Trump voted by mail in Florida’s March 24 special election for state legislative seats while he continued to publicly criticize mail ballots as fraud-prone, an Associated Press account said, citing Palm Beach County voter records and the White House’s response.
According to the records cited by AP, Trump voted by mail in the special election for state House District 87 and Senate District 14, and his ballot was counted. The contest’s early in-person voting ran through Sunday, when Trump was still at his south Florida estate, the report said.
The White House, in turn, pushed back on the idea that Trump’s own vote-by-mail use contradicts his push for new federal voting rules. In a statement carried by AP, spokeswoman Olivia Wales said Trump’s ire was at states using universal mail-in voting rather than at individual voters seeking accommodations to cast ballots by mail.
Wales said, “As 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,” according to the AP report. Wales also added that Trump participates in Florida elections as a resident of Palm Beach and that he “obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,” calling the dispute “a non-story.”
The AP report said Trump has intensified his criticism of vote-by-mail since the start of his public false fraud claims around his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. It also noted that multiple U.S. courts and Trump’s own attorney general have found no evidence that fraud affected that outcome, even as the COVID-19 pandemic increased the share of voters who cast mail ballots in 2020.
Over the last week, AP reported that Trump referred to mail voting as “cheating” and “corrupt as hell,” including comments made at the White House during a visit by Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Trump previously also used a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last August to criticize mail voting, according to the AP account.
In Congress, Trump has urged passage of the SAVE America Act, a bill AP described as aiming to bar universal mail ballots while limiting mail voting options to certain voters, including those with disabilities, military service commitments or those traveling on Election Day. The AP report said the measure faces steep odds in the closely divided Senate, even as Congress and the administration also grapple with the Iran war and a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
On the Senate floor, AP said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to seize on Trump’s choice to vote by mail. AP quoted Schumer as saying, “According to Donald Trump, vote by mail is cheating when other people use it, but perfectly fine when he does it himself.”
AP also reported that Trump does not have a standing vote-by-mail request for all elections, based on county records, meaning he had to request a mail ballot for each individual race. The ballot for this election included the March contest for House District 87 and Senate District 14.
Finally, AP reported that Trump endorsed Jon Maples late Monday for the House special election through his Truth Social platform, writing that polls were open from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and urging “TO ALL GREAT PATRIOTS IN FLORIDA STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 87: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR JON MAPLES,” without mentioning that he had voted by mail. The AP report said Republican Maples lost Tuesday to Democrat Emily Gregory, a district that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.