First Lady Melania Trump and the couple’s son Barron voted by mail in a recent Florida special election, using the very method President Donald Trump calls “mail-in cheating” and wants to ban through his sweeping SAVE America Act.
State election records reveal that both Melania and Barron, who turned 20 last week, cast mail-in ballots in Florida’s House District 87 special election on Tuesday. The discovery comes just days after the 79-year-old president himself was found to have requested a mail-in ballot on March 14 for the same election.
The timing exposes a glaring contradiction in the Trump family’s voting practices. On Monday, during a stop in Memphis, Tennessee, President Trump denounced the practice his family had already used.
“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we’ve got to do something about it,” Trump said at a crime task force roundtable in Memphis, where he also appeared to doze off during the meeting and took an impromptu tour of Elvis Presley’s Graceland.
The revelation proves particularly awkward given that Trump was physically present at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, during the early in-person voting period, which ran through Sunday. The president could have easily voted in person at a location about a 20-minute drive from his residence where he is registered to vote.
The SAVE America Act, which Trump has made a central condition of reopening the government and funding the Transportation Security Administration, would require voters to present documentary proof of citizenship when registering. A proposed Senate amendment would impose additional restrictions on mail-in voting, eliminating universal mail-in voting and only allowing mail ballots in certain cases such as illness, disability, military service, or travel. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University warns the legislation could disenfranchise more than 21 million Americans who lack ready access to required documents.
Trump has demanded Senate Republicans eliminate the filibuster to pass the controversial bill, which faces resistance even within his own party. Many red states have long relied on mail-in voting to turn out older voters, creating internal Republican opposition to the legislation.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales dismissed the revelations as a “non-story” on Tuesday, pointing to exceptions built into the SAVE America Act.
Wales added that the president is a resident of Palm Beach but “obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.” The explanation failed to address why Trump spent the voting period at the Florida property where he is registered to vote.
This pattern of behavior stretches back years. According to NPR, Trump has cast mail-in ballots throughout his years-long crusade against the practice, dating back to at least 2020. The president’s hypocrisy on the issue has become increasingly visible as he intensifies his push to eliminate voting by mail.
In August 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social vowing to “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS,” falsely claiming the United States was “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting” and that “ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING.”
The special election that prompted this controversy ended in an upset victory for Democrat Emily Gregory in Florida’s House District 87. Trump won the district by roughly 11 points over Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024. Gregory’s new district covers Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club, where the president maintains his voting registration.
According to the Brennan Center, a proposed Senate amendment to the SAVE America Act would “prohibit universal mail voting, requiring all mail voters to submit an application in order to receive a mail ballot.” This would end the longstanding principal method of voting in eight states and Washington, D.C.
The legislation would also create new barriers for voter registration. Currently, most Americans can use their driver’s license when registering to vote. But 45 states, 16 territories, and Washington, D.C. don’t indicate citizenship on driver’s licenses. Under the SAVE America Act, Americans would need to bring either a passport or birth certificate along with their driver’s license to register. Whether every American would be required to re-register remains unclear.
The controversy highlights the widening gap between President Trump’s public demands and his family’s private actions. While the White House continues to frame the story as inconsequential, the optics of the first family using a voting method the president has spent years condemning as fraudulent undermines his message on election integrity.
For Barron Trump, this marks his participation in one of his first elections as a newly eligible voter. That he chose to vote by mail—or that his parents allowed it—makes the situation all the more striking given his father’s relentless campaign against the practice.