Jenna Ellis voted by mail in Colorado in 2012, 2013 and 2014, according to public records obtained by CNN’s KFile.
Colorado is one of five states that conducts its elections entirely by mail. The state sends a ballot to every registered voter by mail and the voter returns a cast ballot in a signed envelope to their local county clerk’s office. (Voters can also vote in person at the ballot box if they prefer.)
Ellis joins a growing list of Trump campaign and White House staffers who have publicly criticized mail-in ballots and voting-by-mail but privately cast an absentee or mail-in ballot themselves, including President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, second lady Karen Pence, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and campaign manager Brad Parscale.
In a statement, Ellis told CNN that Trump is “absolutely right that mail-in voting is ripe for fraud” and pointed to the “horrendous results” in Pennsylvania and New Jersey elections, both of which used mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ellis told CNN, “I live in Colorado, and unfortunately my state is one of only five that are universal vote-by-mail states. Even though President Trump and I agree it is a flawed method of running an election — and I will continue to work to change it — I won’t let that discourage me from exercising my right to vote.”
Ellis, a frequent surrogate for the President, is also the public face of a Trump campaign lawsuit — along with several Republican congressmen and the Republican National Committee — filed against Pennsylvania’s counties over the state’s plans to use mail-in ballots for the general election this November over coronavirus safety concerns.
“Shifting from an absentee voting system to one that pushes unmonitored vote-by-mail creates opportunities for fraud, and encourages ballot harvesting where paid political operatives try to collect and deliver loose ballots. This lawsuit seeks to restore integrity into the process and mandate the ability of campaigns to monitor the casting, collecting, and counting of all votes. Every American, regardless of which candidates they support, should be concerned that our elections remain free and fair.”
“They treat mail-in ballots as a cure-all and make a pitch for the ‘bold democratic reform bill’ offered by the House Democrats in Congress. But what they don’t tell you is that an overnight change to universal mail-in ballots will potentially disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters and that their so-called ‘bold proposals’ are merely an attempt to get more votes for their party,” wrote Ellis and her co-writer, Justin Clark, a senior political adviser to the Trump campaign.
Ellis was not always publicly critical of mail-in ballots, however. In 2018, while Ellis served as the policy director for the conservative Dobson Family Institute, she wrote a blog post encouraging Christians to register to vote and use state voting methods, including mail-in ballots, early voting and day-of voting.
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