Recommendations of the Editorial team
What applies to me does not apply to everyone. As Donald Trump puts pressure on Republicans to pass the SAVE Act – a voter ID law that would make it significantly harder for millions of Americans to vote – The president himself is apparently resorting to a practice that he incorrectly describes as a gateway to election fraud.
As several media outlets reported on Monday, Trump cast his vote for the special election to fill a seat in the Florida state legislature by mail – the election itself took place on Tuesday.
That same day, at a security conference in Memphis, Trump attacked the legitimacy of postal voting – a common and extremely secure method that millions of Americans use to cast their votes. The Washington Post points out that studies show that one in three Americans voted by mail in the 2024 election.
Trump’s objection to postal voting
“Postal voting means mail fraud,” Trump said. “We have to get everything under control.”
The SAVE Act, a sweeping election reform law that would immediately disenfranchise millions of people and effectively affect the entire American electorate, is just the Trump administration’s latest attack on mail-in voting.
Last year, the president signed an executive order penalizing states that accepted absentee ballots that were postmarked before or on Election Day but did not reach election authorities until after the election.
In August of that year, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would “lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots, including the highly ‘inaccurate,’ extremely expensive and deeply controversial VOTING MACHINES.”
False Claims and Executive Plans
Trump also falsely claimed that the United States was “the only country in the world to use mail-in voting” and that everyone else had abandoned it because of “massive voter fraud.” He announced that he would sign an executive order that would simply abolish mail-in voting – a practice he described as “corrupt.”
Even if Republicans fail to pass the SAVE Act, Trump could restrict mail-in voting in other ways. The Supreme Court is currently considering a case from Mississippi that could potentially ban the counting of late mail-in ballots nationwide.
Incidentally, Tuesday’s special election in Florida is not the first time that Trump has voted by mail. When asked in 2020 how he justified voting by mail despite calling the practice “horrible,” he replied, “I’m allowed to vote by mail.” When asked how he reconciles that with his criticism, he said: “Because I’m allowed to.”
