Absentee vs. Mail-In Ballot Spin
The president is drawing a distinction without a difference when he claims that absentee ballots are “good” but mail-in ballots will result in an “INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election.”
Voting experts told us the verification process is the same for absentee and mail-in ballots, and many states consider them to be the same thing — including Florida, where Trump has cast what he calls an “absentee” ballot. But it’s not really the case that Florida has absentee ballots.
Florida is one of
34 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have “no excuse” absentee or mail-in voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Voters in those states do not need to attest that they will be out of the voting jurisdiction on Election Day, or unable to vote in person because of an illness or disability.
So there is no special process that “absentee” out-of-town voters go through that other mail-in voters do not,
Darren Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Florida and an
elections expert, told us in June, describing the “absentee ballot label” as “somewhat of a relic.”
“The differences between the two systems are trivial,” Hutchinson said. “There is no rigid screening process that distinguishes the two methods of voting. Once registration and address are verified, the elections office will process the request and send the ballot. In Florida, almost
30% of votes in the last presidential election were cast by mail, and voters did not have to provide an excuse, be absent from the state, or go through an enhanced screening process. On this issue, Trump is simply wrong.”