US Politics
Trump reportedly cast a mail ballot in Florida as he publicly condemns legitimate voting method as fraudulent
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President Donald Trump reportedly voted by mail in an upcoming local special election in Florida, despite the Republican’s frequent and false claims that mail-in voting is plagued with fraud.
The president cast a mail-in ballot in his home county of Palm Beach as part of a race for the state legislature, The Washington Post reports, even though the Republican was in the area over the weekend when early in-person voting was available.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, the president encouraged voters to take part in the “very important” special election and shared a link to help find their voting location. The post did not mention Trump wouldn’t be joining Floridians in person at the polls.
The Trump administration dismissed the Post’s reporting, calling it a “non-story” because it’s well known that the president uses mail-in voting, given that his main residence most of the time is the White House.
The president has voted multiple times by mail in the past, including in the 2020 presidential primary and a 2021 Florida election.
Still, the mail-in ballot was something of an irony, given the president’s long-running attacks on the practice, which continued on Monday.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said while speaking with law enforcement members during a visit to Memphis. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we [have] got to do something about it all.”
The president, who has repeatedly and falsely tied his 2020 election loss to the virtually non-existent phenomenon of mass voting fraud, is also a driving force behind the GOP’s SAVE America Act.
The bill seeks to impose new ID requirements for federal elections, including when voting by mail.
Negotiations around the bill have gummed up the rest of Congress, with the president saying he won’t sign new bills until the SAVE America Act lands on his desk, even though the Senate appears unlikely to advance the bill in the face of Democratic opposition.
The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in a case over whether states can keep counting mail-in ballots that arrive late.
All 50 states require ballots be cast or postmarked on or before Election Day, but 14 states have grace periods allowing for delayed counting that can last weeks.
