President Donald Trump initially tried to register to vote in Florida with his Washington D.C. address of the White House, The Washington Post reports.
According to Florida elections records obtained by the newspaper, Trump told the elections office in Florida his permanent residence was in D.C. in his September 2019 application.
Florida law requires voters to be legal residents of the state in order to register to vote. Trump reapplied using his Mar-A-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla. a month later. In March, the president voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary.
Trump has been vocal about not expanding vote-by-mail measures amid the coronavirus pandemic. He has made claims that mail-in ballots will result in a flawed election.
People applying to register to vote in Florida are warned on forms that they may be subject to fines and even prison time if they do not provide truthful information, the newspaper reports.
Records show Trump’s first application is dated Sept. 27, 2019, which is the same day that Trump made a domicile change from his Manhattan penthouse. On one of his forms that day he told Florida election officials that his “legal residence” was Washington, D.C., and on another he was claiming to be a “bona fide resident” of Florida.
It is unclear why it took Trump a month to resubmit his voter registration application. But the second version featured another change beside the address change. The original voter-registration application asked officials to send registration documents to Mar-a-Lago in care of Sean McCabe, a vice president and general manager of Trump Florida Properties in West Palm Beach. McCabe’s first name, Shawn, is misspelled on the form.
The voter registration address mix-up isn’t the only time Trump has sent out a conflicting message over where he lives.
On Monday, he said he lives in Manhattan while on a call with governors to discuss the ongoing George Floyd protests.
After Trump made the comment about living in New York, Democrat lawyer Marc E. Elias called Trump out in a tweet, “Sounds like New York may have a good claim for taxes. And Florida for voter fraud.”