President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly slammed mail-in voting as “mail-in cheating,” cast a mail ballot that was counted in Tuesday’s special election in Palm Beach County, Florida. County records list his ballot as a returned “Mail Ballot” in the contest to fill a state House seat. The move drops fresh fuel on an already heated fight over whether to tighten rules around absentee and mail voting ahead of the fall elections.
County Records Show Trump 'Voted by Mail Ballot'
Voter lookup pages on the county site list Mr. Trump, who has been registered in Palm Beach County since 2019, as having “voted by Mail Ballot” in the special election between Democrat Emily Gregory and Republican Jon Maples. According to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, the ballot was received and accepted for tabulation under routine signature-verification and handling procedures. The county's public records offer the clearest official account of how the former president cast his vote in the local race.
Trump’s Public Attacks On Mail Voting
At a Memphis appearance this week, Mr. Trump again tore into widespread mail voting, saying, “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” according to The New York Times. The Times also reports that Mr. Trump has pushed for the SAVE Act, federal legislation that would tighten identification and documentation requirements for absentee-style ballots, while publicly urging senators to pull back the use of mail voting.
History Of Mixed Messages
Trump's reliance on mail ballots is not new. Fact-checkers have previously noted that he used mail ballots in Florida primaries in 2020. PolitiFact reported that Florida law allows voters, and in some circumstances designated agents, to request and return mailed ballots, and detailed how officials process and verify those ballots once they are sent back. That backdrop helps explain why both critics and defenders point to his personal voting record when arguing over potential changes to mail-voting rules.
What This Means For The Wider Fight Over Mail Ballots
The episode lands as federal and state-level clashes over mail voting intensify. The New York Times notes a pending Supreme Court decision over Mississippi’s mail-ballot law that could affect hundreds of thousands of ballots in November. Whether Mr. Trump's own mail ballot alters that national conversation is unclear, but the optics of attacking a voting method while using it are almost certain to be highlighted by both sides in the debate.
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