After voting by mail in Florida, Trump said mail-in voting means cheating. Pants on Fire!

President Donald Trump wants Congress to approve the SAVE America Act to add certain requirements for voting, and he also wants to ban most cases of voting by mail, even though he voted that way recently in Florida.

"Mail-in voting means mail-in cheating. I call it mail-in cheating, and we got to do something about it all," Trump said at a March 23 event in Memphis. He also said that the U.S. is the only country that "does mail-in voting," which is False.

Does voting by mail equate to cheating? No, more than a decade of studies, reviews and investigations of voting by mail show that fraud happens occasionally, but it is not widespread. 

The House passed the SAVE America Act in February and debate in the Senate continues. The bill would require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register and a government-issued photo ID to vote. Trump wants lawmakers to add to the legislation a ban on voting by mail except for travel, illness, disability or military.

Voter fraud by mail is rare and sporadic

Trump voted by mail in the March 24 special election for a state house seat in the Florida district that includes his Mar-a-Lago home. Democrat Emily Gregory won the election, with a majority of votes received via mail-in ballots, according to unofficial results, flipping the district from red to blue. It was not the first time Trump voted by mail — he did so in some past New York and Florida elections.

Olivia Wales, a White House spokesperson, told PolitiFact that it was a "non-story" that Trump voted by mail because he primarily lives in Washington, D.C.

Trump was in Florida during some days of early voting. 

Wales pointed to some examples of mail-in voting fraud, including a former Atlantic City, New Jersey, councilman and political operative who in 2025 pleaded guilty in a vote by mail scheme. Some of the examples Wales cited stretched back a decade or more. Wales also pointed to a 2005 report by a commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter that said "absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud." The report also said mail voting worked in some places, and Carter later embraced mail-in voting.

Voter fraud, including by mail, happens sporadically, but not enough to change the outcome of a statewide or nationwide election. There are anecdotal examples of people voting on ballots of dead relatives, for example.

A North Carolina congressional election was overturned in 2018 after evidence surfaced that the Republican candidate benefited from an effort to collect voters’ mail-in ballots. 

Mail voting fraud is extremely rare, occurring approximately four times per 10 million votes cast each election cycle, according to a 2025 analysis by Brookings Institution, a think tank. The analysis used voter fraud cases documented by the conservative Heritage Foundation for general elections from 2016 to 2022. 

In 2022, The Associated Press asked top election officials in each state whether mail-in ballot drop boxes were tied to fraud. None that allowed the boxes in 2020 said they were tied to fraud or stolen ballots. Another AP investigation into fraud in 2020 battleground states found too few cases to affect the outcome of the election that Trump lost.

Republican lawmakers have not gone along with Trump’s proposed ban on most voting by mail. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said during a SAVE America Act debate that her state had taken steps to ensure the security of mail-in voting.

"We have got an ability to track your ballot once you have cast it," Murkowski said. "So we have worked this long and hard and well to accommodate the many, many tens of thousands of Alaskans who will vote by mail."

The Heritage Foundation database showed five fraud cases in Alaska since 1982 and none were related to voting by mail. 

States take several steps to ensure the security of voting by mail. It starts with determining whether someone is eligible to vote. Election offices also periodically update their registration lists, including removing inactive voters or those who have died. Election officials track mail ballots to prevent double voting.

Trump has made false and ridiculous voter fraud allegations for a decade, such as grossly inflating instances of noncitizen voting. 

The day before the Florida election, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case about whether to ban counting mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and arrive after the election, a practice allowed in more than a dozen states. A ruling is expected by July 4.

Our ruling

Trump said "mail-in voting means mail-in cheating."

Each election year, tens of millions of Americans, including Trump, vote by mail, and evidence from court records and studies shows only a tiny speck of votes are fraudulent. By saying that mail-in voting means cheating, Trump is wrongly lumping all such voting as a criminal act.

Our definition of Pants on Fire is a statement that is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. That fits here.

We rate it Pants on Fire.

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