For months, Trump has made a number of inaccurate claims of voter fraud being associated with ballots sent by mail.
President Donald Trump, who has for the past several months repeatedly made unverified and dubious claims about fraud associated with mail-in voting, authored a tweet on Tuesday urging voters in his home state of Florida to vote by mail if that’s what they wanted to do. “Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True,” Trump said. The president elaborated in his social media posting that the Sunshine State’s voting system “has been cleaned up,” alleging without evidence that Democratic lawmakers there had tried to make the system less secure. “I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!” Trump added. The tweet contradicts a number of statements that Trump has made since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, when many began touting mail-in voting as a means to cast ballots without having to physically appear at ballot boxes. In April, for example, Trump described the practice as “horrible” and “corrupt.” When it was pointed out that he himself had benefited from voting through the mail, the president justified it by saying that he was voting absentee — a distinction that many say is nonexistent as it’s the same as mail-in voting. “Sure I can vote by mail… because I’m allowed to,” Trump said at the time.
