False Claims About Voting by Mail: Trump Alleged Massive Fraud Despite His Own Administration's Findings and His Own Use of Mail-In Ballots
Tier 3Ongoing2020-04-01 to 2026-03-24
Factual Summary
Beginning in the spring of 2020 and continuing through his second presidential term, Donald Trump made repeated false claims that voting by mail leads to massive fraud. These claims were contradicted by his own administration's officials, by Republican state election administrators, by nonpartisan research, and by his own personal use of mail-in voting.
Trump's campaign against mail-in voting intensified as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted states to expand absentee and mail-in voting options for the November 2020 election. In dozens of tweets, rally speeches, and press briefings, Trump stated or implied that mail-in voting was inherently fraudulent, that ballots would be "robbed," that foreign countries would print counterfeit ballots, and that thousands of people were conspiring to commit mail ballot fraud.
On November 12, 2020, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration, issued a joint statement with federal, state, and industry election officials declaring that "the November 3rd election was the most secure in American history." The statement specifically noted that "there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." Trump fired CISA Director Chris Krebs on November 17, 2020, after Krebs publicly contradicted Trump's fraud claims.
Multiple Republican officials directly contradicted Trump's assertions. Attorney General William Barr stated in December 2020 that the Department of Justice had found no evidence of fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the election. Republican secretaries of state in Georgia, Arizona, and other contested states affirmed the accuracy of their election results. Sixty-one of 62 lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies challenging the 2020 election results were rejected by courts, including courts presided over by Trump-appointed judges.
Trump himself voted by mail. He cast an absentee ballot in Florida's March 2020 primary. When a reporter asked him at an April 7, 2020 White House coronavirus briefing how he could reconcile voting by mail with his criticism of the practice, Trump responded: "Because I'm allowed to." He also voted by mail in subsequent Florida elections.
PolitiFact rated Trump's claims about mass mail-in fraud as false. FactCheck.org documented multiple instances of Trump making claims about mail-in voting that were unsupported by evidence. NPR, PBS, CNN, and other outlets published detailed fact-checks documenting the lack of evidence for Trump's assertions. The Brennan Center for Justice cited studies showing that mail-in ballot fraud rates are between 0.00004 percent and 0.0025 percent.
In his second term, Trump continued to make false claims about mail-in voting and in 2026 sought congressional legislation to ban most mail-in voting in federal elections, excepting cases involving disability, illness, travel, or military service.
Primary Sources
1. CISA joint statement: "Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees," November 12, 2020
2. White House press briefing transcript, April 7, 2020 (Trump's remarks on his own mail-in voting)
3. Department of Justice statement by Attorney General William Barr, December 1, 2020
4. Snopes: "Did Trump vote by mail in Florida election after years of unfounded fraud claims?" (fact-check confirming Trump's mail-in votes)
Corroborating Sources
1. FactCheck.org: "Trump's Repeated False Attacks on Mail-In Ballots," September 2020
2. NPR: "Fact Check: Trump Spreads Unfounded Claims About Voting By Mail," June 22, 2020
3. Time: "The Facts About Mail-In Voting Fraud," March 20, 2026
4. CNN: "Fact check: Debunking Trump's mail-in voting claims," March 24, 2026
5. PolitiFact: "Donald Trump's dubious claim that 'thousands' are conspiring on mail-ballot fraud," April 9, 2020
6. FactCheck.org: "Trump and Musk Amplify Long-Ago Debunked Mail-In Vote Fraud Claim," February 2026
Counterarguments and Context
Trump and his supporters argued that expanding mail-in voting during the pandemic created opportunities for fraud that had not existed at the same scale before, and that the absence of evidence of widespread fraud did not mean fraud had not occurred. They pointed to isolated cases of mail-in ballot irregularities in various jurisdictions as evidence that the system was vulnerable. Some election security experts, including those who did not support Trump's claims, acknowledged that mail-in voting systems require safeguards against potential abuse, though they consistently found that existing safeguards were effective. Trump drew a distinction between absentee voting, which he said he supported, and universal mail-in voting, though the ballots cast through both systems use the same procedures in most states. The factual record shows that Trump's claims of "massive fraud" through mail-in voting were contradicted by his own administration, by his own attorney general, by Republican election officials, and by every court that reviewed the evidence. His personal use of the system he publicly attacked further undercut his stated rationale.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 3 because the falsehoods are documented through primary evidence, including Trump's own statements, the CISA statement from his own administration, Barr's public remarks, and Trump's confirmed mail-in ballot records. The false claims are not matters of interpretation but factual assertions that have been repeatedly and specifically debunked by authoritative sources, including officials within the Trump administration itself.