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Hi, this is Jamie, calling from Hurricane Island, Maine, a 19th century quarrying town that supplied granite for the Brooklyn Bridge and Washington Monument.

This podcast was recorded at 1222 p.m. on Wednesday, August 20th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will be enjoying the rocky shores of Maine and watching students study marine ecology

at our off-grid, off-coast science school. Enjoy the show.

You could get a job in public radio with those sounds. The recording was so good. Such good

natural sound. I can't get over Hurricane Island, though. I feel like it's kind of odd to name a place after a natural disaster, no? Especially a place in Maine where there aren't that many hurricanes, typically. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And today on the show, President Trump wants to

change the way people vote. Here he is speaking in the Oval Office on Monday.

Mail-in ballots are corrupt. Mail-in ballots, you can never have a real democracy with

mail-in ballots. And we, as a Republican Party, are going to do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots.

So today on the pod, we are going to unpack this, the claim that mail-in ballots are corrupt and also

talk about how the country votes. But first, Ashley, let us start with the basics.

Can President Trump or any president unilaterally get rid of voting by mail?

No. The executive branch has absolutely no power in dictating how states run their elections.

We have a decentralized system in this country, which, by the way, has been embraced by conservatives up until now.

I talked to a lot of legal scholars about this. And this was one of those things where like there was no equivocation. Everybody was like, this is illegal if he were to do this. So, you know, the founders designed the system this way. I mean, this one's one of those cut and dry things where it's like absolutely not. The president does not have a say in how states run their elections. But the president is saying that he's going to sign an executive order. We don't know exactly

what that order will say or do. When asked about this fact of how elections work, the White

House says, well, we'll also be working with Republicans in Congress and out in the states.

Well, I mean, he mentioned Congress.

Like, Congress could change this system that we have, right?

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