June 3, 2020
FLORIDA – Today, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump potentially committed voter fraud by registering to vote in Florida using the White House as his address. He then submitted a second voter registration application using Mar-a-lago’s address, though he had previously signed an agreement saying he would not live at the club. While Trump politicizes vote-by-mail and makes unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, this report raises questions about the legitimacy of Trump’s own voter registration in Florida.
“After spending weeks politicizing vote-by-mail and lying about voter fraud, it’s once again clear that Trump is guilty of what he accuses others of doing,” said Florida Democratic Party Chair Terrie Rizzo, “Floridians are sick of Trump’s double standards and cheap attempts to suppress their right to vote — and will hold him accountable at the ballot box in November. He’s a president, not a king.”Â
Washington Post:Â President Trump tried to register to vote in Florida using an out-of-state address By Manuel Roig-FranziaÂ
KEY POINTS:
- The September 2019 registration application listed Trump’s legal residence as 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, the location of the White House. That created a potential problem for Trump: Florida law requires voters to be legal residents of the state. A month later, Trump resubmitted his application to use a Florida address and in March he voted by mail in Florida’s Republican primary.
- In Palm Beach, where Trump has registered to vote, there was a high-profile arrest in 1993 of a popular restaurateur who was charged with voter fraud and briefly jailedbecause he registered to vote in Palm Beach but lived in the neighboring city of West Palm Beach. A felony charge in the case was eventually dropped.
- Trump, however, has sent confusing signals about his official state of residence beyond the recent change on his Florida voter-registration forms. On Monday, he declared, “I live in Manhattan,” during a call with the nation’s governors about the response to unrest related to protests over the death of an unarmed black man who had been held down by police in Minneapolis.
- Opponents of the dock unearthed an agreement with the city that Trump signed in the early 1990s converting Mar-a-Lago’s use from a single-family residence to a private club. At the time, his attorney told the council that he would not live at the club, but would have use of the facilities like any other member. The agreement also bans members from staying at the club for more than 21 days a year spread over three nonconsecutive visits.
- Glenn Zeitz, a Philadelphia-area attorney who has a home in Palm Beach and has been informally advising the dock opponents, has said that the withdrawal has no bearing on the legal issues raised by Trump’s domicile issue. Zeitz has said that Trump’s decision to use Mar-a-Lago as his domicile may represent “a substantial and serious potential legal impediment” to Trump registering to vote in Florida. The revelation about Trump using an out-of-state address for his first voter application only adds more questions, he said.
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