Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence voted by mail for this month’s Indiana Republican primary using a home address that they haven’t lived in for nearly four years, Insider has learned.
The Pences cast their mail-in ballot on April 13 by listing the Indiana governor’s mansion as their residence, according to a copy of the state’s voter files.
The second couple moved out of their taxpayer-funded house in Indianapolis at the end of 2016 as they prepared for their move to Washington but remain registered for voting purposes at their most recent address along with the state’s current Republican governor, Eric Holcomb.
While legal experts say there’s nothing illegal about the vice president and his wife using their old address to vote, their reliance on mail-in ballots does undercut a central argument President Donald Trump has been actively making as he crusades against expanded absentee voting for the 2020 general election.
“Unless the Pences decided to re-register in DC, their registration in Indiana is perfectly valid, assuming they comply with the state’s requirements and weren’t purged from the rolls for some reason,” said Kim Wehle, a University of Baltimore law school professor and the author of “What You Need to Know About Voting and Why”, which published earlier this month.
“What this shows is that Trump’s claim that voting by mail is rife with fraud is simply not borne out by the facts,” she added.
Aides to the vice president did not immediately return requests for comment Monday.
Trump’s railing against mail-in ballots have been a recurring theme during his presidency but the unsubstantiated complaints have only escalated during the coronavirus pandemic as his poll numbers in key battlegrounds sag and states struggle to find ways to allow their residents to vote without subjecting them to getting sick with the deadly virus.
“Because of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, 2020 will be the most RIGGED Election in our nations history – unless this stupidity is ended,” the president tweeted on Monday. “We voted during World War One & World War Two with no problem, but now they are using Covid in order to cheat by using Mail-Ins!”
The vice president and his wife aren’t the only ones to use the very voting technique the president questions. Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, voted 11 times by mail over the past decade, the Tampa Bay Times reported in May. CBS News obtained Texas election records showing Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale submitted his 2018 vote by mail.
Trump himself also voted by mail during Florida’s GOP primary in March after changing his permanent residence from Trump Tower in New York to his Palm Beach private club, Mar a Lago. The president needed two tries to register for voting in the Sunshine State after he initially listed the White House as his legal residence, which would have put him in violation of state law, according to the Washington Post.
Indiana and the Pences have a long history with Trump’s allegations of voter fraud. After the 2016 election, Trump tasked Pence with finding 3 million voters he claimed committed fraud. The now-disbanded task force charged with investigating alleged voter fraud was led by Indiana’s secretary of state, Connie Lawson.
Lawson got her job because the previous secretary of state, Republican Charlie White, had voted illegally from an old residence in suburban Indianapolis. White was convicted of voter fraud.
