Report: Trump wanted all mail ballots sent by certified mail
President Donald Trump’s plan to restrict mail voting through the United States Postal Service was supposed to be even more prohibitive, with the help of two election conspiracists inside the White House, according to new reporting from ProPublica.
Postal officials shut down Trump’s scheme to require all mail ballots to be sent via certified mail. Certified mail is a special service USPS offers that, critically, would require the person receiving their ballot to sign for it at home.
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Some USPS officials then remained in the dark, while others stayed deliberately silent, as Trump forged ahead with plans to implement his anti-voting executive order, part of which was finally blocked by the Supreme Court this month.
Monday’s reporting also uncovers new information about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was briefly set to head the USPS last year before talks to merge the Postal Service and the Commerce Department dissolved.
Lutnick’s aspirations to take over mail voting didn’t stop in 2025. According to ProPublica, Lutnick helped write Trump’s order that gave him authority in “effectuating all relevant aspects of the implementation of this order.”
Lutnick also met with two election conspiracists in August to discuss nationalizing elections and banning voting machines, with the help of the Commerce Department, according to emails obtained earlier this month by the government watchdog organization American Oversight.
“What was discussed is Executive Order 13873 and the ability for Sec. of Commerce Howard Lutnick to revoke the purchase and use of critical infrastructure that contains components from adversarial nations,” an August email from Will Huff, one of the election deniers, reads. “This can immediately force states to move to hand-marked and hand-counted ballots like the President wishes.”
The email, addressed to conservative attorney Ed Martin, also said the group of three discussed a proposal for “no mass mail-in ballots.”
Special Presidential Assistant J. Brian Sikma, another Trump ally, also reportedly played a hand in crafting Trump’s anti-mail voting mandates that were struck down Sept 14. Sikma previously expressed support for the administration’s voter roll purges in New Jersey and incorrectly said the effort had yielded a “very significant number” of “potential non-citizens.”