Trump Mailed His Ballot While Telling You Mail-In Voting Is a Scam

Let me tell you what I can see with my own eyes. The president of the United States dropped a ballot in the mail to vote in a Florida primary. Palm Beach County got it August 14. He hasn’t set foot in Florida since May. And somewhere between Mar-a-Lago and the post office, that envelope did just fine. Nobody lost it. Nobody stuffed it in a shoebox. Nobody forged a signature on a kitchen table.

Which is a funny thing, because that is exactly the nightmare Donald Trump has been describing to anyone who will listen.

“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating,” he said in Tennessee. “I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it.” He told a crowd in July that mail-in ballots are “inherently corrupt.” He stood up in front of Congress at the State of the Union and demanded “no more crooked mail-in ballots.” And then he went home, requested his absentee ballot, and voted by mail. Again. He did the same thing in March. He did it in 2020 too, and when somebody asked him about it back then, he said, well, he was at the White House and couldn’t get to Florida. Bless his heart.

So which is it? Is it cheating, or is it convenient? Because I have questions for the manager on this one.

Govern del Kreis Düren (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

The White House sent out spokeswoman Olivia Wales to clean it up. “The SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel,” she said. Then she called the whole thing “a non-story.”

Well. It is a story, honey. It is the whole story. The president gets an exception. You get a lecture. He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and can’t be bothered to fly south to a polling place, so he mails it in. You work two jobs and your polling place moved across county lines and closed at 5 p.m., and his administration is at the Supreme Court right now trying to make it harder for you to do the same thing he just did.

His people are asking the justices to let them impose new rules that could restrict ballot access before November. Nearly two dozen states, more than 50 former judges, and 118 election officials have told the court that this would create “chaos.” Election workers are already in what they call an “untenable position,” facing criminal threats if they don’t overhaul their systems weeks before ballots go out. But the president’s ballot sailed through just fine. Funny how that works.

Now I have been around long enough to know that politicians say one thing and do another. That is not exactly breaking news. But there is something about the sheer nerve of this one. He stood at a podium and told you mail-in voting is a scam. Then he sat down at his desk and did it himself. And his staff called it a non-story. They figure you are too dumb to notice the difference.

Sharon Hahn Darlin (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

The SAVE America Act is stalled in the Senate, where it belongs, because it does not have the votes. It would make mail voting harder for everybody, not easier. You would have to photocopy your photo ID and send it in with your ballot. The president did not have to do that. He just mailed his in.

I am not against mail-in voting. I am against being talked down to by people who think the rules are for the little folks. If it is good enough for the president, it is good enough for the rest of us. And if it is cheating when you do it, it is cheating when he does it too. You cannot have it both ways, and the people who tell you otherwise are counting on you not to notice.