Absentee Ballot Versus Vote-by-Mail? A Guide to Election Terms

  • Trump says one is rife with fraud and the other is ‘good’
  • Elections administrators say the terms are interchangeable

An election official wearing a protective mask drops off a mail-in ballot in a drop box at a polling location in Miami on Aug. 18, 2020.

Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg
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President Donald Trump frequently says there’s a difference between absentee voting, which he once called “good” in a tweet, and mail-in voting, which he has called “inaccurate and fraudulent.”

But the people who run elections don’t make that distinction.