Trump Urges Supporters to Vote by Mail Despite Years of Fraud Claims

President Donald Trump has told his supporters they can vote by mail in next month’s midterm elections if they wish, a striking shift in tone from a president who has spent years describing mail-in voting as a practice rife with fraud.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday afternoon before departing for a rally in Grand Island, Nebraska, Trump said backers of his in the congressional midterms on 3 November could choose whichever method suited them, even as he restated his personal preference for in-person voting, according to Reuters.

“They can vote by mail if they want, because we seem to have no choice because a lot of people want to vote by mail, but a lot of very good people also want to vote in-person,” Trump said, according to Reuters. “You can do either.”

The remarks followed a campaign video posted over the weekend in which Trump urged Republicans to turn out by every available means. “Vote early, vote by mail or vote in-person on Election Day, November 3rd,” he said in the video, according to Reuters.

Trump framed the message as a turnout drive, writing on social media on Saturday that Republicans “must use every appropriate tool” and calling for massive turnout to overwhelm Democrats. He also promoted a “Swamp the Vote” website encouraging absentee, mail-in and early voting, Democracy Docket reported.

The shift comes as Republicans trail in the polls. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Monday put Trump’s approval rating at 32%, matching September’s record low, with registered voters preferring Democrats over Republicans 44% to 37% on the generic midterm ballot, according to Reuters.

It is also not the first time Trump’s actions have contradicted his rhetoric on the issue. He urged supporters to vote by mail in the 2024 presidential race and voted by mail himself earlier this year in a special election, Democracy Docket noted. Yet his administration has repeatedly tried to tighten the rules governing mail-in voting heading into these midterms, only for the Supreme Court in September to decline to allow the Postal Service to enforce new restrictions on mail ballots, Reuters reported.

Some Republicans have long worried that attacking mail-in voting could suppress turnout among conservative rural voters, many of whom live far from polling stations, according to Reuters. Analysis from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab cited by Democracy Docket found that in 2024, 37% of Democrats voted by mail compared with 24% of Republicans.

More than a million ballots have already been cast in early voting, with Democrats so far making up a larger share of ballot requests than at the same point in 2024, Meawww reported.

In a further sign of the campaign push, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has directed that members of the military — a group that tends to favour Republicans — be given a day off to vote.

Analysis: Why It Matters

Trump’s embrace of mail-in voting is one of the more revealing reversals of the 2026 campaign — not because the tactic is new to his playbook, but because of what the timing says about the state of the race.

For years, his attacks on mail-in ballots served a purpose: they seeded doubt about election integrity and explained away losses. But attacks are campaign messaging; turnout is campaign mechanics. With Republicans staring at polls showing a 44-to-37 Democratic edge on the congressional ballot and his own approval frozen at a record-low 32%, the maths has changed. A party that tells its own rural base — the voters for whom the mailbox is the polling station — that mail ballots are corrupt risks leaving its own votes uncounted.

The White House’s simultaneous two-track approach is the tell. The same administration pushing mail-in voting on the campaign trail was trying to tighten mail-in rules through federal policy until the courts blocked it. That tension captures the real story — a president publicly recruiting mail voters while his government treated the postal vote as a problem to be managed.

What to watch next: whether Trump repeats the message on the stump in the coming weeks, whether the early-vote gap between the parties narrows, and how state-level Republicans — many of whom still campaign against mail-in voting at home — handle the mixed signal coming from the top of the ticket.

Sources

• Reuters: Trump urges supporters to vote by mail despite fraud claims — https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-urges-supporters-vote-by-mail-despite-fraud-claims-2026-10-06/
• Democracy Docket: Trump backtracks and begs Republicans to vote by mail as Democrats’ odds of taking Congress improve — https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-backtracks-and-begs-republicans-to-vote-by-mail-as-democrats-odds-of-taking-congress-improve/
• Meawww: Trump changes his tone on mail voting ahead of the 2026 midterms — https://news.meaww.com/trump-changes-his-tone-on-mail-voting-ahead-of-the-2026-midterms