President Donald Trump has vowed to do away with voting by mail, but his Republican allies in Nevada and Arizona are being more cautious. 

Mail voting is popular with Nevada voters: In three of the last four statewide elections, more Nevadans voted by mail than voted in person. The exception was the 2024 general election, when 45 percent of voters cast their ballots by mail. 

On Truth Social last month, Trump called for a total end to the practice, with exceptions for those who are “very ill” and “The Far Away Military.” Earlier this month, he announced the relocation of U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama, saying a “big factor” was  Colorado's policy of sending all eligible voters a mail ballot — a practice known as universal mail voting. Nevada and Colorado are among eight states and the District of Columbia that have universal mail voting; it was introduced in Nevada during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Trump’s claims have placed some of his supporters in an awkward position, balancing allegiance to the president with the desire for convenience among many Republican voters. 

In a statement to The Nevada Independent, Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, wrote, “I would — of course — support President Trump's efforts to end universal mail-in voting.” 

But Trump’s public comments have gone further than that, calling to end mail voting entirely. At the time of publication, Lombardo had not responded to follow-up requests about his view on removing Nevadans’ option to vote by mail. 

In the runup to the 2024 elections, Lombardo, Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV) and state party chair Michael McDonald urged Republicans to vote early or vote by mail. In the 2024 primary elections, data from the secretary of state’s office showed that a majority of Republicans voted with their mail ballot – albeit a smaller majority than among Democrats.

Trump has long claimed mail voting is a pathway to fraud, even though there is no evidence of widespread problems. He sent conflicting messages about it in 2024 as Republicans made a strategy shift to focus on early voters ahead of the presidential election.

“President Trump is committed to ensuring that every vote cast is done in a secure and transparent fashion to restore trust and integrity back to American elections,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email to the Associated Press on Tuesday.

Lombardo’s position on mail-in voting is distinct from that of Trump, who Lombardo endorsed for president in 2024. Lombardo has previously called for an end to “universal mail-in ballots” and has supported stopping mail ballot counting after Election Day, but has affirmed Nevadans’ right to vote by mail if they request to do so.

The governor has looked to build an independent profile as a moderate in a state where close elections are commonplace and where Democrats control both chambers of the state Legislature. He rejected Trump’s false claims of the 2020 election being stolen, although he still garnered an endorsement from Trump in his 2022 gubernatorial race.

Lombardo's 2022 election was drawn out in part because of a 2020 law requiring counties to accept mail ballots postmarked by Election Day, even if they arrive four days later. Counting mail ballots takes more time in Nevada because voters' signatures are inspected before the ballot can be tallied, and voters whose signatures do not match those on their voter file have until a week past Election Day to “cure” their ballot. 

These rules mean Nevada has more slowly reported results in some recent close races than in other states like Florida, which only counts mail ballots received by Election Day. Lombardo told KTNV Las Vegas last November that the state’s delayed election results were a “national embarrassment” that created “an environment of perceived fraud, especially if there’s certain races that flip.” 

His view, that slower results unnecessarily undermine trust in Nevada’s elections, differs from that of Trump, who has framed delays in result reporting as genuine proof of fraud.

At his 2025 State of the State address, Lombardo argued that only counting ballots that arrive by Election Day is “vitally important … for our elections system to function properly.” 

In the last legislative session, Lombardo pushed for a bill that would have enacted such a policy, but the bill died in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

Along with his frustrations that mail voting slows down reporting of election results, Lombardo has raised concerns about the security of mail-in voting. He vetoed a bill (AB306) in the Legislature’s 2025 session that would have established more drop boxes for mail-in ballots, writing in his veto message concerns that the bill did not “guarantee appropriate oversight of the proposed ballot boxes or the ballots cast.” 

The effort to create more drop boxes was nearly resurrected as part of an attempted deal with Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas), who combined that idea with a voter ID requirement in AB499. Nevada is one of 14 states that does not require any form of voter ID.

But Lombardo vetoed AB499 as well, citing his belief that it created looser ID requirements for voters who mail in ballots than those who vote in person. The bill would have verified in-person voters using a photo ID but allowed mail-in voters to be verified using only their signature. 

In his re-election campaign launch earlier this week, Lombardo made no specific mention of mail voting but did reference his “fight for commonsense election reforms, like voter ID.” 

After Democrats in the Legislature killed a Lombardo-backed bill in 2023 to require voter ID, the governor publicly and financially supported a 2024 ballot question on the same issue. Unlike AB499, the ballot question stated that mail-in votes must be verified with both a signature and a personal identification number, such as a Social Security number. 

Last November, voters overwhelmingly approved the ballot question. If they approve it again in 2026, it will become state law. 

Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, has defended the use of mail-in ballots and the integrity of Nevada’s elections, which he describes as “safe, secure and accessible.” 

In Arizona, Republicans face a similar conundrum

Similar issues have emerged in neighboring Arizona, where 85 percent of voters cast a mailed ballot in the last elections. 

GOP strategist Barrett Marson said mail voting helped Republicans win Arizona races in the 2024 election, when Trump won the state overall by more than 5 percentage points and the party expanded its legislative majority.

“President Trump and his campaign had a very successful ballot-chasing program in 2024, and so it would be nice for him to understand sort of the way that works and how successful he was in that endeavor,” Marson said.

The dilemma highlights the challenge some GOP candidates face heading into next year's midterm elections. It is an especially pressing question in the Republican primary for Arizona governor, where Trump has taken the unusual step of endorsing two candidates. 

U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, one of the candidates with Trump's endorsement and a former chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, supported Trump's false claims about the 2020 presidential election being stolen. 

But he breaks with the president on mail voting.

“He does not support eliminating mail voting,” said Sean Noble, a Biggs campaign consultant.

The other candidate endorsed by Trump, Karrin Taylor Robson, side-stepped a question on voting by mail in a recent radio interview, noting that she agrees with Trump on the need to "restore trust and integrity" in elections but not explicitly stating whether or not she wanted to see mail voting repealed. Her campaign declined to elaborate.

Arizona's Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who is running for re-election, has said she would protect mail-in voting.