Trump Wants US to ‘Get Rid of Mail-in Ballots.’ Most Countries Already Have.

The United States is an outlier in the world when it comes to mail-in voting, as most industrialized democracies either ban it or require photo ID to acquire a ballot.

Last week, President Donald Trump vowed on Truth Social he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS.”

Trump’s Truth Social post said, “All others gave it [mail-in voting] up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” 

While not “all other” countries abandoned voting by mail, an overwhelming 84.3% of countries in the world, or a total of 172, don’t allow what’s typically known internationally as in-country postal voting, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, also known as International IDEA. 

And even in those countries that allow in-country postal voting, it is generally only available to someone who is out of the country for military service or similarly vital reasons. 

John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, issued a report in 2020 that focused on mail-in balloting mostly on advanced democracies titled “Why Do Most Countries Ban Mail-In Ballots?: They Have Seen Massive Vote Fraud Problems.”

Lott told The Daily Signal that Europe falls into three categories. Thirty-five countries outright ban mail-in voting. Another 10 countries allow mail-in voting if the voter picks up a ballot and provides an ID. The third category is a subset of the 10: six require a person to prove he or she would be in the hospital, in military service, or otherwise unable to vote on Election Day to get a mail-in ballot. 

“Before 1975, France was similar to how the United States is now. But on the island of Corsica, votes of the dead were counted, votes were being bought,” Lott said. “One big problem with vote-buying is that it’s in the interest of the buyer and seller to hide the transaction. This interestingly came to light in France when some people felt guilty and reported themselves and then reported others.”

The United Kingdom added ID requirements after a 2004 mail-in ballot fraud case, Lott noted, in what a British judge described as a “massive, systematic, and organised” postal voting fraud campaign that involved as many as 40,000 fraudulent ballots.

Most U.S. states join Canada, Germany, Iceland, South Korea, Liechtenstein, Luxenberg, New Zealand, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as the only nations in the world that allow what is effectively no-excuse mail-in voting, according to International IDEA. This means voters are allowed to mail in their vote without providing a reason, such as being out of town on Election Day.

In the United States, 28 states—both red and blue—allow for no-excuse mail-in voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. 

Of those, eight states—Vermont for general elections only, and Oregon, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Utah, and Washington state—have moved beyond mail-in voting to instituting what elections experts worry are an even bigger threat to election integrity: all-mail elections.

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