Trump Used Mail Ballot in Florida Election While Condemning Mail-In Voting

President Donald Trump, who is in the midst of pressuring senators to curb the use of mail-in voting, voted by mail ballot in Tuesday's special election in Palm Beach County, Florida — and then, barely a week after his ballot was received and counted, stood before a crowd in Memphis and declared the practice fraud.

Democrat Emily Gregory won the highly watched special election for Florida State House District 87, defeating Republican Jon Maples in final results. Gregory received 17,047 votes, accounting for 51.15% of the total, while Maples received 16,281 votes, or 48.85%. Trump had endorsed Maples and, the day before the election, urged his social media followers to turn out for the candidate, saying Maples was backed "by so many of my Palm Beach County friends."

The juxtaposition of Trump's ballot and his rhetoric was stark. Trump cast a mail ballot in the election despite his public criticism of the voting method, and Palm Beach County voter records showed his ballot was counted. Early in-person voting in the contest ran through the Sunday before the election, when Trump was still at his Palm Beach estate. According to Palm Beach County elections records, Trump requested the ballot on Saturday, March 14, and it was received the following day. On Monday, March 23, one week after casting his vote, Trump said during an anti-crime meeting in Memphis: "Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating — I call it mail-in cheating — and we got to do something about it all."

The White House did not concede any contradiction. "As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.," White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement. Wales added that the SAVE America Act, the legislation Trump has promoted to restrict absentee voting, "has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel," and that universal mail-in voting "should not be allowed because it's highly susceptible to fraud." She called the story a "non-story."

A Brookings Institution analysis from November 2025 found that voter fraud is rare in voting by mail, a finding that cuts against the White House's fraud rationale.

The special election was held to fill the seat previously held by Mike Caruso, a Republican who resigned in August to become Palm Beach County clerk. Trump carried the legislative district by about 11 percentage points in 2024. The race drew national attention as a test of political momentum in Florida, featuring a high-stakes showdown in a district that includes Mar-a-Lago.

This is not the first time Trump voted by mail while condemning the practice. He requested a mail-in ballot in 2020 as well. When NBC News asked him at the time how he reconciled the contradiction, Trump said: "You know why I voted? Because I happened to be in the White House and I won't be able to go to Florida and vote." He also claimed without evidence that "thousands and thousands of people were signing ballots fraudulently in their living rooms." NPR reported that his 2020 ballot was hand-delivered by a third party. Palm Beach County public records for the 2026 ballot do not detail how it was delivered to election officials.

Florida's 87th District is the 10th GOP-held state legislative seat Democrats have flipped around the country since Trump took office again last year. Republicans have not flipped any Democratic state legislative seats during that time. The result was touted by Democrats as another warning sign to Republicans for the looming 2026 midterm elections.