President Donald Trump holds power over the U.S. Postal Service that is "pretty absolute," Republican strategist Dick Morris told Newsmax on Saturday, and the administration is using that leverage to police mail-in voting through postal rules rather than state-by-state legislation.

Appearing on "Saturday Report," Morris cast the postal route as the decisive lever the president can pull on election integrity.

"Trump's power over the post office as president is pretty absolute," he said. "He's implementing procedures that are appropriate for the post office. And I think that that's a brilliant attempt to deal with fraud, but deal with it through the post office, not just through voter ID."

The Postal Service is structured as an independent agency within the executive branch under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, and is run by an 11-member Board of Governors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

All six current independent governors are Trump appointees, and the president has two more nominations pending before the Senate, giving the White House unusually deep influence over postal policy heading into the 2026 midterms.

Morris said photo ID rules, the longtime Republican focus, miss the larger vulnerability.

"All the focus on election integrity so far has been about photo ID, and that's fine if the person is right there standing in front of you," he said. "But the bulk of the fraud taking place now is probably through mail-in ballots. And we have a piece of paper. How do you know if that's legit or not?"

His comments followed a USPS notice of proposed rulemaking, the first concrete step toward implementing Trump's March 31 executive order on election integrity, that would require states to send the Postal Service the names of voters receiving mail-in or absentee ballots along with unique barcodes tied to each outbound and return envelope.

Morris described the design as end-to-end ballot tracking.

"He's got special envelopes for votes that the Post Office needs, can require to be used, and you can track it as it goes out and comes in," he said, adding that "every state has been required now to give the post office a list of potential absentee voters so they can get the special mailing."

The rule would apply to general, special and runoff federal elections, but not primaries or ballots sent to military and overseas voters, and would generate state-specific Mail-In and Absentee Participation Lists through a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal.

Morris said lawsuits are inevitable but predicted the administration will prevail because the action runs through postal authority rather than direct federal preemption of state election codes.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols last month declined to block the mail-voting provisions of the executive order, ruling the challenge premature because agencies had not yet acted.

The proposed rule heads to the Federal Register for a 30-day public-comment period before any final action, opening a fresh window for litigation.

Critics, including former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., have speculated the timeline and unfunded mandates could destabilize the midterms, a counterpoint Morris did not address on the program.

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