Apparently Mail-in Voting Is Fine Now

March 23rd of this year, Donald Trump:

“Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating.”

October 3rd, same guy:

“Vote early, vote by mail or vote in-person on Election Day, November 3rd.”

Well, thank God. The envelopes have been rehabilitated.

To my eyes, that’s not evolution. That’s a panic pivot.

After years of telling Americans to distrust mail-in voting, he is now encouraging Republicans to use it. Apparently, the postal service has received a temporary exemption from the conspiracy.

And before anyone explains that politicians change their positions: yes. They should. When the evidence changes, when an argument persuades them, when experience exposes something they got wrong.

I respect somebody who can say, “I was wrong.”

But changing your instructions without correcting the accusation leaves the people who believed you holding the bag. Yesterday, they were defending your claim that the process was corrupt. Today, they’re supposed to participate in it.

At some point, somebody deserves an explanation.

There’s also a complication we need to acknowledge, because an article about intellectual honesty ought to practice some.

This isn’t even his first turn around this particular block.

In 2024, his campaign launched “Swamp the Vote USA” to promote absentee ballots, mail voting, and early voting. He referred to that effort again in Saturday’s video. So the accurate story isn’t that Trump opposed mail voting continuously and has now experienced a miraculous conversion. He has promoted it when campaigning while continuing to attack it.

That makes the question more interesting.

How many times can something be a threat to democracy between elections and a turnout strategy during them?

Trump also cast a mail ballot in Florida’s March special election. His White House defended that choice by explaining that he supported exceptions for circumstances such as travel and that, although he was a Florida resident, he primarily lived in Washington.

Fair enough. There are distinctions between different voting systems, and there are legitimate arguments about how to administer them. We should be able to discuss those details like adults.

But Saturday’s appeal wasn’t confined to people serving overseas, people with disabilities, or presidents away from home. It was a broad appeal for Republicans to vote, including by mail.

And the political circumstances are worth noticing. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Monday put Trump’s approval at 32 percent, with registered voters favoring Democrats over Republicans for Congress, 44 percent to 37 percent. That doesn’t prove what motivated the video. It does help explain why Republicans might want every available route to a ballot.

There is a perfectly reasonable defense available here: use the legal voting methods that exist, even if you would prefer different rules.

Agreed.

Now finish the sentence.

Those methods are available to your opponents, too. Their lawful ballots deserve the same presumption of legitimacy as yours. You don’t get to encourage confidence while your supporters are filling out envelopes and encourage suspicion when somebody starts opening them.

That is where this stops being a funny collection of contradictory clips.

Imagine taking him seriously in March. You believe there is a fundamental problem. You argue about it with your family. You repeat his words because you trust that the president knows something you don’t.

Then October arrives, and he’s advertising the thing you were told to fear.

You deserve more than a new set of marching orders. You deserve to know which claim you were supposed to believe and why you were asked to defend both.

I’m tired of treating that as clever politics. There are real people on the receiving end of it. Their trust matters. So does the trust of the people who have to live alongside them after the campaign moves on.

An election system cannot work if confidence in it is something a politician switches on for his own voters and switches off for everyone else.

If there is evidence of fraud, investigate it. Identify what happened, establish who was responsible, and apply the law. That standard should survive every change in party, candidate, and result.

What cannot qualify as evidence is disappointment.

A result you hate is not proof that somebody cheated. A ballot cast against your candidate is not less legitimate than a ballot cast for him. And a voting method doesn’t become honest because your campaign finally needs the people who use it.

Without a consistent standard, “election integrity” becomes a fucking mood ring.

So yes, I’m glad Trump is encouraging people to vote. Republicans should vote. Democrats should vote. Independents should vote. Nobody’s participation should depend on whether I like their politics.

But keep the video.

Keep the date.

When the ballots are being counted, remember that he explicitly encouraged this method of voting. Ask whether he will defend the legitimacy of lawful mail ballots when they favor somebody else.

That’s the test. It always was.

He has told his supporters to vote by mail.

Now he needs to accept that other Americans will, too.