The Vice President of the United States is actively campaigning for the authoritarian-leaning president of Hungary. Rather than spreading democracy, the US is actively trying to spread authoritarianism.
Orban has given himself the ability to rule by decree, restricted the media, manipulated the electoral and district system, taken over and abused with police NGOs and universities, redistributed wealth to loyalists rather than based on sound policy, and supported Russia invading its neighbor. He has bent a former democracy toward authoritarianism. The European Parliament has declared that Hungary is no longer a full democracy in a 433 to 123 vote.
The death of the West will be the end of Western values like free speech, free association, free press, and free and fair elections. Vice President Vance supports Orban’s authoritarian actions in Hungary just like he supports Trump’s, often illegal, authoritarian actions at home.
“In August 2025, President Trump vowed on social media to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” claiming, without proof, that “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST” if Americans cast their votes by mail.
Yet when the time came for Trump to cast his own vote in Tuesday’s special election in Palm Beach County, Fla., he chose to do it … by mail.
Just like he did in 2020.
The president hasn’t abandoned his outspoken opposition to mail-in voting — at least not for other people. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said during an appearance in Memphis on Monday. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.””
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In the 2024 general election, about 30% of all ballots were cast by mail. That’s 48 million votes. In the 2020 election — which occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic — the number was even higher: nearly 66 million votes. Since 2000, more than 250 million votes have been cast via mailed-out ballots in all 50 states.
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For decades, mail-in voting wasn’t seen as controversial — let alone partisan. In fact, Republicans were even more enthusiastic about the practice than Democrats.
Why? Because they saw it as a safe and efficient way to make voting easier for rural and older voters — a key part of their base.
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As polls began to show Trump trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden by a sizable margin, the incumbent seized on mail-in voting as a preemptive explanation for any unfavorable election outcome. “2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump wrote online that July. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” He described mail-in voting as the “biggest risk” to his reelection, and both his campaign and the GOP unsuccessfully sued to stop it.
Trump’s rhetoric effectively polarized the practice. Democrats (who were already more prone to avoid pandemic-era gatherings) embraced it; Republicans resisted. As a result, 58% of Democrats wound up voting by mail that year; only 29% of Republicans did the same.
Trump lost to Biden by more than 7 million votes, but he’s been blaming election “fraud” — including supposedly fraudulent mail ballots — ever since.
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In 2020, the president was particularly upset when he seemed to be “winning” early on election night — only to see Biden catch up and surpass him as the evening wore on. But that effect — known as a “red mirage” or a “blue shift” — is easily explained by the fact that if Republicans tend to vote in person and Democrats tend to vote by mail, Republican votes will tend to be counted before Democratic votes.
At times, Trump has also tried to distinguish between absentee voting and universal vote-by-mail. But the same multistep security and verification methods apply to both processes, and states that rely on universal vote-by-mail haven’t experienced more misconduct because of it. One election expert dismissed as “nonsensical” any “distinction” between the two forms of voting “in terms of the potential for fraud.”
In truth, fraudulent mail voting is vanishingly rare. According to a Nov. 2025 analysis by the Brookings Institution — which relied on an election fraud database compiled by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative group — there were only between six and 46 cases of mail voting fraud in each general election from 2016 to 2022.
That means just 0.000043% of mail ballots — four out of every 10 million cast — have been found to be fraudulent during the Trump era.
In general, all of Trump’s allegations of widespread, result-altering election fraud — claims he has been making since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 — have been conclusively debunked, both in court and by GOP election officials.
‘Many disinformation posts on social media originated from a small town in central Macedonia called Veles. The epicenter of the viral phenomenon was Mirko Ceselkoski, who posts fake news and mentors others in it. The creators were mostly young people in their 20s with little English fluency. They said they were too poor to do anything and had no future, so work hard creating fake news to make money. They did this by exploiting conservative Americans’ hunger for negative stories about Hillary Clinton’
“In every form, the SAVE Act would require American citizens to show documents like a passport or birth certificate to register to vote. Our research shows that more than 21 million Americans lack ready access to those documents. Roughly half of Americans don’t even have a passport. Millions lack access to a paper copy of their birth certificate. The SAVE Act would disenfranchise Americans of all ages and races, but younger voters and voters of color would suffer disproportionately. Likewise, millions of women whose married names aren’t on their birth certificates or passports would face extra steps just to make their voices heard.
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The SAVE Act solves nothing. All available evidence, including from the Trump administration itself, indicates that only American citizens vote and the exceptions are vanishingly rare. States that have combed through their voter rolls looking for illegally cast votes — like Louisiana and Utah did recently — have repeatedly confirmed that fact.”
“Even small changes such as moving into an apartment building, moving down the block, or changing party affiliation are considered voter registration updates. Under the SAVE Act, Americans would have to go in person to their election office and present original or certified documentation to make any voter registration change.
This would make civic participation much more difficult for tens of millions of citizens every election cycle and would outright disenfranchise millions more. The policies of the SAVE Act would also be in addition to state voter ID laws that require voters to show identification at the polls
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The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would require all American citizens registering to vote or updating their registration information to present documentary proof of citizenship in person. For the vast majority of Americans, this would be a passport or birth certificate.”
“In effect, the SAVE Act introduces a documentation requirement for a law that has existed for decades: the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 explicitly prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
To do so, the SAVE Act amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by introducing a requirement for individuals to provide proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
Registration and voting attempts by noncitizens are routinely investigated and prosecuted by the appropriate authorities, and there is no evidence that attempts at voting by noncitizens have ever been significant enough to impact any election’s outcome. In fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that registration and voting by noncitizens is few and far between.
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According to the U.S. Department of State, examples of primary citizenship evidence include a birth certificate, a U.S. passport, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, a Certificate of Citizenship, or a Naturalization Certificate. (While Real IDs are often assumed to be a reliable proxy for citizenship, they do not definitively establish citizenship.)
Although at least one of these documents are in theory available to most citizens, not all voters have them readily available.
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9% of all eligible voters do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship.
52% of registered voters do not have an unexpired passport with their current legal name.
11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate.
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Additionally, birth certificates often lack information that matches a person’s current identity. For instance, someone who has changed their name through marriage or court order may need to present a third document (such as a marriage certificate) to join their proof of citizenship (e.g., birth certificate) with their proof of identity (e.g., driver’s license), further decreasing the likelihood that a voter will have the appropriate documentation on hand to successfully register.
Even if voters were to provide documentary proof of citizenship, verifying the authenticity of those documents is an inherently complex task, one that election officials and motor vehicle departments often do not have the resources or training to perform.
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Front-end verification risks burdening eligible voters who lack ready access to proof of citizenship, while back-end verification hinges on the accuracy, completeness, and interoperability of government databases. Between the two approaches, we encourage policymakers to prioritize back-end verification over front-end verification because it places the responsibility on government officials rather than voters to prove citizenship.
Under a back-end approach, it’s essential that states give voters identified as potential noncitizens ample opportunity to prove their citizenship, given that many government databases are outdated or otherwise incorrect. Instead of automatic cancellation after a short notice period, BPC recommends election officials place voters flagged as potential noncitizens into a “challenged” or “pending verification” status. Under this approach, a voter would remain registered but be required to affirm their citizenship before they can vote again.”
“As Georgia’s top elections official, Raffensperger rebuked efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results, turning him into a target of attack from Trump and his allies for years. That has created a deep tear between the Georgia secretary of state and Republicans in his state, many of whom continue to echo the president’s false claims of widespread fraud.
Now, Raffensperger is running for governor — and Trump just made 2020 the top issue in the GOP primary again.”
Trump is personally involving himself in the investigation of the 2020 election. The investigation itself seems driven by Trump’s false beliefs, or lies, that the election was stolen from him. This could be an attempt to undemocratically steal the 2026 midterms, ironically using false claims of election malfeasance to commit election malfeasance.
“Trump’s use of the FBI to pursue his obsession with the 2020 election is part of a pattern of the president transforming the federal government into his personal tool of vengeance.
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Georgia has been at the heart of Trump’s 2020 obsession. He infamously called Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, asking that Raffensperger “find” 11,780 more votes for Trump so he could be declared the winner of the state. Raffensperger refused, noting that repeated reviews confirmed Democrat Joe Biden had narrowly won Georgia.
Those were part of a series of reviews in battleground states, often led by Republicans, that affirmed Biden’s win, including in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. Trump also lost dozens of court cases challenging the election results and his own attorney general at the time said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
His allies who repeated his lies have been successfully sued for defamation. That includes former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who settled with two Georgia election workers after a court ruled he owed them $148 million for defaming them after the 2020 election.
Voting machine companies also have brought defamation cases against some conservative-leaning news sites that aired unsubstantiated claims about their equipment being linked to fraud in 2020. Fox News settled one such case by agreeing to pay $787 million after the judge ruled it was “CRYSTAL clear” that none of the allegations were true.
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As part of his campaign of retribution, Trump also has spoken about wanting to criminally charge lawmakers who sat on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, suggesting protective pardons of them from Biden are legally invalid. He’s targeted a former cybersecurity appointee who assured the public in 2020 that the election was secure.
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“So much this administration has done is to make claims in social media rather than go to court,” Becker said. “I suspect this is more about poisoning the well for 2026.””