President Donald Trump this week vowed to “lead a movement to get rid of” voting by mail ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
“WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections,” the president said in a post on Truth Social Monday.
Trump, who has long opposed voting by mail, continued to claim, without evidence, that it’s fraught with fraud.
Utah has been the only red state among eight that have conducted universal by-mail elections, including six Democratic strongholds and one swing state — a fact that some conservatives here have balked at, while others have defended the state’s by-mail system as a popular, convenient and safe voting method.
After Trump’s post, Utah’s top election official, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, issued a short statement on social media without addressing the president directly.
“The constitutional right of individual states to choose the manner in which they conduct secure elections is a fundamental strength of our system,” Henderson said.
The president, however, asserted that states should do what the federal government wants.
“Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” Trump said. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”
Another high-ranking Republican and member of GOP legislative leadership — Senate Majority Assistant Whip Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork — disagrees.
McKell told Utah News Dispatch in an interview Tuesday that, like Henderson said, states have the right to choose how to administer their elections, and that he’d push back on an effort to completely undo voting by mail.
“In Utah, we’re in a good place. I think there’s strong support for vote by mail. There’s also strong support for security,” McKell said.
He added that’s “the needle we tried to thread” earlier this year when the 2025 Utah Legislature passed a bill that he sponsored to require voter ID and eventually phase out automatic voting by mail in this state by 2029. The aim of that bill, he said, was to preserve voting by mail as an option for Utah voters while also adding a new layer of security.
Even though local polls have shown a vast majority of Utahns remain confident in their elections, Gallup polling shows trust nationally has decreased especially among a faction of Republican voters since 2006 as elections have become more polarized. After Trump lost the 2020 election, he ramped up rhetoric to cast doubt on election security and voting by mail.
Asked about Trump’s comments this week, McKell reiterated it’s a matter of states rights.
“It is a federalism issue,” he said. “If it’s not enumerated in the (U.S.) Constitution, it’s reserved for the states. That’s article 10. I think states have the right to dictate how they run their elections.”
McKell also defended Utah’s track record as a state that has used voting by mail for years, starting with optional pilot programs that counties opted into before moving to universal voting by mail.
“In the state of Utah, Republicans have done really well with vote by mail. We elect Republicans,” he said, also noting that Trump in 2024 won the red state handily. “There’s generally broad support for vote by mail, especially among rural voters and elderly voters in Utah.”
He added that “it’s OK if there’s some tension between the federal government and state government,” but he argued the Constitution clearly reserves elections for states to control and administer.
Pressed on how he’d respond to pressure from the Trump administration to get rid of voting by mail, McKell said, “I would resist a movement that didn’t originate in the state,” adding that he responds to his constituents, not the federal government.
“If there’s a movement to change vote by mail, it needs to come from — it must come from — the state,” he said. “It’s a state issue. The states need to be in control of their own elections. Right now, I don’t feel like there’s a reason to eliminate vote by mail. I think we do a good job.”
Not all Republicans in Utah embrace voting by mail, however, Earlier this year, McKell’s bill was the result of a compromise between the House and Senate to more drastically restrict the state’s universal vote-by-mail system.
Asked whether Trump’s comments could further inflame skepticism around the security of voting by mail in Utah, McKell said it’s nothing new. “We saw these comments before, and even going into the last legislative session, there were folks that opposed vote by mail.”
But McKell said multiple state audits “have shown that our elections are safe and secure,” while legislators have also made efforts to continually improve the system where issues have cropped up, like in voter roll maintenance.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s comments could fan some Republican lawmakers’ appetite to go after voting by mail during their next general session in January, but McKell said typically every year there’s a slew of election bills for legislators to sort through.
Asked whether he plans to make any tweaks to his 2025 bill, McKell said he’s still talking with clerks about any possible changes.
“I feel like we did strike a really appropriate balance, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at ways to make it better,” he said, adding that he doesn’t have any specific proposals yet, “but that could change as we get closer to the legislative session.”
This story was originally published by Utah News Dispatch, read the full article here.
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About the Author
Katie McKellar covers Utah government as a senior reporter for Utah News Dispatch. She specializes in political reporting, covering the governor and the Utah Legislature, with expertise in beats including growth, housing and homelessness.
