President Donald Trump has cast another mail ballot in Florida as he continues to publicly bash the voting method and push Congress to curtail the practice. Palm Beach County voter records show Trump voted by mail in a Tuesday special election for state legislative seats, and that his ballot has been counted, according to the Associated Press.
The White House said Tuesday that Trump’s ire is directed at states using universal mail-in voting, not individual instances of voters needing accommodations to vote by mail. White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said that Trump’s voting practice does not contradict his push for new federal voting rules. Wales stated, “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.”
Trump has in the last week called mail-in voting “cheating” and “corrupt as hell,” and is urging Congress to pass the SAVE Act. The bill would bar universal mail ballots and, as Wales noted, limit the options to a select few voters.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said, “According to Donald Trump, vote by mail is cheating when other people use it, but perfectly fine when he does it himself,” according to the AP.
Trump has fixated on mail ballots since he began falsely claiming that his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden was the result of fraud. Multiple U.S. courts and Trump’s own attorney general have found no evidence of fraud that affected the outcome.