Attacks On Mail-In Ballots Are An Attack On The Working Class - Economic Barriers To Voting 📮

- 'Attacks on Mail-In Ballots Are an Attack on the Working Class.' Truthdig, April 8, 2026.

Trump’s executive order to restrict voting by mail would raise the economic barriers to exercising a basic democratic right.
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Donald Trump loathes mail-in voting, except, of course, when he uses this method to cast his own ballot, as he did in a recent Florida special election. Frustrated by congressional inaction, Trump issued an executive order last week to restrict what he likes to call “mail-in cheating.”

Actual proven cases of mail voting fraud? Those amount to a whopping 0.000043% of total mail ballots, according to Brookings Institution experts.

Trump’s real fear: that voting by mail gives Democrats an edge. In reality, broad, cross-partisan swaths of our electorate benefit from access to this convenient means of exercising our most basic democratic right. Low-income Americans of all political stripes have a particularly large stake in defending our existing patchwork of mail voting systems — and in efforts to make this option universal.

Economic hurdles to voting:
Economic hurdles to election participation drop when people can fill out their ballots at their kitchen table and pop them in a mailbox. For one thing, you don’t have to worry about ticking off your boss by asking for time off to go to the polls. Currently, only 21 states require employers to give their workers paid leave for voting, and enforcement of this benefit is weak.

The richer the American, the likelier they are to vote.

Another 7 states require the right to unpaid time off to cast ballots. But for workers who are barely scraping by, the choice between voting versus earning a full day’s pay can be a tough call. Low-income voters are also more likely to have trouble affording costs associated with getting to the polls, such as securing child care and transportation. The lack of universal mail-in voting rights is one factor driving the huge voter participation gap between rich and poor Americans...
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/attacks-on-mail-in-ballots-are-an-attack-on-the-working-class/