Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said Tuesday that President Donald Trump is attempting a “power grab” in trying to clamp down on mail-in voting.

Trump discussed mail-in voting during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, where he said the two agreed it is not “honest.” Trump vowed Monday he will issue an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 elections.

Griswold said states are responsible for overseeing elections, “not Donald Trump.”

“Look, mail ballots are secure. They cannot be hacked because they‘re a piece of paper. That is increasingly more important, as Trump has made our elections less secure since taking office again. He‘s disbanded much of the federal government‘s work on countering foreign disinformation, and is obviously taking cues about democracy from a dictator, Putin,” Griswold said on CNN.

Griswold said Trump and his family used mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election. She said the president’s ire against this form of voting showcases him “escalating his attacks” on the U.S. Constitution.

The secretary of state encouraged people to “fight back,” and said she will do all she can to “stop” the Trump administration.

Griswold received national attention when she led an effort to remove Trump from her state’s 2024 primary ballot. However, this move lost on the federal level when the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that states cannot keep presidential candidates off primary ballots under the 14th Amendment.

In October, just before the 2024 presidential election, Griswold said the partial passwords to Colorado’s voting system had been live on its website for several months and reported this to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. She also fired the employee responsible for this “serious mistake.”

Trump’s bid to rid mail-in voting contrasts with his 2024 campaign, which created the Swamp the Vote USA grassroots program with Trump Force 47. Trump also encouraged Republicans to use every possible tool to defeat Democrats in the 2024 election.

Trump’s proposed executive order to, in his words, “get rid” of mail-in ballots will likely face opposition from an unlikely source: Republicans.

Republicans are quietly pushing back on Trump’s proposal, announced Monday on Truth Social, after spending time and money since the 2020 election during the COVID-19 pandemic, encouraging GOP voters to use mail-in absentee ballots.

One well-placed Republican strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Trump’s proposal, described it as a “big surprise,” telling the Washington Examiner it would be “counterproductive to what Republicans have been working really hard for over the past couple of years.”

“I don’t think there’s really a good way to spin it, to be completely honest,” he said.

The strategist pointed to Trump’s home state of Florida, where 3 million voters voted by mail-in ballot last year, as one in which Republicans have closed the mail-in ballot “gap” between the parties. Last year, 35% identified as members of the GOP and 42% as Democrats.

“If it becomes more of a formal effort where we actually see it getting some steam, then I do believe it will probably be Republicans in the ecosystem who will push pretty hard against this and just present the facts to the White House and the president of why that might be a bad idea,” he added.

University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden agreed Trump’s proposal “might end up hurting his party’s election chances” as the president and the White House prepare for next year’s midterm elections. Those preparations range from promoting the One Big Beautiful Bill, including Vice President J.D. Vance’s Thursday trip to Peachtree City, Georgia, to mid-decade redistricting in Texas and potentially Indiana.

“Historically, Republicans have been more likely to vote by mail,” Burden told the Washington Examiner. “The pattern got upended during the COVID pandemic in 2020 when Democrats became heavier users of mail ballots. But the differences in how Democratic and Republican voters cast their ballots have been ebbing since 2020, so new limits on mail balloting could actually create more challenges for the GOP.”

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow John Fortier was more circumspect than Burden. Fortier told the Washington Examiner there was “this enormous spike” in Republican mail-in ballot use during the 2020 COVID election, but that the trend decreased last year to be “a little higher than 2016 but certainly far lower than 2020,” with “a lot of Republican states that eased things for COVID going back to what they had done before.”

Regardless, Republicans in 2024, “as a political strategy, said we should use absentee ballots where they’re available,” according to Fortier.

“Whatever the law is, wherever it is, we shouldn’t just tie our hand behind our back, we should use those laws,” he said.

Aside from the political consequences of Trump’s proposal, University of Georgia political science professor M.V. Hood III underscored constitutional concerns.

“Federal courts have recognized the ability of state legislatures under the time, place, and manner clause to essentially establish wholesale election codes,” Hood told the Washington Examiner.