President Donald Trump criticized the practice of mail-in voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, but admitted he voted by mail in Florida’s primary last month.
Despite noting he had voted by mail, Trump called the practice “horrible” and “corrupt” during the coronavirus task force news briefing Tuesday.
He said that “there’s a big difference between somebody that’s out of state and does a ballot, and everything’s sealed, certified and everything else.” For cases of mail-in voting within the state, “you get thousands and thousands of people sitting in somebody’s living room, signing ballots all over the place,” he claimed.
“You look at what they do, where they grab thousands of mail-in ballots, and they dump it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what — and I don’t have to tell you, you can look at the statistics — there’s a lot of dishonesty going along with mail-in voting, mail-in ballots,” he continued. “I think if you vote, you should go.”
Trump’s advice comes as most Americans are avoiding going out in public and following social distancing guidelines in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Many states including Ohio and Florida have postponed their primaries, and politicians are expecting absentee and vote by mail policies to expand exponentially due to the virus.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said last week the country would “probably be moving to vote by mail” for the remainder of the 2020 election season, as local governments continue to issue shelter-in-place orders.
However, Trump indicated on Wednesday that his dislike of mail-in voting stemmed from the fact that “for whatever reason, [it] doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”
“Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to statewide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it,” Trump tweeted Wednesday. “Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.”
