Fact-Checking Republicans’ Misleading Claims About Mail-In Ballots and Fraudulent Voting

President Trump has for months promoted a number of baseless claims about rampant voter fraud to try to justify a federal takeover of the country’s election system. It is an effort that has spread to other parts of government, which have peddled questionable assertions.

In public remarks and executive orders, Mr. Trump has escalated his attacks on mail-in voting and made misleading comparisons to other countries’ election systems. In lawsuits and affidavits, the Justice Department has repeated debunked claims about the 2020 election and selectively highlighted data to criticize how certain states maintain voter rolls. And in Congress, Mr. Trump’s allies are pushing to pass a bill restricting voting and voter registration by falsely suggesting that noncitizens were voting en masse.

Here’s a fact-check.

Attacks by Trump on mail-in ballots and casting American elections as insecure

What Was Said

“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary.”
— Mr. Trump in signing an executive order in March

This lacks evidence. Documented cases of fraud in mail-in voting are extremely rare, according to election officials, data and a body of research.

A 2025 analysis by the Brookings Institution found that cases of fraud accounted for four out of 10 million mailed ballots. The analysis noted that universal mail-in systems, in which all voters are mailed ballots, are actually less susceptible to fraud than absentee ballot systems, in which voters must request a ballot.

A database of proven election fraud cases maintained by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, includes 289 cases that involved “fraudulent use of absentee ballots” from 1982 to 2025.

A 2020 report by researchers at the American Statistical Association found “no evidence that voting by mail increases the risk of voter fraud overall.”

Repeating Mr. Trump’s criticism of mail-in ballots, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that “the president will do everything in his power to defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

What Was Said

“We’re the only country in the world that has mail-in ballots.”
— Mr. Trump on March 29 in remarks to reporters

False. More than 30 other countries allow for postal voting, including 10 that allow all voters to vote by mail, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a pro-democracy group.

The 10 countries are Canada, Germany, Iceland, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland and Britain. In the United States, 28 states allow all voters to vote by mail, with no excuses required, and eight others and the District of Columbia conduct elections entirely by mail.