Voters trust local election officials. They're less sure about the mail

President Donald Trump's unfounded insistence that mail-in ballots lead to fraud appears to be persuading only his loyal coalition and almost no one else, a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll finds ahead of midterm elections.

With early and mail voting underway in a handful of states, many of those ballots that will help determine which party controls Congress are moving through a system that Trump has spent more than a year trying to reshape.

In August 2025, Trump pledged to issue an executive order ending the use of mail-in ballots and voting machines before the midterms. The order he signed in March directed the U.S. Postal Service to build a system for blocking delivery of ballots to voters not on lists presubmitted by state officials, prompting lawsuits from 23 Democratic-led states and voting rights groups.

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Last week, as this poll was in the field, the Supreme Court refused to clear the way for the president's plan. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that state and local officials lacked sufficient time to implement the rule before the elections.

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials, told PBS News after the Supreme Court decision that election officials breathed a "sigh of relief."

"It was almost an impossible ask to have election officials try and implement this rule in this late hour," she said, adding, "I think everyone is a little bit relieved that we don't have to do this for the November election, and they can focus on the tasks at hand and getting prepared for what is to come."

READ MORE: Election officials get mail-in voting clarity after Supreme Court decision

While the president has repeatedly insisted, without evidence, that elections and mail ballots in particular are rife with cheating, voter fraud is incredibly rare.

The conservative Heritage Foundation lists roughly 1,500 cases over decades in its database, compared to hundreds of millions of votes cast.

Even so, 41% of voters say there is a great deal or good amount of fraud when people can vote by mail. Seventy percent of Republicans and 75% of self-identified MAGA supporters say the same, compared with 18% of Democrats and 32% of independents.

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, doubted the fraud argument would move many votes beyond the president's base.

"He has image problems, he has turnout problems, he has issue problems," Miringoff said. The mail message, he added, is "not exactly telling the voter something he hasn't already told them."

Seventy-five percent of voters trust their state or local government to run a fair and accurate election, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Graphic by Dan Cooney/PBS News.

More recently, the Trump administration has threatened to prosecute state election officials if they don't prevent noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and rare.

When it comes to voter behavior, the consequences of Trump's repeated attacks on mail voting are visible in this poll. Nearly a quarter of voters plan to cast a mail ballot this year; 31% voted by mail in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats are nearly three times as likely as Republicans to say they'll vote by mail.

Half of voters say they'll vote in person on Election Day.

At the same time, 75% of voters trust their state or local government to run a fair and accurate election. Among Democrats, 86% say they are somewhat or very confident, while 66% of Republicans say the same.

Miringoff said that trust is because voters feel differently about the election workers in their own communities. "They sort of know these people," he said.

Confidence in the Postal Service, however, has dropped considerably. Fifty-eight percent of voters are confident USPS will deliver election mail on time this year, down 13 points since 2024.

WATCH: Whistleblower's attorney details concerns over USPS mail-in ballot system

On nearly every question about how Americans vote, Democrats and Republicans are on opposite sides, but this is one area where they agree. In both parties, around 4 in 10 voters have little to no confidence mail will arrive on time.

Patrick said that means voters need to be more vigilant.

She urged that anyone who does want to vote by mail both makes their request and returns their ballot early, either at a drop box or by mail, depending on what options are available in your state.

PBS News, NPR and Marist Poll conducted a survey from Sept. 14 to 15, 2026, that polled 1,280 registered voters by phone, text and online with a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points. For Democrats, the margin of error is 6.5 percentage points; Republicans, 6.8 percentage points; independents, 7.2 percentage points.