Pres. Trump wrote on social media on Aug. 18 that he’d like to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS” nationwide, starting with an executive order to end the practice and ban the use of voting equipment.
Election experts say a nationwide ban would have to go through Congress, and Trump lacks the legal authority to tell states how to run their elections. The Trump administration had not issued an executive order banning either practice as of Sept. 15.
But if such a prohibition on mail ballots were to take effect, it could keep reliably Republican voters from casting ballots in the Equality State, said Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander). Case co-chairs the state Legislature’s Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee.
Wyomingites vote by mail when they request absentee ballots in-state or vote overseas. The latter method is used by state residents who are stationed abroad as part of the armed forces.
“Those are two pretty important areas, and I'm not sure that we'd want to eliminate mail voting for them,” said Case. “I do not see a security risk with mail ballots.”
Case said he’s worried about seniors who rely on mailing absentee ballots as opposed to going in-person to their local polling place.
“As I walk into my senior citizen center, I will tell you that if I were to ask the question, ‘How many of you guys voted in-person and how many of you guys use absentee ballots?’ Most of them use absentee ballots. And, ‘Who returns your ballot?’ Most of them are going to mail it. I'll tell you what else. They're 90% Republican,” Case said.
But Bryan Miller, chairman of the Wyoming Republican Party, said in an emailed response to questions from Wyoming Public Radio that the party’s official position doesn’t back mail-in voting. He cited a resolution on mail-in voting and election integrity from the party’s 2024 convention.
“The Wyoming Republican Party has intensively debated and passed resolutions in the past regarding election integrity and the lack of rigorous controls on mail-in balloting and in general, beyond true absentee requirements, [we] do not support mail-in balloting and would support laws restricting mail-in voting,” wrote Miller.
He added he was not concerned that doing away with mail-in voting might prevent Republican voters in Wyoming from casting ballots for GOP candidates.
“For decades and decades we had a reliable system in place that the public trusted,” he wrote. “It wasn’t until the left realized that they could not win elections with the majority of Americans anymore in the electoral arena with their liberal ideas and desires to fundamentally change America. Once the door was opened in the name of convenience, confidence and trust began to fall.”
Experts say mail-in voter fraud is rare.
No legislation banning mail-in voting has been brought before his committee, Case said, though Trump’s social media post could change that. Lawmakers are instead considering draft bills that would expand the use of hand counting ballots and require tests of voting machines to be open to the public.
Though rare, hand count audits of state elections can happen when there’s issues with the way ballots are printed, as in the case of Weston County during the 2024 election.
In the last legislative session, legislators considered a bill that would’ve banned the use of voting equipment in the state, but it died in committee.
Hours after Trump’s post, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a founding member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, said on social media he was “expressing my complete and total support for President Trump's statement this morning on election integrity.”
“I will continue to work to advance these election integrity measures and look forward to President Trump's Executive Order,” he wrote.
Ryan Williamson, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wyoming (UW), echoed Case’s sentiment that some who rely on mail ballots in Wyoming tend to vote for Republican candidates.
“We know that the people most likely to cast a mail-in ballot are older, white, more high-propensity voters who do tend to be Republican more often,” said Williamson.
One of the groups that most frequently votes by mail in the U.S. are those who are older and white, according to a research paper published in Sage Journals.
That group also tends to vote for Republican candidates, according to a demographic report by Pew Research Center.
An election year survey conducted by UW’s Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center in 2024 found 37.7% of respondents picked “Anyone who wants to vote by mail should be allowed to do so” in response to the question, “Which of the following statements best reflects your view on voting by mail?”
Meanwhile, 16.4% of respondents selected “All voting should be done in person.”
Williamson theorized the reason Trump is willing to end mail-in voting, even if it hurts down-ballot candidates in his party, is due to election integrity concerns.
“ I think the idea is – if I had to guess, to be clear – even if it did potentially hurt some Republicans, those Republicans should quote, unquote, ‘be happy,’ to go out and vote in-person at the polling place, in order to make sure that the elections are as secure as possible,” he said.
In Wyoming, an oft-cited statistic from The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, lists four documented cases of voter fraud in Wyoming since 1982, all U.S. citizens who had been convicted of a crime.
At the federal level, a report prepared for Congress by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on the 2024 general election found 14.1% of all ballots cast in Wyoming were done so using the mail, for a total of 39,842 votes.
The Joint Corporations Committee will meet again on Nov. 3 in Cheyenne.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
