Donald Trump once again voted by mail in Florida elections despite repeatedly attacking mail-in ballots as “mail-in cheating” and a “scam” that his administration has spent months trying to restrict for millions of Americans.
Records in Palm Beach County, where the president’s primary Mar-a-Lago residence is located, indicate that he requested a mail-in ballot last month to participate in Florida’s Republican primary elections. His ballot was received August 14. Politico first reported his ballot.
Trump has not returned to the Sunshine State since May. He last voted by mail during a special election in March.
But his latest absentee vote follows his administration’s emergency request to the Supreme Court to implement sweeping restrictions on Americans’ access to mail-in ballots, a move that has been repeatedly blocked in court while the president pushes Congress to enact his far-reaching election reform legislation.
“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,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in a statement shared with The Independent.
open image in gallery“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, D.C.,” she said. “This is a non-story.”
Days after casting his ballot by mail in March, Trump described the process as “cheating” during an event in Tennessee.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,” he said at the time.
During a July speech, he called mail-in ballots “inherently corrupt.” He used February’s State of the Union Address to demand “no more crooked mail-in ballots.”
In 2024, Trump’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee launched “Swamp the Vote” to make up for lost ground on mail-in voting among Republican voters in the aftermath of 2020 elections.
“You need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible,” Trump said in a statement announcing the plan. Days later, Trump told a crowd at the far-right Turning Point Action conference that early voting is “sad” and “crazy.”
“They start early. You know, it’s sad, when you have to go months early,” he said at the time. “It’s crazy. What are they doing with all these votes? What are they doing?”
“Mail-in voting is totally corrupt,” he told supporters at a rally in Michigan in February that year. “Get that through your head.”
open image in galleryLast week, the Trump administration pressed the Supreme Court for permission to implement new rules that could significantly restrict voters’ access to ballots in midterm elections this fall.
Federal courts have blocked the U.S. Postal Service from further implementing Trump’s executive order that sought to create a national voter registration list that would be used to decide who is eligible to cast a ballot.
If the Supreme Court doesn’t stop them, the judge’s rulings will “effectively run out the clock” on the administration’s attempts to implement the executive order before November’s elections, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote to the high court last week.
Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states, dozens of election officials and more than 50 former state and federal judges have warned the nation’s high court that Trump’s order would create “chaos” for voters and their ballots.
If the justices let the order take effect, “the result will be chaos,” according to a bipartisan coalition of 118 current and former election officials tasked with running the nation’s elections.
Election workers are now in the “untenable position” of carrying out Trump’s order “on pain of threats of criminal prosecution” with elections already underway in most states, forced to overhaul their election systems just weeks before ballots are sent, they said.
Critics fear the president’s efforts to centralize control over election administration, which is left to the states, is an attempt to boost Republican candidates and suppress Democratic turnout ahead of November elections that could determine the balance of power in Congress — and the fate of Trump’s remaining years in office.
Florida voters will select nominees Tuesday to replace term-limited Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.
Eleven GOP candidates are competing for the nomination, including Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, Rep. Byron Donalds, former investment firm CEO James Fishback and former state House Speaker Paul Renner.
The state also will hold its first congressional primaries since adopting a newly redrawn map designed to boost Republican candidates.
Voters also will cast their ballots in a special primary election to fill the Senate seat vacated by now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Republican Ashley Moody, who is currently filling the seat, is facing two primary challengers, while two candidates are competing for the Democratic nomination.