Last September, President Trump tried to register to vote in Florida while listing his primary residence in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Doing so would have run afoul of Florida election law, so Trump resubmitted his registration using the Florida address of Mar-a-Lago.
The original application was submitted in late September 2019, a month before Trump announced that he would be making Palm Beach Florida his permanent residence. He tweeted at the time that he would no longer call New York City home because he pays too much in taxes and is treated poorly by political leaders.
The corrected application was submitted 31 days after the first one. The Post reports that it’s not clear why. “It’s possible that Florida elections officials flagged the D.C. address on the application and may have requested a change or clarification,” reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia writes. Trump was able to vote by mail in Florida’s elections last March.
The Post found examples of people who were punished for doing just what Trump did, including one person who was charged with voter fraud and jailed. The paper also notes that “Florida voter-registration applicants are warned on registration forms that they may be subject to fines and even prison time if they do not provide truthful information.”
Still, Trump’s error is a fairly mundane one. It’s the kind of mistake that many people could, and do, make. But it’s also the kind of mistake that Republicans who fearmonger about voter fraud like to focus on as they portray mistakes people make while navigating a complicated system as attempts at deception. Don’t expect them to say much about this one though.
