The entire Trump family voted by mail in a Florida special election for House District 87 — the district that includes Mar-a-Lago — while Trump simultaneously campaigns to ban the practice nationwide.
Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections records show Donald, Melania, and Barron Trump all requested and submitted mail-in ballots on March 14-15, 2026. Barron, who turned 20 the previous week, listed Mar-a-Lago as his address. Trump was physically present at Mar-a-Lago during the early in-person voting period, which ran through March 23 — he chose to vote by mail anyway.
On March 24, barely a week after casting his mail ballot, Trump declared in Memphis: “Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all.” In his 2026 State of the Union, he had called for “no more crooked mail-in ballots” and claimed “Cheating is rampant in our elections.” He has also falsely claimed “we're the only country that does mail-in voting” — at least 11 countries allow all voters to vote by mail.
PolitiFact rated Trump's claim as “Pants on Fire,” noting mail voting fraud occurs approximately 4 times per 10 million votes cast per election cycle, according to a 2025 Brookings Institution analysis — a rate of 0.000043%.
When asked why he voted by mail despite calling it cheating, Trump's answer was: “Because I'm president of the United States.” He then claimed he “felt I should be here” in Washington instead of “being in the beautiful sunshine” — at which point a reporter immediately fact-checked him to his face: “You were in Palm Beach, sir, the last few weekends — could you have gone in person?” Trump had indeed been at Mar-a-Lago and his golf course during the early voting period from March 14-22. In 2020, he had similarly justified his own mail voting by saying: “I can vote by mail. I'm allowed to.”
The White House called it a “non-story,” with spokesperson Olivia Wales citing “commonsense exceptions” in the SAVE America Act for illness, disability, military, or travel. But Trump's own SAVE Act would make the kind of mail voting his family just used significantly harder — requiring voters to photocopy photo IDs and deliver proof of citizenship in person to election offices.
To cap it off, Democrat Emily Gregory won the election 51.15% to 48.85%, flipping Trump's home district blue for the first time this century, defeating Trump-endorsed Republican Jon Maples. It was the 29th seat Democrats have flipped from Republican control since Trump's second term began. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Trump a “complete fraud”: “Don't ever believe a word he has to say about election integrity.”
Update (October 4, 2026): A month before the midterms, Trump urged Republicans to use the methods he has attacked. “Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, we must 'swamp' the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout!” he posted on October 3, alongside a video in which he says, “Vote early, vote by mail, or vote in person on Election Day.” CNN noted that he “has criticized mail-in voting for years and pushed to limit it since the start of his second term, though many of those efforts have been blocked by courts.”
Update (October 5, 2026): About a day after urging Republicans to vote by mail, Trump posted late on October 4 that slow counts are a sign of fraud: “In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other U.S. Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!” He contrasted U.S. counts with a presidential election he first named as India's; the vote was Brazil's, and ETV Bharat reported that he corrected the post. He offered no evidence. Newsweek noted that mail ballots, provisional ballots and signature checks make complete counts take longer in some places, and that “The difference in reporting speed is not evidence of fraud.”
Update (October 27, 2026): Trump voted early, at the Palm Beach County elections office, on October 24, with Melania Trump. Asked whether he voted the party line, he said, “Uh, very much so,” according to the Roll Call Factbase transcript. The South China Morning Post noted that he cast a mail ballot in Florida's August primary and has been urging Republicans to vote early, reversing course on a practice he has long decried.