President Trump, who has long railed against mail-in voting — including on Monday, when he called it “mail-in-cheating” — used the method himself in a Florida special election scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
According to voter records on the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, Mr. Trump voted by mail in Palm Beach County, home to his Mar-a-Lago Club. Records show he has been registered to vote there since 2019 — and that he mailed his ballot at least one other time, in 2020.
The website noted that Mr. Trump’s voter status was “by mail ballot” and that it had been counted in the special election that will determine whether Democrat Emily Gregory or Republican Jon Maples, whom Mr. Trump endorsed, will represent Mr. Trump’s district in the Florida state house.
Mr. Trump’s most recent vote, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as the president torpedoed negotiations to end the partial government shutdown to demand Republican lawmakers pass legislation called the SAVE Act that would stiffen voter identification requirements and make mail-in voting significantly more difficult.
During an appearance in Memphis, Tenn., on Monday, he argued that the voter identification bill was essential to national security. “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.”
Also on Monday, the Supreme Court appeared poised to reject Mississippi’s mail-in ballot law, a decision that could upend mail-in voting throughout the country. A decision in the case, brought by the Republican Party, is expected by late June or early July. It could affect hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots for hotly contested congressional races in November.
Mr. Trump has long fixated on mail-in-voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, and has called the SAVE Act one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in the country’s history. During his State of the Union address, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “cheating is rampant in our elections” and called for “no more crooked mail-in ballots,” though states that vote entirely by mail see very little fraud.
Mr. Trump has called for some exceptions for mail-in voting, such as when voters are ill, disabled, traveling or in the military. But it is unclear why Mr. Trump chose to mail his ballot for this week’s Florida’s special election. He has spent the last two weekends in West Palm Beach during the early voting period, which started on March 14 and ended on Sunday.
According to the elections website, his polling location is within a 15-minute drive of both his residence and his golf club.
Erica L. Green is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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