President Donald Trump has cast another mail ballot in Florida as he continues to publicly bash the voting method as a source of fraud and push Congress to curtail the practice.
Palm Beach County voter records show voted by mail in a Tuesday special election for state legislative seats and that his ballot has been counted. Early in-person voting in the contest ran through Sunday, when Trump was still at his south Florida estate.
The White House said Tuesday that Trump’s ire is at states using universal mail-in voting, not individual instances of voters needing accommodations to vote by mail. A spokeswoman pushed back specifically at the idea that his voting practice contradicts his push for new federal voting rules.
鈥淎s President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel 鈥� but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it鈥檚 highly susceptible to fraud,鈥� said White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales in a statement.
A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that cases of mail voting fraud occurred in only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast, or about four cases out of every 10 million mail votes.
Wales added: 鈥淎s 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. This is a non-story.鈥�
Nonetheless, Trump has in the last week called mail-in voting 鈥渃heating” and 鈥渃orrupt as hell.鈥� He is urging Congress to pass . The sweeping bill would bar universal mail ballots and, as Wales noted, limit the options to a select few voters such as those with disabilities, military commitments or who are traveling on Election Day. The measure faces steep odds in the closely divided Senate even with the president’s pressure.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to capitalize on the president’s voting choice.
鈥淎ccording to Donald Trump, vote by mail is cheating when other people use it, but perfectly fine when he does it himself,鈥� Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.
Trump has 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, despite the COVID-19 pandemic increasing the share of the electorate that cast mail ballots that year.
鈥淲e鈥檙e the only country in the world that does it that way. Corrupt as hell,鈥� Trump said when hosting Irish Prime Minister Miche谩l Martin.
Dozens of countries, including European democracies that are traditional U.S. allies, use some form of mail-in voting.
Trump said last week that the SAVE Act was the 鈥渂iggest thing鈥� pending in Washington, even as Congress and administration grapple with the Iran war and a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Last August, Trump used a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to blast mail voting.
鈥淲e鈥檙e going to start with an executive order that鈥檚 being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they鈥檙e corrupt,鈥� Trump said. 鈥淎nd it鈥檚 time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it. It鈥檚 the only way they can get elected.鈥�
The president, who changed his official personal residence and voter registration from New York to Florida during his first term, does not have a standing vote-by-mail request for all elections, according to the county records. That means he has to request a mail ballot for any individual election.
The ballot today includes Florida state House District 87 and Senate District 14.
Trump offered an endorsement late Monday in the House contest via his Truth Social platform.
鈥淭here is a very important Special Election tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24th, for Florida State House District 87 in beautiful Palm Beach County. … TO ALL GREAT PATRIOTS IN FLORIDA STATE HOUSE DISTRICT 87: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR JON MAPLES! Polls are open from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.鈥� Trump wrote, without mentioning that he had voted by mail or at all.
Republican Maples lost Tuesday to Democrat Emily Gregory in the district, which includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The Florida election comes one day after the in a Mississippi case questioning whether states can count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but not received until later. Trump has criticized those allowances in 14 states and the District of Columbia.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press reporter Stephen Groves contributed from Washington.
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