Convenience for me but not for thee. As Donald Trump attempts to pressure Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, the voter-ID bill that would make it more difficult for millions of Americans to vote, it turns out the president is personally taking advantage of some of the same practices he falsely claims lead to electoral fraud.
According to Monday reports from multiple outlets, Trump voted by mail in the special election held to fill a seat in the Florida state Legislature on Tuesday.
Trump earlier in the day appeared at a security conference in Memphis, Tennessee, where he attacked the legitimacy of mail-in voting, a common and exceedingly secure method through which millions of Americans cast their ballots. The Washington Post points out that studies have shown that one in three Americans voted by mail in the 2024 election.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” Trump said. “We’ve got to do something about it all.”
The SAVE Act, a transformative electoral-reform bill that would immediately disenfranchise millions and impact virtually the entire American electorate, is just the latest in a string of attacks the Trump administration has made against mail-in voting.
Last year, the president signed an executive order that sought to penalize states that accepted mail-in ballots that had been postmarked before or on Election Day, but arrived at election offices after the election.
In August of last year, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would be leading “a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
Trump has also falsely claimed that the United States was “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting,” and that “all others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” He said he was planning on signing an executive order attempting to flat-out end mail-in voting, which he called “corrupt.”
Even if Republicans don’t manage to pass the SAVE Act, Trump may succeed in limiting mail-in voting through other means. The Supreme Court is currently weighing a Mississippi case that could potentially ban the counting of late-arriving mail-in ballots.
Tuesday’s special election in Florida isn’t the first time Trump has voted by mail. When asked in 2020 about voting by mail despite saying the practice is “horrible,” Trump said, “I can vote by mail.” When asked how he reconciles that with his criticism, he replied, “Because I’m allowed to.”
From Rolling Stone US
