Trump Votes by Mail in Florida Primary Despite Attacks on Mail-In Voting

President Donald Trump has cast his vote in the Florida Republican primary election. The controversy lies in the fact that he voted by mail, despite repeatedly attacking the process of mail-in voting. Read on for details on why the president used this voting method and why his opponents are calling him out for it.

Trump Votes by Mail in Tuesday's Florida GOP Primary

The White House confirmed that the president returned a mail-in ballot on August 13. The Florida Republican primary was on Tuesday, August 18. This year's primary featured a hotly contested Republican gubernatorial race including Trump ally Rep. Byron Donalds. This marks the second time this year that Trump has leaned on mail-in voting to cast his ballot even though he has previously called the method "inherently corrupt," comparing it to cheating.

News agency Politico was the first to report that Trump was casting a mail-in ballot in Florida. The president has designated Florida as his home state, making him eligible to vote in the state's primary elections. Politico cited voting records from the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections to confirm that the president had voted by mail. The report was further corroborated by USA TODAY through Palm Beach County online records.

Most recently, Trump also voted by mail for a Florida state House special election in March. When asked why he voted by mail in that election, Trump told reporters at the time that he did so "Because I’m president of the United States, and because of the fact that I’m president of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida." Olivia Wales, a spokesperson at the White House, confirmed that Trump did indeed vote by mail last week; however, she said that it was a "nonstory."

Trump's Opposition to Mail-In Voting

Wales is right that a president voting by mail should be a nonstory. But the Trump administration has made it a story by repeatedly saying that mail-in voting promotes voter fraud.

The president has spent the last several months urging Senate lawmakers to approve the SAVE America Act, a bill that would ban universal mail-in voting. Should this act pass, mail-in ballots would be limited to members of the military, disabled Americans, or individuals traveling or with illnesses that make it difficult for them to vote in person.

According to Wales, "President Trump has said the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel – but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud." She went on to say that "As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, DC."

Last week, the president asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene so that he could implement an executive order to restrict mail-in ballots as the November midterms approach. A federal court in Massachusetts blocked the original executive order from the Oval Office. This order mandated that states provide lists of voters eligible to receive mail-in ballots. Under the parameters of the order, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) could refuse to deliver the ballots if the states did not comply.

During an event in Memphis in March, Trump said that "Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all." The president also parroted these claims of cheating surrounding mail voting ahead of the 2020 presidential election. This election happened during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when more Americans chose to utilize the convenience of mail-in voting rather than head out to polling locations.

It should be noted that some states only offer mail-in voting as an option. California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington all send mail-in ballots as a default. Voters can also choose to cast their ballots in person at designated polling places.

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