“[The Jimmy Carter commission's] conclusion was, if you have mail-in voting, you're going to have massive fraud.”

White House remarks to the National Governors Association

The Carter-Baker Commission never concluded that, and Jimmy Carter himself spent his final years urging states to EXPAND voting by mail. The 2005 report found "little evidence of fraud in Oregon, where the entire state votes by mail." It did call absentee ballots "the largest source of potential voter fraud," but it spoke of potential fraud and risk in states with weaker safeguards, not of mail voting producing massive fraud.

The bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Carter and Republican James Baker III, actually found that where safeguards are in place, such as Oregon, which has voted entirely by mail since 1998, there was "little evidence of voter fraud." Its recommendations were modest: more research on mail voting and a ban on candidates or party workers handling other people's ballots. It never called for abolishing mail voting.

In May 2020, the Carter Center issued a formal statement urging federal and state governments "to expand access to vote-by-mail options," noting that since 2005 many states had shown the commission's concerns "can be effectively addressed." Trump has repeated this distortion for years; PolitiFact rated a near-identical version False in November 2022 and again debunked it in February 2025.

"I urge political leaders across the country to take immediate steps to expand vote-by-mail and other measures that can help protect the core of American democracy – the right of our citizens to vote." — Former President Jimmy Carter, Carter Center statement, May 6, 2020