Brian Bronzynski doesn’t usually vote early, but he was the first person in line to do so in his rural Iowa precinct on the day early voting began.
Bronzynski, a registered Democrat and retired special education teacher, said he typically votes by mail or in person closer to Election Day. But this year, he is one of the many Democrats rushing to the ballot box early as trust in the U.S. Postal Service is in steep decline.
“I’m not gonna even give them the chance to screw up my ballot and not get it to me in time that I can get it taken care of and get it sent back in. I’m just going to go up there and do it,” he said. “I was also afraid that if I showed up on Election Day, I was going to walk in there and [they’d] say, ‘Oh, we don’t have you registered.’”
Trust in the USPS to deliver mail-in ballots on time, which has been steadily growing less reliable over recent years, dropped precipitously this year after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March prohibiting the agency from delivering mail-in ballots to voters who were not on preapproved voter lists.
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The Supreme Court eventually blocked the order. But the administration has continued to raise alarm over mail-in ballots. In September, a whistleblower said USPS was rushing “untested” technology ahead of the midterms that could “derail” the election.
“It further raised concerns, especially from Democrats, that the Postal Service was no longer a trusted authority, that it didn’t have the resources to do what it used to do in terms of delivering mail and that it was increasingly under the control of the Trump administration and might intentionally not deliver ballots in some cases,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies voting.
Democrats have staunchly defended broad mail-in ballot use over the last few years as the practice became more politicized. Republicans were once strong supporters of mail-in ballots. But during the pandemic, as mail-in voting increased, Trump and other conservative figures claimed that mail-in ballots were rife with fraud, decreasing trust in the practice among Republican voters.
Concerned Democrats say their worries over mail-in ballots differ sharply from those of Republicans.
“There’s no fraud” in mail-in voting, Ohio state Rep. Tristan Rader (D) argued. “It’s more that [Republicans are] moving the goalposts. They’re making it harder for people to count their votes.”
Burden says the behavior shifts may be seen the most in states where mail-in ballots are growing in use but not yet universal, and states that have a hard Election Day delivery deadline.
Early voting data in some states is already showing that shift. In Ohio, for example, the total number of ballots as of Tuesday was about 30,000 higher than at the same point in the 2022 election, according to the Ohio Secretary of State.
But when and how Ohioans are voting has shifted dramatically: Absentee ballot requests this year have decreased by about 28%, while early in-person voting has increased by about 196% compared to 2022.
Nearly 2,000 people voted on the first day of early voting in Cuyahoga County, one of Ohio’s most populous counties and the home of Cleveland. That’s a 250% increase from previous years.
Ohio’s mail-in ballot law now requires that ballots arrive by Election Day. Previously, they just needed to be postmarked by Election Day.
“The national discourse has had an absolutely huge impact on how people feel about [this], and it’s showing up in the numbers,” said Rader, who joined the crowds to vote on opening day.
Rader said the crowd was excited and highly motivated to vote, but he has also heard a lot of fears from Ohioans that USPS may not get their ballot in on time.
“People understand that if you show up, your vote will still be fully counted,” Rader said. “Whereas they’re not sure anymore that if they vote by mail, their vote’s going to 100% be counted.”
In Michigan, 30% more absentee ballots were returned in 2026 a month out from election day than in 2022, per Secretary of State data.
And in Iowa, Democrats have requested fewer absentee ballots than in 2022 and are currently returning them in much higher numbers to county offices or opting to vote in person at the county office or at satellite polling locations, reported Bleeding Heartland, an independent blog focused on Iowa politics.
“People might not be able to tell you all of the details with Trump’s executive order and whatever was going on with the courts, but they know that the Trump administration is trying to do something funny with mail ballots,” said Laura Belin, the primary author of Bleeding Heartland. “Whether that’s warranted or not, that is definitely a fear I’ve heard anecdotally from a lot of Democrats.”
The Democratic ground game in Iowa is not pushing vote-by-mail to the extent they have in the past, Belin said, but voters are still being urged to get their ballot in early.
Whether this is a permanent shift in Democratic voting behavior remains to be seen.
“The real super excellent analysis of this will have to be sort of after the election,” said John Forteir, an expert in voting at the American Enterprise Institute. “I doubt it’s a very substantive change.”
Bronzynski said that once Trump is out of office, he plans to return to his normal practice of voting by mail or showing up in person closer to Election Day.
“As soon as this hellish period passes,” he said. “I think it will go back to normal as it should.”