Election Day is still six weeks away, but early voting has already begun in some states. With that in mind, Donald Trump made it clear at his latest rally in Pennsylvania that he is simultaneously for and against early voting and mail-in voting. NBC News reported:
“We’ve got to go vote. You can start right away. You know we have this stupid thing now where you can vote 45 days early,” Trump said. He mused about “what the hell happens” between the start of early voting and Election Day, and claimed that election fraudsters are “moving” votes from one candidate to another.
While those claims were demonstrably false, the Republican still called the existing system “terrible” while encouraging his supporters to abuse the process he deemed “dumb.”
The former president has made no attempt to address or even acknowledge the contradiction, which is unlikely to help confused voters.
Even as Republican officials practically beg voters in their party to take advantage of early voting, Trump seems undecided. Two weeks ago, for example, he decried mail-in voting as “terrible.” Just three days earlier, however, Trump released a TikTok video encouraging his supporters to take advantage of early voting opportunities, including mail-in voting.
That contradicted a related message he delivered a week earlier, in which he insisted that mail-in voting should be abolished altogether. Around the same time, Trump called early voting “ridiculous.”
In July, the former president said that Americans must not be “allowed” to vote early, adding that early voting is inherently rigged, despite the reality.
A month earlier, Trump had supported early voting. However, at a campaign event on May 11, the former president condemned mail-in voting.
Two days earlier, the Republican had posted a video online specifically promoting “absentee voting” and “early voting,” the opposite of what he had said to Newsmax’s Greg Kelly two weeks earlier.
Six days earlier, Trump had said the opposite, posting a message on his online social media platform supporting “absentee voting” and “early voting.”
As regular readers know, these disjointed shifts have been going on for a while. After the 2022 midterms, for example, Trump wrote on social media, “YOU CAN NEVER HAVE A FAIR AND FREE ELECTION WITH MAIL-IN BALLOTS — NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.” (In case that was too subtle, the Republican republished the letter a day later, adding, “NEVER!”)
For a while, it seemed that party officials keeping tabs on the former president were nudging him in a more sensible direction. In February 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported, “After years of attacking early voters, Donald Trump is having a change of heart.” The article cited a recent fundraising appeal Team Trump sent to donors, which said the way forward for Republicans “is to CONTROL the Democrats’ own game.”
A month later, the former president told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference that it was time for Republicans to “change our thinking” about early and mail-in voting. In July 2023, Trump even said a video filmed on behalf of the Republican National Committee in support of the party’s early voting initiative.
And then he went back to his other position.
“Voting by mail is totally corrupt. Remember that,” Trump declared in February 2024, trampling on his party’s message. “It has to be. The votes. I mean, it has to be.”
Since then he has changed his mind several times.
This is more than just a curiosity: The Republican base has absolutely no idea what to make of mail-in and postal voting, and the former president’s supporters apparently have no idea which of his competing messages to believe.
This post is an update to our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
