News

Trump said the US is the ‘only country’ that uses mail-in voting. That’s wrong.

Poynter · Amy Sherman · last updated

President Donald Trump vowed to take action against voting by mail, which he said makes the United States an outlier.

“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting,” Trump wrote in an Aug. 18 Truth Social post.

His post echoed grievances about mail-in voting he had aired days earlier in his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15 in Alaska, Trump told Hannity that Putin said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was “rigged” because of mail-in voting. It wasn’t. Trump lost that election. Officials in his own administration told him that.

Hours after his post, Trump slightly softened his language during a White House meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Related Knowledge Center: Fact-checking and its detractors

State of Play

Fact-checking has become a familiar tool for political reporters to hold office-holders and candidates accountable. But critics ask if fact-checkers sometimes miss the forest for the trees, and if the practice often struggles with false equivalency the way conventional political coverage does.

Information integrity


More informationabout Fact-checking and its detractors

Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics

State of Play

News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.

The White House vs. the press


More informationabout Democracy and politics