President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that he is moving his administration’s headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, citing Colorado’s voting practices as the primary reason. Speaking at the White House, Trump directly linked the move to what he called “automatically crooked” elections in the state, criticizing its mail-in voting system.
Trump’s Objections to Mail-In Voting
Colorado has conducted statewide mail-in elections for nearly a decade and is often highlighted by experts as a model for secure, accessible voting. However, Trump dismissed those assurances, saying:
“The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting, they went to all mail-in voting. So they have automatically crooked elections. And we can’t have that.”
He added that when a state embraces mail-in ballots, “that means they want dishonest elections,” arguing it played a “big factor” in his decision to relocate operations.
Longstanding Election Claims
The president’s remarks are consistent with his years-long narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, despite extensive investigations and court rulings upholding Joe Biden’s victory. Trump has frequently promoted claims of fraud linked to absentee and mail-in ballots, even though evidence of such misconduct is vanishingly rare.
There are no systematic problems with ballot integrity, according to independent research, including bipartisan analyses of Colorado’s elections. In fact, Colorado has consistently reported high voter turnout and strong security measures.
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Push Against Electronic Voting Machines
Alongside mail-in ballots, Trump renewed his demand to end the use of electronic voting machines nationwide. He has repeatedly argued that elections should rely on paper ballots and hand-counts instead.
“So much of this comes down to the machines,” he said. “We don’t need them. We should go back to paper ballots, real ballots, and count them by hand.”
Election officials, however, warn that such a system would be costly, time-consuming, and less accurate than modern tabulation machines. Hand-counts have been tested in several counties and consistently take longer while producing more human errors.
Political and Strategic Implications
The relocation of headquarters from Colorado to Alabama underscores the political weight Trump places on his election claims. He has directly linked partisan disagreements over vote security to administrative decisions by incorporating voting techniques into the selection of locations for federal operations.
Alabama, a Republican stronghold, has more restrictive voting laws compared to Colorado and does not use statewide mail-in voting. Analysts suggest Trump’s choice of Alabama is both a symbolic and political gesture, reinforcing his opposition to expanded ballot access measures.
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Supreme Court Ruling in the Matter
Trump’s comments also come amid broader challenges to his policy agenda. Last week, he warned that if the Supreme Court upholds a lower court ruling against his tariffs, the US would face financial consequences. “We would have to give trillions and trillions of dollars back to countries that have been ripping us off for the last 35 years,” Trump claimed, though official figures show $65.8 billion in tariffs have been collected as of August 24, far below his stated estimate.
The headquarters shift adds to the perception that Trump’s governing decisions remain intertwined with his personal campaign to delegitimize election systems he opposes.
