Five weeks ago the Supreme Court upheld mail-ballot grace periods, 5–4. On Monday the administration asked the same Court to let it restrict mail voting in other ways.
Trump's order, signed in March, works in two steps: Homeland Security builds state-by-state lists of citizens, and the Postal Service writes rules delivering ballots only to the people on them. A federal judge blocked it in June. An appeals court kept the block in place in July, warning it would "sow confusion" and "threaten disenfranchisement of many eligible voters." Twenty-three states and D.C. are suing, on the grounds that the Constitution gives election rules to states and Congress — not the White House.
Less than one hundred days out from the midterms, that fight is now on the emergency docket. The polling from this month reveals some...discomfort with the order.
Fox News Has Bad News For Trump
Fox's July survey of 1,003 registered voters — fielded July 17–20, the week before the filing — finds voters siding with states over Washington 68% to 31%. Fox reports the preference holding across all major party groups, which means the administration's own voters are inside that number too. While this isn't the precise legal question in front of the court, it does lie at the root of the case: who gets to decide on electoral rules?
Uncomfortably, Fox News is showing voters resoundingly want the Feds to stay out of these issues.
The Mandate Doesn't Match The Order
The same Fox poll finds 83% favor photo ID to register and 77% to cast a ballot. Those numbers have sat between 77% and 85% in Fox's polling since 2011 — fifteen years without meaningful movement. Support for the registration requirement reaches 96% of Republicans and still 72% of Democrats.
This isn't what Trump's executive order does. Instead, it would force federally compiled citizenship lists and a postal rulemaking that would gate ballot delivery to those lists. Fox has never polled that. But two other pollsters spent July polling its closest legislative cousin.
The Gradient: Support Shrinks With Scrutiny
The nearest thing to the executive order that is currently on the books is the SAVE Act, a bill requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register. Two firms measured it this month, and both found the same thing.
Echelon Insights, surveying through July 24, finds the SAVE Act ahead by 23 points overall and 13 among independents. Among voters who say they've read, seen, or heard something about the bill, that lead collapses to a virtual tie.
Verasight (n=1,364 registered voters, July 14–17) found the same dynamic. Support runs 58–35 among voters who've heard only a little about the citizenship requirement, and narrows to 53–45 among those who've heard a lot.
Support narrows as awareness rises. A Supreme Court ruling is an awareness event.
Two firms, different samples, same direction in the same month. Neither firm measured the executive order itself, which adds the federal lists and the postal machinery. What overlaps is the citizenship-proof requirement, the part voters know best and like least.
Verasight also priced the cost of being wrong. 7% of currently registered voters say they'd have difficulty producing documentary proof of citizenship, or couldn't produce it at all — rising to 15% among Black voters, against 7% of white voters and 5% of Hispanic voters.
The partisan split shows some distinct electoral consequences. 9% of Democrats say they'd struggle against 3% of Republicans — an asymmetry large enough to change who the electorate is.
The Catch: The Threat Voters Ranked Last
The order is justified as a defense against non-citizen voting. In Nevada we've got a ranked test of that premise.
The Democracy Defense Foundation / Tarrance Group survey of 600 likely Nevada voters, fielded in late June, handed respondents a menu of election threats. Non-citizens casting ballots finished last:
- 78% worried about court decisions changing election rules
- 74% worried about cyberattacks
- 62% worried about federal pressure on state election officials
- 58% worried about non-citizens voting
Asked what could go wrong with their elections, Nevada voters ranked judges and Washington above the thing Trump's executive order is named for. The caveat is that the bottom item still comes in at a majority worried AND it is the most partisan in the set — 90% of Republicans are concerned about non-citizen voting against 25% of Democrats. It finishes last on the composite while topping the list for half the electorate.
What voters do trust is the machinery closest to them. The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, polling with SurveyMonkey, finds 64% express high trust in state election officials and 61% in local ones — well above the 25% that trusted the news media, social media, or prediction markets.
Mail's Confidence Problem
What about mail voting specifically? Fox finds 64% favor universal mail-in voting. But only 51% are confident mail ballots get counted accurately, against 48% who aren't. Nevada measures the same anxiety from another angle: 89% are confident in early in-person voting against 59% in mail — and just 33% of Republicans trust the mail count.
Voters back the method more than they trust the count. That gap has administrative fixes — faster processing, better tracking, clearer audits.
And on the one mail question the Court has actually resolved, the public and the Justices landed in the same place. 70% support counting ballots postmarked by Election Day even when they arrive afterward, including 88% of Democrats and 74% of independents. Republicans are the one group opposed, at 53%. On June 29 the Court upheld exactly that practice in Watson v. RNC, 5–4, Barrett writing for Roberts and the three liberal justices.
Quick Hits
📊 Prediction markets are teaching people the wrong thing. The PLEJ survey (n=867 likely midterm voters) finds nearly four in ten believe prediction-market odds reflect votes already counted or official projections from election officials. They reflect neither — they're wagers. And 38% say that if the odds diverged from the official result, they'd trust the official result less.
✅ Confidence is highest on access, lowest on the count. Fox's confidence questions descend in a straight line: 76% are confident eligible voters will be able to cast a ballot, 61% that ineligible voters will be blocked, and 58% that the final count will be fair — with mail-ballot accuracy lowest of all at 51%. Access is the part voters believe in. Their doubt starts at the counting.
🚨 Federal enforcement has a credibility problem. Data for Progress (n=1,207) finds 55% of likely voters don't trust ICE to give the public accurate information about its operations, against 42% who do. Independents land on the distrust side at 60%.
Every poll above is in Poll Vault, with the toplines and the crosstabs behind it.
Next Week
- The emergency docket. The Court is in summer recess, so this arrives as an order rather than an argued opinion — it could land any morning, with little reasoning attached.
- August 4 and August 11. Missouri and Washington vote Tuesday; Minnesota, Connecticut, Vermont, and Wisconsin follow the week after. Mail-ballot rejection rates are the closest thing to a live test of the administrative gap Fox measured.
- Whether the gradient holds. Two pollsters found support for the SAVE Act softening as awareness rose. A ruling would raise awareness sharply — and move the number in the direction its supporters won't want.
What Else We Tracked This Week
- Ossoff Leads by 9 in Georgia Senate Race as Voters 50+ Set to Dominate Turnout — AARP / Fabrizio Ward / Impact Research
- Lawler Holds 5-Point Lead in NY-17 on Crossover Votes and Unaffiliated Support — co/efficient
- Wrong Track Hits 55% as Democrats Gain Edge on Generic Ballot Ahead of Midterms — McLaughlin & Associates
- Minnesota Primary Turnout Enthusiasm Trails November by 15 Points, Lindell and Tafoya Lead GOP Races — KSTP / SurveyUSA
- Democrat Killin Within 1 Point of GOP Incumbent Crank in Colorado's 5th District — Global Strategy Group
- Graham's Sister Leads Crowded SC Senate Primary but Faces Deep Undecided Pool — Resonance Media Services
- Voters in 235 House Districts See GOP as More Out of Touch Than Democrats — Verasight
- North Carolinians Give Trump 38% Approval as Wrong-Track Sentiment Hits 58% — High Point University
Until next time,
Alex Lundry
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