Kellyanne Conway on voting by mail in 2018 midterms: ‘That’s called an absentee ballot’

White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway is drawing a contrast with her mail-in vote for the 2018 midterm elections in New Jersey with general mail-in voting, saying she filed an absentee ballot, not a mail-in ballot.

“That’s called an absentee ballot. One completes it and posts it by U.S. Mail,” Conway told the HuffPost in an email. “Don’t confuse it with a [non-absentee] ‘mail-in ballot’ to serve your purposes.”

Conway voted in the New Jersey midterm election while living in Washington, D.C., much like President Trump did in Florida.

The state of New Jersey does not require voters voting remotely to indicate if they are in the state or not when they send in the ballot. 

Her statement comes after she defended the president’s stance against mail-in voting to reporters on Wednesday, where she compared waiting in line for a cupcake to standing in line to cast a ballot. 

“I mean, they wait in line for a Georgetown Cupcake for an hour, to get a cupcake,” she told reporters at the White House Wednesday. “So, I think they can probably wait in line to do something as consequential and critical and constitutionally significant as cast their ballot.”

Kellyanne: If you can stand in line for a cupcake, you can stand in line to vote pic.twitter.com/iTEvPZjNu7

— Peter Wade ‍♂️ (@brooklynmutt) May 27, 2020

Trump has repeatedly railed against mail-in balloting, which he appears to perceive could hurt his chances of reelection if allowed across the country. 

He has argued it would lead to increased fraud, though no evidence has been produced to support the idea that mail-in voting has led to more fraud than in-person voting.

Mail-in voting is expected to increase in 2020 given the coronavirus pandemic, as people avoid crowds to limit the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.