corrupt" — and since the start of his second term has used the power of his office to try to restrict it. A March executive order sought sweeping changes to how mail ballots are sent to voters, but the Supreme Court rejected those restrictions last month after state election officials warned they lacked time to implement them.
Trump erupted after that ruling, calling the country's mail-in voting system a "disaster," a "laughing stock all over the World," and a "Nation Destroying SCAM." He has also aggressively pushed Congress to pass the "SAVE America Act," a federal elections overhaul aimed at restricting mail voting, but the bill has met bipartisan opposition in the Senate and stalled.
The irony: Trump is himself a regular mail voter. He mailed his ballot in a Florida special election in March — explaining that he did so "because I'm president of the United States," days after declaring that "mail-in voting means mail-in cheating" — and voted by mail again in the August primary. Palm Beach County records show he requested that ballot in July and returned it Aug. 13.
Election law experts see a tactical pivot. "He's realizing that his efforts to change policy on mail-in voting have basically run aground at this point, and he's shifting gears," said Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, calling the video a major shift.
Republican strategist Doug Heye cautioned that it was too soon to say whether Trump would stick to the message, adding it would be no surprise if the president returned to claiming mail voting is fraud in the coming days. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how Trump's endorsement squared with years of attacks.
With courts blocking his executive order and his legislation stalled, Trump's anti-mail-voting campaign has run aground — and with the midterms approaching, banking every Republican ballot appears to have taken priority over attacking the mailbox.