Donald Trump has described voting by mail as \u201ccheating\u201d at an event in Memphis, Tennessee, just days after casting a mail\u2011in ballot himself.<\/p>\n
\u201cMail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all,\u201d the US president said on Monday, in remarks to a roundtable on his administration\u2019s crime taskforce.<\/p>\n
Records show Trump voted by mail in the special election for House district 87, which encompasses his Mar-a-Lago golf club, according to<\/a> the Palm Beach county supervisor of elections website. Trump has endorsed the Republican candidate, Jon Maples, in the race against Democrat Emily Gregory.<\/p>\n Trump chose to mail his ballot even though he has recently been in Palm Beach where early in-person voting was available until Sunday evening<\/a>.<\/p>\n In recent months, Trump has renewed his baseless claims that the practice is subject to widespread fraud, as he pressures Senate Republicans to pass a restrictive voting bill<\/a> that would require proof of US citizenship for new voters, as well as other measures. The president is also pushing for amendments to the legislation, notably a ban on mail-in ballots with limited exceptions.<\/p>\n On social media, Trump has railed against voting by mail, calling it a \u201cscam\u201d, and has vowed to gut the process. During his State of the Union address last month, he demanded \u201cno more crooked mail-in ballots\u201d.<\/p>\n Many election experts say that the president\u2019s relentless attacks on mail-in voting over the years undermine overall trust in the democratic process<\/a>, and that there are extensive checks and balances by local officials to mitigate most fraud.<\/p>\n In a statement, the White House spokesperson Olivia Wales called Trump\u2019s decision to vote by mail \u201ca non-story\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel \u2013 but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it\u2019s highly susceptible to fraud,\u201d Wales added.<\/p>\n \u201cAs everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida<\/a> elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n