President Donald Trump launched an attack Monday on vote-by-mail, which Washington has used to conduct all its elections every year since 2012.
All-mail elections in Washington have proved both popular and successful — the state regularly ranks among the highest in the nation for voter turnout and poll results have shown that voters trust and are happy with the system.
But Trump has, since his defeat in 2020, attacked mail-in ballots, charging — without proof — that they are corrupt. That, in turn, has sown partisan distrust in the system.
“We’re gonna end mail-in voting, it’s a fraud,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, speaking with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Mail-in ballots are corrupt.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud in states that use vote by mail.
"We find no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall," found a 2020 report by the American Statistical Association.
An Election Law Journal study of Washington's elections evaluated the claim that vote by mail allows dead people to cast ballots. It found 14 possible (but not certain) cases of fraud, out of 4.5 million voters, over a span of eight years.
Trump, in a social media post Monday, said he would issue an executive order "to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections." Trump's power to make unilateral changes to election law is limited. The Constitution gives states the power to set the “times, places and manner” and Congress the ability to make changes.
“Vote-by-mail is the consistently most safe and trackable method of voting,” Sen. Maria Cantwell said in a prepared statement. “We can’t be for suppressing the vote."
"Despite President Trump’s claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that voting by mail results in increased voter fraud," Cantwell's office wrote.
Charles Boisner, a spokesperson for Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, said it was impossible to know the scope or implications of any executive order without seeing it first.
"What we do know is that under Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution, the authority to regulate federal elections rests with Congress and state legislatures, Boisner wrote.
Washington has had some form of vote by mail since 1983, expanded the options in 2005 and began universal vote by mail in 2012.
Trump issued an executive order earlier this year that calls for requiring people to provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and for mail-in ballots to be received by elections offices no later than Election Day.
Washington allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive later. The state requires a driver’s license, state-issued ID card or Social Security number to register to vote, and registering if you are not a citizen is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
A federal judge blocked Trump's order from going into effect, following lawsuits from Washington and 20 other states.
Washington is one of eight states that conducts elections almost entirely by mail, sending a ballot to every registered voter. Twenty-eight other states allow voters to request a mail ballot.
Studies generally find increased voter turnout in states that offer vote by mail. Washington has ranked no lower than 18th in voter turnout in any federal election since it implemented all-mail elections and has been in the top 10 for turnout five out of seven times, according to data from the University of Florida's U.S. Election Project. Oregon, which also uses universal vote by mail, has been in the top 10 six out of seven times since 2012.
Voters in Washington have shown no interest in going back to polling places. They have consistently elected officials, including secretaries of state of both parties, who support vote by mail.
The 2022 WA Poll, conducted for The Seattle Times and partners, found that 71% of Washington voters had moderate to high trust in vote by mail. A majority of voters of all parties trusted the system, but the poll found a significant partisan breakdown. Among Democrats, 92% had moderate to high trust, compared with 53% of Republicans and 59% of independents.
© 2025 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
