President Donald Trump, a repeated absentee voter, broke with tradition on Saturday by appearing at library in Florida’s Palm Beach County to cast his ballot in person, a move that comes after repeatedly condemning mail-in voting.
“It was a very secure vote, much more secure than when you send in a ballot,” Trump said on Saturday according to NPR, after telling reporters that he had “voted for a guy named Trump.”
Vice President Mike Pence also voted early a day earlier in Indianapolis.
President Trump has repeatedly voted by mail in the past — voting absentee in New York in 2018 and in Florida’s March primary. After months of criticizing vote-by-mail, Trump even requested a mail-in ballot for Florida’s primary election that was sent to his Mar-a-Lago residence in August and flip-flopped about the safety of mail-in voting in the battleground state.
President Trump has railed against efforts by Democrats and voting rights advocates to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic — often peddling the false claim that ballots cast by mail will cause a “rigged” election overwhelmed by “fraud.”
After voting, President Trump boasted that he was headed to big rallies which — even as he slides in national polls — he said have recently welcomed large crowds, the Associated Press reported. The President has previously been criticized for hosting large gathering where masks are often not worn and social-distancing guidelines are not followed — the issue becomes particularly critical amid back-to-back record-shattering single day highs for new coronavirus cases on Thursday and Friday.
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told a drive-in rally outside Philadelphia that he didn’t like “all this distance” but said it was necessary amid the coronavirus pandemic.
”We don’t want to become super-spreaders,” Biden said, according to AP, in an apparent jab at President Trump who hosted a ceremony at the White House last month for his Supreme Court nominee which appeared to result in a number of COVID-19 cases.
Broke with tradition, did he?
2016-below:
In fairness to Trump, he was still mentally absent.
I’m willing to bet he didn’t bother filling out the rest of the ballot. Or if he did, just punched buttons at random.
In that photo, it sure looks like he wants to make sure Melania didn’t write in Justin Trudeau.
Trump walked into a library?
It’s like a matter/anti-matter encounter, and I’m surprised both didn’t implode.