President Donald Trump launched his second-term assault on mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines on Aug. 18, firing off a series of unfounded claims while announcing an effort to do away with both.

The president began the day with a post on Truth Social saying he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” Trump said he was working on an executive order to target both voting methods. He repeated his intentions later in the day while answering reporters’ questions alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House.

Trump made familiar unsupported or false claims about mail-in voting and voting machines, and a new assertion about a president’s power and the role of states in the election process:

• The president wrongly claimed “[w]e are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-in Voting.” Eleven other nations allow all their voters to use some form of mail-in voting, and 22 additional countries allow some voters to cast ballots by mail.

• Trump said that “States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.” But experts told us that the Constitution gives states the authority to run elections, with oversight from Congress, and the...

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