How Trump falsely claims US is the ‘only country' that uses mail-in voting
'We are now the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting,' he posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday.
His post echoed grievances about mail-in voting he had aired days earlier in an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity. After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska, Trump told Hannity that Putin said the 2020 US presidential election was 'rigged' because of mail-in voting. It wasn't. Trump lost that election. Officials in his own administration told him that.
Hours after his post, Trump slightly softened his language during a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
'And do you know that we're the only country in the world – I believe, I may be wrong – but just about the only country in the world that uses [mail-in voting]. Because of what's happened, massive fraud all over the place,' Trump said.
Mail-in voting provides more opportunities for fraud than in-person voting, researchers said, but it's still rare, and election officials have safeguards in place.
Trump said during Monday's remarks at the White House that his administration is preparing an executive order 'to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt'.
We asked the White House for evidence to support Trump's statement about other countries and received no response.
Data compiled by a Sweden-based organisation that advocates for democracy globally found in an October report that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting, which it refers to as 'postal voting'.
Dozens of countries allow at least some mail-in voting
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that of those 34 countries or territories, 12 allow all voters to vote by mail and 22 permit only some voters to vote this way.
'Europe has the largest number of countries that make in-country postal voting available to all or some voters,' the report said.
No two countries have exactly the same postal voting system, said Annika Silva-Leander, the organisation's North America head.
Silva-Leander noted some differences:
Ballot tracking: Ballot tracking allows voters and election officials to track ballots throughout the voting process to reduce fraud. Although that is common in the US, many countries don't have it.
Different state systems: Many countries have the same postal voting system for the entire nation. In the US, the system differs from state to state. The majority of states allow voting by mail, including primarily Republican-voting, Democratic-voting and battleground states.
Mailing ballots to all voters is unusual: In most countries, postal voting supplements voting at polling stations, but some US states, such as Washington, rely largely on postal voting.
Ballot curing: This is a US process that allows voters to fix a problem, such as forgetting to sign the envelope, after casting their ballots. This process is not available in most countries.
The US has had voting by mail since its 1861-1865 Civil War. Voting by mail also has a long history across the globe.
Australia introduced postal voting more than a century ago, Graeme Orr, an expert on international electoral law at the University of Queensland in Australia, previously told PolitiFact.
All Canadians are eligible to use mail-in voting, said York University Associate Professor Cary Wu, who cowrote a 2024 paper about the effect of Trump's antimail-voting messaging on Canadians' views of postal voting.
'Voting by mail has long been a vital component of the democratic process in Canada,' Wu said.
Although the option of submitting a ballot by mail was extended to all Canadian voters in 1993, it was not commonly used in general elections before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, on-demand postal voting was part of a wider modernisation in electoral administration in the early 2000s, according to a 2021 paper by UK researchers. Postal voting's expansion was driven largely by a desire to increase turnout. Using data from the 2019 British Election Study, researchers found older voters and people with disabilities were more likely to opt for postal voting's convenience.
US states set mail-in voting laws
In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote: 'The States are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes' and must do what the president tells them.
Election law Professor Rick Hasen at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote on his blog that Trump's statement is 'wrong and dangerous'.
'The Constitution does not give the President any control over federal elections,' Hasen wrote, adding that federal courts have recognised those limits.
The US Constitution's Article 1, Section 4 says the regulation of elections is a power of the states.
'The president plays literally no role in elections, and that's by design of the founders,' said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Despite often criticising voting by mail, Trump himself occasionally cast a mail-in ballot, and in 2024, Trump invited Republicans to cast mail-in ballots.
We asked the White House for details about the forthcoming executive order he described, including whether it seeks to entirely ban mail-in voting. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields did not address that question but said Trump wants to require voter IDs and prevent 'cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York.'
There is no evidence of widespread cheating in California and New York, two of the most populous states that consistently vote for Democrats for president. Most states require voter IDs although the rules vary.
Our ruling
Trump didn't explain his evidence and hours later softened his language when he said he 'may be wrong'.
In 2024, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that 34 countries or territories allow postal voting. For example, Australia has had mail-in voting for a century, and all Canadians are eligible to vote by mail.
We rate this statement false.
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