President Donald Trump has voted by mail in Florida’s upcoming special election, according to Palm Beach County records, while publicly criticizing the voting method as fraudulent.
“Mail voting is mail fraud. I call it mail fraud, and we have to do something about it all,” Trump said Monday.
Public records show that his mail-in ballot was received and counted by election officials in Palm Beach County, where he is registered to vote, though the records do not detail how it was delivered to election officials.
It’s a typical move — and a reaction — from the president, who has often criticized mail-in voting as rife with fraud. He used the speech to push a major election reform bill through Congress called the SAVE America Act.
That bill does not eliminate voting by mail, as the president has suggested in public documents.
“As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, war, or travel — but mail-in voting worldwide should not be allowed because it is at risk of fraud. House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said.
Trump was in Palm Beach over the weekend; early voting continues on Sunday.
It’s not the first time Trump has voted by mail while criticizing the method: He did so in 2020.
Meanwhile, NBC News asked Trump how he reconciled his criticism of mail-in voting with the fact that he voted by mail.
“You know why I voted? Because I happen to be in the White House and I can’t go to Florida to vote,” he said.
“There is a big difference between a person who is not under the government and who votes and everything is closed and verified and everything else,” he said at the time, before saying without evidence that thousands and thousands of people were signing fraudulent ballots in their living rooms. “I think postal voting is a very bad thing. I think if you vote, you should go.”
NPR reported at the time that his ballot was hand-delivered by a third party.
Trump has blamed increased voter turnout during the 2020 violence for his loss in his second bid for the presidency, despite there being no evidence of voter fraud in the US election. Since then, the email has been among Trump’s repeated false claims about election security.
In his State of the Union address earlier this year, Trump called for “no more fraudulent mail-in voting” and said “fraud is rampant in our elections.”
Trump posted on social media that he would like mail-in voting to be available only in cases of “SICKNESS, DISABILITY, MILITARY, OR TRAVEL!”
Mail-in ballots are verified in different ways depending on the state, usually by checking the voter’s signature against their voter registration.
Trump made his comments Monday while proposing the SAVE America Act, which would add voter ID and written proof of citizenship requirements to national elections. Trump says he won’t sign any bills until they reach his desk, but the bill is stalled in the US Senate, where it lacks the necessary 60 votes to pass under the chamber’s current rules.
Trump suggested that the SAVE America Act would end mail-in voting, which is not true. The proposed law would make voting by mail more difficult — voters would have to photocopy their photo ID to submit with their ballot — but it would not end the practice.
In his remarks in Memphis on Monday, Trump repeated the false claim he made earlier, saying that “it was brought to my attention today that we are the only country that votes by mail.”
Voters cast ballots by mail in at least 32 countries, according to a Swedish-based organization, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, which says it “supports democracy around the world.”
Florida has state legislative elections on Tuesday to fill vacant seats, including the state House district that includes Mar-a-Lago. Trump carried the state by about 11 percent in the 2024 presidential race, according to Downballot, a left-leaning political site that tracks party swings in state special elections.
Trump endorsed Republican Jon Maples in the race and encouraged people to “get out and vote” in a Public Truth post earlier this month. The map faces Democrat Emily Gregory.
Since Trump began his second term, Democrats have flipped nine state legislative seats across the country in special elections, in addition to gains in regularly scheduled legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia last year.
