The Putin Pretext: An Unconstitutional Assault on Mail-In Voting

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In a move that signals a dangerous new offensive in his long-running war on the American electoral system, the Felonious Punk announced on Monday that he would issue an executive order to end mail-in voting. The justification for this audacious and legally baseless assault on a voting method used by tens of millions of Americans? A bizarre and unsubstantiated claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally advised him to do so during their recent summit in Alaska. This flimsy pretext, however, is merely a convenient new excuse for a deep-seated obsession, a crusade rooted not in evidence of fraud but in the political trauma of the 2020 election and a cynical strategy to reshape the 2026 midterm battlefield in his party’s favor.

The true origin of this crusade lies in the “red mirage” of the 2020 election. As election-night results, which heavily favored in-person voting, came in, they showed Republican leads in numerous key states. Over the subsequent days, as legally cast mail-in ballots—which were used disproportionately by Democrats—were counted, those leads shrank and, in many cases, evaporated. For the Felonious Punk and his allies, this was not evidence of a functioning democratic process, but a traumatic spectacle they immediately labeled as fraud. This grievance has since hardened into a core tenet of the MAGA movement, an unshakable belief that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt. The profound hypocrisy of this position was laid bare in the 2024 election, when the Republican Party, recognizing the strategic necessity, finally encouraged its own supporters to vote by mail, leading to significant gains. The Felonious Punk’s decision to renew his war on the practice now demonstrates that his personal grudge is now overriding his own party’s recent and successful electoral strategies.

His proposed remedy, an executive order, is a legal fantasy. The U.S. Constitution is unambiguous on this point: it vests the power to set the “times, places, and manner” of elections with the state legislatures, giving only Congress the ability to alter those regulations. As Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck stated, the Constitution “gives precisely zero power over elections to the President.” This legal reality has not stopped the Felonious Punk from inventing his own, wildly incorrect constitutional theory, claiming on social media that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government” and “must do what the… The President of the United States tells them.” This assertion was swiftly rebutted by legal experts from across the ideological spectrum, including Walter Olson of the libertarian Cato Institute, who confirmed that states are “in no way mere ‘agents’ of federal authorities.”

Furthermore, this is not the administration’s first attempt at this unconstitutional overreach. As reported by The Washington Post, the Felonious Punk has already seen his attempts to alter voting rules via executive order this year slapped down by the courts. A federal judge blocked provisions of a March executive order that attempted to impose proof-of-citizenship requirements, and another judge in June barred him from punishing states that count legally cast ballots that arrive after Election Day. This established pattern of judicial rebuke makes it all but certain that any new executive order seeking to ban mail-in voting would be dead on arrival in federal court.

If the legal strategy is “bluster,” the political strategy is deadly serious. As Reuters analysis makes plain, a ban on mail-in voting would “disproportionately favor his Republican Party,” as Democratic voters are traditionally more likely to use the method. This move is not an isolated tantrum; it is one front in a multi-pronged campaign to rig the 2026 midterm battlefield. It is happening in concert with aggressive, mid-decade gerrymandering efforts being pushed by Republicans in states like Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Ohio. It is a clear attempt to secure power not by persuading more voters, but by making it harder for the opposition’s voters to vote at all.

Ultimately, the goal of this crusade may not be to actually succeed in court. The true purpose is to relentlessly attack the foundations of the electoral system itself. By constantly casting doubt on the security of mail-in ballots and voting machines—proposing a return to paper ballots and hand-counts, a method election officials say is far less accurate and more costly—the Felonious Punk is preemptively poisoning the well for the 2026 midterms. He is ensuring that any outcome unfavorable to his party can be immediately and plausibly, to his supporters, labeled as “rigged.” It is a cynical and corrosive continuation of the “Big Lie,” a direct assault on the fundamental trust that a functioning democracy requires.