Pete Hegseth promotes mail-in voting for troops — as the Trump administration tries to restrict it
Por Alex Woodward — – World RSS Feed
Pete Hegseth promotes mail-in voting for troops — as the Trump administration tries to restrict it
Defense secretary tells service members their midterms ballots will be counted after the administration’s failed legal battle to overhaul elections
Alex Woodward in New York Friday 25 September 2026 20:53 BST
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is calling on U.S. service members and their families to remember to register to vote and cast their ballots before midterm elections, sending a message that supports mail-in voting despite the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict the option.
“Regardless of your home state or current duty status, you can use a standardized federal postcard to register and request a ballot, and if you’re forward deployed and your standard ballot is delayed, you can use the federal write-in absentee ballot,” Hegseth said in a video message Friday.
“All of these processes are straightforward and protected by law,” he said in the nearly two-minute video.
“Every warrior deserves an opportunity to cast his or her ballot, and be confident that it will be counted,” he said. “Keep our nation the land of the free and the home of the brave. Get registered and vote.”
President Donald Trump and administration officials have argued that their failed efforts to impose nationwide restrictions on mail-in ballots don’t apply to members of the military, but voting rights advocates and election law experts have warned that there was no process in place to ensure that the U.S. Postal Service would still reliably recognize and deliver those ballots.
open image in gallery“This is not the time to experiment with an untested system where a mistake can mean disenfranchisement of our military service personnel and their families, and citizens voting from overseas,” Daniel C. Schwartz, chair of National Security Leaders for America’s Legal Advisory Committee, said in a statement at the time supporting a legal battle to block Trump’s changes.
The Supreme Court has stopped the Trump administration from implementing mail-in ballot changes, for now, allowing states to continue distributing ballots using long-standing procedures that account for millions of votes cast every election year.
September’s decision, issued just weeks before Election Day, prevents the administration from requiring states to use a standardized envelope design and submit lists of eligible voters through an online portal. USPS would then be allowed to refuse delivery of mail-in ballots from any state that failed to comply with these rules.
The rule change “threatened mass confusion and chaos for voters abroad,” according to Doris Speer, president of the Association of Americans Resident Overseas.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, president of the U.S. Vote Foundation, which represents military voters overseas, noted that many of them had already sent in their ballots while the administration was mulling major changes to the process.
“We are grateful that voters have certainty about the rules for this election cycle, especially for those of us who already face significant hurdles to participating in elections,” she said in a statement.
open image in galleryAbout 67 percent of active-duty U.S. troops were registered to vote in the 2024 election, marking a three-point drop compared to 2020, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
Nearly three-quarters of the nation’s 1.3 million active-duty service members are eligible to cast an absentee ballot this year, according to the agency.
Hegseth’s statement in support of broad access to absentee ballots for Americans service members stands in stark contrast to Trump’s message. After losing at the Supreme Court, the president is still pushing Congress to enact his far-reaching election reform legislation that critics say would still significantly impact overseas and military voters.
“As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel – but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement to The Independent last month.
Days after casting his own ballot by mail for Florida’s primary election in March, Trump described the process as “cheating” during an event in Tennessee. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” he said.
During a July speech, he called mail-in ballots “inherently corrupt.” He used February’s State of the Union Address to demand “no more crooked mail-in ballots.”
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Pete HegsethDonald Trumpmail ballotsmidtermsSupreme Court
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