Photo: Alamy | Op-ed by Summer Lane
This week, mainstream media airwaves and internet algorithms chattered with a report alleging that President Donald Trump cast a mail-in ballot in a special election in the state of Florida.
The criticism was instant and strong: how could President Trump, who has strongly advocated against the broad use of mail-in ballots, possibly cast one himself?
The answer is glaringly obvious, but mainstream dissidents don’t want to hear it: there is an exception to every rule, and President Donald Trump is it.
The case for election security
President Trump has been a vocal supporter of election security. Since the chaotic election processes of 2020, he has consistently advocated for voter ID and discussed his transparent criticism of free-for-all mail-in ballots.
“The cheating is rampant in our elections, it’s RAMPANT. It’s very simple; all voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote, and no more crooked mail-ballots, except for illness, disability, military, or travel,” the president remarked during his State of the Union address in late February.
The president has strongly pushed the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which would codify photo ID as a prerequisite to vote and proof of citizenship to register to receive a ballot in U.S. elections.
His comments about exceptions to the mail-in ballot rule – illness, disability, military, or travel – are very reasonable, and as President of the United States, his reported mail-in ballot, cast in Florida, certainly fits the very criterion that he laid out.
President Trump is traveling all the time, and as the Commander-in-Chief of the United States military, particularly during this time of war, he ticks two of his own exception boxes. Additionally, President Trump’s beef with mail-in ballots has been the loose and unsecured nature of it – the universal aspect of collecting ballots with what seems to be little to no real oversight.
Where do the ballots come from? Why are they counted for weeks after an official Election Day? Mail-in ballots are not inherently wrong, but the way that they have been used over the past several years has raised serious questions about the safety and security of vote-counting processes nationwide.
This is not a difficult concept to grasp, and yet, dissidents in the media will lurch at anything they can find to criticize President Trump, even over the most banal items.
SAVE America and common sense
“As President Trump has said, the SAVE America Act has commonsense exceptions for Americans to use mail-in ballots for illness, disability, military, or travel – but universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud,” said White House Spokeswoman Olivia Wales, per the Associated Press.
As reported by RSBN, the core tenets of the SAVE America Act are highly popular among Americans, to the tune of 80 percent or higher. The concept of identifying yourself for the privilege of voting is common sense and just about as basic as it gets – especially when one considers the long list of items Americans already must show identification to participate in (like flying on an airplane, buying alcohol, and so forth).
President Trump’s message on mail-in ballots has been clear and unchanging, making attacks on his use of a singular mail-in ballot utterly absurd. The president’s primary residence right now is the White House, which makes him, perhaps, the ultimate exception to any potential rules.