OHIO — The American Postal Workers Union announced on Tuesday that it will begin airing a national television ad campaign promoting voting by mail, with the 30-second spot set to debut in Ohio before expanding to other states. The union, which has 200,000 members, said the ad features voters including a farmer and a flight attendant explaining why they cast their ballots by mail and closes with the message "Vote by mail — keep it, protect it, expand it."

American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said the ad was produced before President Donald Trump's recent executive order on elections and was not created in response to it. Smith said the campaign is intended as a message to voters, not to the president. "Our message is to America: Vote by mail is efficient, it's safe, and it's successful. Period," he said.

The ad campaign comes as Trump has taken several actions targeting mail voting. In 2020, Trump began claiming mail voting was susceptible to mass fraud. He has publicly criticized the practice as a source of fraud and is pushing Congress to curtail mail voting through legislation. Trump signed an election executive order last year that targeted mail ballots by seeking to require they be returned by Election Day. More than a dozen states allow a grace period for mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. Trump himself voted by mail as recently as last month.

Two weeks before the union's announcement, Trump signed another executive order seeking to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to bar postal workers from sending absentee ballots to individuals not on each state's approved list. Various groups have filed lawsuits in response to that order.

Smith expressed concern about potential ramifications of requiring postal workers to determine who should receive an absentee ballot. "It is our position that it is not the job of the postal workers to verify voter eligibility. It is our job to move mail from one destination to the next. We do not want to be politicized," he said.

The National Rural Letter Carriers' Association also opposed the executive order, saying it threatens confidence in the mail and in elections. The association said the order "risks politicizing one of the nation's most trusted public institutions" and that "USPS is not equipped or authorized to decide who is or is not entitled to vote."

Mail voting had been increasing in popularity in both Democratic-led and Republican-led states until 2020 but has since become less popular among Republicans. A 2025 Brookings Institution report found that cases of mail voting fraud occurred at a rate of about four per 10 million mail ballots cast. In Ohio, Union Army soldiers cast the first mail ballots in 1864. "This is educating the American people that you can use vote by mail and you can be guaranteed that your voice will be heard and your vote will be counted," Smith said.