nola.com27%
As President Donald Trump pushes hard on election rules, would much change in Louisiana? 19%
By Mark Ballard39%
8/1/2026, 2:00:00 AM
Keywords: Trump, Election Rules, Louisiana, Save Act, Mail In Ballots, Photo Id, Citizenship Verification
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Confirmation Bias, and Hasty Generalization, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 27% saturation with 206 hits. Analysis detected 1,436 faulty-reasoning hits from 764 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 29.2% and a BS Rank of 19% (20,553 of 25,185 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 81.60% of the article peer group.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump and his Republican allies went “all in” last week on their theory that American elections are fundamentally flawed and rigged against the Republicans who now control Congress and the White House.
Trump’s Solicitor General, D.
John Sauer, asked Monday that the U.S.
Supreme Court quickly endorse an executive order that would limit the use of “mail-in” ballots in time for the Nov. 3 midterms.
In November, voters will decide if Republicans will continue to hold all the reins of power or whether Democrats should control either the House or the Senate or both.
That’s why Trump and his allies are pushing changes to election protocols in Congress and now at the U.S.
Supreme Court.
Louisiana joined Tuesday other Republican-run states in making a similar request of the Supreme Court in another case.
While this is a major fight on the national level, it doesn’t particularly mean much in Louisiana, where congressional candidates from Wednesday through Friday will pay their fees and sign up to run for office.
That’s because the Louisiana Legislature, with its GOP supermajorities, already has approved much of what Trump wants: proof of citizenship when registering to vote; photo identification to cast a ballot; and, this is the controversial part, limits on when and how voters can mail their ballots – restrictions about which even Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton, has reservations, at least when it comes to counting votes in the U.S.
House.
Trump has refused to sign any legislation until Congress passes the SAVE America Act, which requires voters to prove their citizenship when registering and show their identification when casting ballots.
He wants the bill to include restrictions on mail ballots.
Johnson has dutifully attached the bill's wording to just about every instrument passed out of the House and sent to the Senate during the past month.
But he has used a version without the absentee limits for some of the successful House votes on the issue.
“The mail-in ballot,” Johnson said, “is a very difficult thing to regulate at the federal level, because different states do it differently.”
The U.S.
Constitution and federal laws specifically give states authority to stage elections as they like.
Louisiana is one of 13 states that require an excuse to vote without personally showing up at the polls.
There are a dozen or so acceptable reasons, such as being over the age of 65 or living in a nursing home.
Louisiana is the only state that requires a mail ballot to be submitted the day before Election Day.
Thirty-seven other states and the District of Columbia allow voters just to request, without making excuses, an absentee ballot.
Trump called mail ballots “inherently corrupt” as late as last week at a political rally in Michigan.
Like about 30% of the electorate in 2024, Trump voted absentee, according to federal elections data.
Mail-in ballots have held a spot in his litany of election abuses since Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
Though Trump has no reliable proof of widespread fraud, he repeatedly says that cheating is responsible for Democratic electoral wins.
Part of the debate is how long it takes to count the mail votes.
Generally, ballot counting can’t start until the polls are closed.
While votes cast on election day are counted mechanically, mail-in ballots have to be opened, checked for eligibility, signatures reviewed, then counted.
Reports and analysis show that Republicans and Democrats equally use mail ballots, but in some recent counts, early GOP leads of the votes cast in person evaporated when the absentee ballots were tallied.
“I’m not saying it’s rigged.
I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that,” Johnson said of the lengthy count in California’s June primaries.
Into this milieu comes Trump’s request that the Supreme Court essentially ratify his March 31 “Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections.”
The executive order instructs the U.S.
Postal Service to propose rules for mail-in and absentee ballots, and it directs the Department of Homeland Security to compile lists of U.S. citizens over the age of 18, then only deliver ballots to individuals on those “state citizenship” lists.
The goal, Trump says, is to promote election integrity.
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia argued to a federal district court in Massachusetts, where ballots are proactively mailed to voters, that the executive order violates the constitutional provisions giving states the power to organize elections.
The justices are asking opponents to file their responses by close of business Monday.
Analysis
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