State audits find little fraud in elections
Can Postal Service create a voter list, given how often it struggles to do its basic job?
ANOTHER VIEW| WALL STREET JOURNAL
Can the president order the U.S. Postal Service not to deliver mail he doesn't like? Add this to the list of questions President Donald Trump is posing to the courts.
Trump recently signed an executive action to create a federal list of people pre-approved to vote by mail, while telling the USPS to refuse to deliver ballots from anybody who isn't on it.
Democrats have already filed lawsuits, saying Trump's plan tramples on the authority over elections that the Constitution gives to the 50 states. The USPS is an independent agency, and the postmaster general is appointed by its board of governors, not the president.
The judiciary will sort this out, so hold the alarmism that the White House is stealing the midterms. The order does indicate, though, that Trump sees profit in continuing to talk election nonsense. As his approval rating gets ugly, he wants to be able to blame illegal votes for whatever happens in November.
Here's the gist of Trump's order: At least 60 days before a federal election, states would have to send the USPS a list of voters "to whom the state intends to provide a mail-in or absentee ballot." The post office would maintain its own list of people "who are enrolled with the USPS, pursuant to a process specified in the rulemaking." The mailman "shall not transmit" ballots "from any individual unless those individuals have been enrolled."
How this is supposed to work in practice is anyone's guess. Plenty of voters ask for absentee ballots closer to Election Day. What if somebody, two weeks before, gets stuck in the hospital or sent on a work trip? Trump's order tells regulators to devise procedures for states to "routinely supplement and provide suggested modifications or amendments" to the USPS's voter list.
That still sounds as if the postmaster is left in charge of deciding which ballots to deliver. Is the USPS prepared to play this role well, given how often it struggles to do its basic job?
Trump speaks as if voting by noncitizens is so common that democracy is hanging by its fingernails, yet real investigations keep finding otherwise. Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen said last month an audit of voter records identified 23 noncitizens. To compare, 602,990 Montanans cast presidential ballots in 2024.
Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said in January that a review of the state's more than 2 million voters found "one confirmed noncitizen who never voted."
Louisiana Secretary of State Nancy Landry announced last fall that a review of voter registrations back to the 1980s identified 390 noncitizens, 79 of whom cast at least one ballot. The state's 2024 turnout: 2,006,975.
Similar meager numbers have been found in other states, such as Texas, Georgia, Michigan, and Iowa. It's good deterrence to go after any illegal ballots, and maintaining voter rolls is vital. Still, this is far from the kind of coordinated mass fraud Trump conjures in the MAGA mind.
