After numerous attempts to block mail-in voting by both litigation and Twitter rants, President Donald Trump requested a mail-in ballot for the August primary in Palm Beach County, Florida, as did his wife, First Lady Melania Trump.
The Trumps changed their state of residence to Florida from New York last October, and they have voted by mail in March during Florida’s presidential primary. Their official registered address is at the Mar-a-Lago Club. An affiliate picked up the ballot for the Trumps back in March.
President Trump has been claiming that mail-in voting will lead to fraud. He highlighted the difference between mail-in voting and absentee voting, claiming that the latter is a safer system, though most elections experts say that they are synonymous terms.
However, on Aug. 4, he backtracked his words by tweeting that Florida’s mail-in voting system is “Safe and Secure, Tried and True” whether one calls it “Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting.”
The Trumps requested their mail-in ballots on Wednesday, according to the elections website, but it was only this Thursday when Trump admitted to withholding funds for the United States Postal Service (USPS) to block mail-in voting.
“They want $3.5 billion for something that will turn out to be fraudulent. That’s election money, basically,” Trump said to Fox Business Network. He also stated, “If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.”
Mail-in voting will be particularly critical this November election because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessity for social distancing. Voting in person can be especially dangerous to those with pre-existing conditions and older voters.
