Trump Wants to Change Voting Rules. He Should Be Careful What He Wishes For.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to fundamentally change the way Americans vote. He wants to prohibit absentee ballots, mail ballots, early in-person voting, and the use of voting machines. He wants all voting to take place on Election Day and all ballots to be paper ballots. He claims that such changes will make elections more honest by preventing voter fraud. This is an extraordinarily dubious claim.

Indeed, moving to paper ballots is likely to increase voter fraud. The classic American phrase “Stuffing the ballot box” comes from the age of paper ballots, when voters put a ballot into a box. It was often simple and easy to put in a second or third ballot into the box, thus “stuffing” it. This phrase dovetails with the other classic American election phrase “Vote early and often.” It reflected an age when urban machine politicians—Republicans and Democrats—would send party loyalists from one polling station to another, pretending to be a voter in each precinct.

The days of such shenanigans are long gone, in part because modern voting machines—what Trump wants to get rid of—can’t be “stuffed” and in part because voter registration is much more professionalized. Every study shows the same thing: There is very little voter fraud in the nation, and there is none tied to machines. A study of voting in six swing states in 2020 found under 500 claims of fraud out of some 25 million votes cast. There were almost no cases of mistakes in counting votes due to machine error, and almost no instances of voter impersonation. One study found only 31 instances of this kind of fraud between 2000 and 2014, when more than 1 billion ballots were cast. Studies of the 2016 election showed only four cases of voter impersonation in the entire nation. Furthermore, there are no recorded instances of noncitizens illegally voting. It just does not happen. Mail voting is equally safe, although sometimes the post office fails to deliver the mail on time, and sometimes the mail gets temporarily misplaced. There have been a few instances when mail carriers threw away mail that included ballots. But these instances of criminal behavior by post office employees are extremely rare, and very few ballots were involved along with large amounts of other mail.

If we return to paper ballots, we are likely to see far more errors in counting votes. Let’s face it: Machines do a better job of counting votes than humans do. Where I live, I sign my name on an iPad, the staff compares the signatures, and I get my ballot. No ID is needed, and it takes only a minute or two. I am given a single ballot, in the form of a Scantron sheet. I fill in the little bubbles and feed the form into a machine, which records my vote. There are no lost ballots, no fraudulent ballots, and no cheating. Ultimately, the precinct has the vote totals, and it always matches the total number of voters for that day. All the ballots are preserved in case someone thinks something is amiss. Absentee ballots are fed into machines as well, and early voting, done at the board of elections, is the same as in-person voting. Both use a Scantron sheet.

Trump has been complaining about voter fraud since 2016, but there has been no proof of fraud or irregularities in 2016, 2020, and 2024. What we do get is occasional human error—such as when mail ballots are in the wrong place and someone forgot to open them. This is not common and has not changed the outcome of any election. (It is worth noting that for all his complaints about the voting system, Trump won two elections when Democratic presidents were in office, in 2016 and 2024, and lost when he himself was in office.) So why the fear of mail ballots, absentee ballots, and early voting? I think it is not fear but the desire of the president to reduce the number of voters, a move he thinks will help his party.

A brief look at the history of absentee and mail ballots helps us understand who will suffer from Trump’s guidelines if he is able to impose them. The first absentee balloting in the United States took place during the Civil War, in the 1864 presidential election. Nineteen states (out of the 25 in the Union) passed laws allowing soldiers in the field to vote, and the ballots were sent back to their home states. It was a great success, allowing those who had risked their lives to save the nation, to participate in the democratic process. Most soldiers voted for Abraham Lincoln, who was campaigning to stay the course, defeat the Confederacy, preserve the Union, and end slavery. Their marching song, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” said it all: “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” (The “peace candidate,” who wanted to end the war and reverse the Emancipation Proclamation, was Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, whom Lincoln dismissed for his incompetence.)

In World War I, with some 3 million men in uniform, almost all states allowed soldiers to vote with absentee ballots. The federal Soldier Voting acts of 1942 and 1944 guaranteed the right of men and women in uniform to vote. After the war, absentee ballots became increasingly common, as voters could not always be home on Election Day.

Trump would take away the ballot from our service members who are not in their home county when an election takes place. He would deny them the right to cast an absentee vote. A service member about to go overseas, or to serve on a ship about to leave, could not vote early before departing. The president, who constantly wants to honor his version of American history, should learn from soldiers voting in every election since 1864: Absentee voting and, now, early voting are as American as apple pie. It is patriotic. The administration claims that, despite Trump’s categorical opposition to absentee ballots, there will be some sort of accommodation for people in the military, but we know no further details. Will it apply only to people overseas? Will it work on ships? Or will a service member from one state, based in another, be able to mail a ballot back home? None of this is clear. Of course, we also wonder if it will also apply to a diplomat overseas, a nonuniformed person working for the federal government on assignment elsewhere. And if all these people are allowed to vote absentee, why not an airline pilot, an Amtrak worker, or anyone else away from home on Election Day?

Elderly voters love to cast their ballots by mail. Many, especially in Florida and Arizona, are Republicans. They do not want to stand in long lines in the hot sun to vote. Florida went for Trump three times, and Arizona voted for him twice, with huge numbers of mail ballots. But the president wants to disenfranchise these voters, many of whom supported him. (Ironically, in 2020, Trump himself gave a ballot to someone in Florida to cast for him in a primary and voted in the presidential election with a mailed absentee ballot.)

Rural Americans often vote by mail because of the distance to polling places. Trump did well among rural voters, but his successor would lose votes without mail ballots. This issue is especially pronounced with Native Americans, for whom distances on tribal lands can be enormous. Some Navajo live more than 200 miles from the nearest polling place. Others are as far as 95 miles away (190 miles round trip) from their polling places. (Most Native American voters did not support Trump, but the issue of ballot access should not be restricted to the winning—or losing—party.)

Blue-collar workers, putting in long days at a factory, mine, or warehouse, benefit from mail ballots and early voting. So too do oil field workers and those on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Add to this list truck drivers, airline personnel, train crews, and many who work in the corporate world, who regularly travel and may not be home on Election Day.

Going to paper ballots will slow down elections, creating long lines at polling places. Abolishing mail ballots and early voting will do the same, because more people will be voting in person.

Who will be less harmed by abolishing mail, absentee, and early voting and slowing down the voting process by getting rid of machines? Middle-class and upper-class professionals will be able to take time off from work, but hourly employees may not be able to, especially if the lines are lengthy, given the cumbersome system of handing out paper ballots. Teachers, professors, and government employees in many states will be given time off to vote. But first responders, police, fire, and EMT personnel may not have that luxury. The director of a hospital will be able to schedule time to cast their ballot; the doctors, nurses, and orderlies in the emergency room may not be able to vote. The manager and maybe the employees of a feed and grain store in a small rural town can vote, but the farmers may not be able to break free. In the large rural county in upstate New York where I grew up (Elise Stefanik’s district), the people in town will still easily be able to vote, but out in the county it will be touch and go. An early snowstorm might stop a lot of voters who would otherwise have mailed a ballot.

Trump’s plan will not make elections safer—they are already extraordinarily safe and secure—and it will not make them more honest. They are already incredibly honest. Rather, it will suppress voters and make it a privilege, a luxury, for those who can take the time to stand in line to vote. It will harm those in Arizona who cannot withstand the heat, and it will harm those in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who cannot stand the cold or snow. As the paper ballot process inches slowly forward, voters may just go home.

The irony here is that if Trump succeeds, he will undermine our political system and our democracy. But he may also disfranchise more Republicans than Democrats. Be careful what you wish for, Mr. President—you might get it.

Sign up for Slate’s evening newsletter.