evidence: Trump has opposed early, absentee and mail voting for years, blaming the practices for election fraud and conditioning voters to distrust those methods. He has repeatedly called only for in-person voting on Election Day and paper ballots, even though he has routinely used early voting. "We have to get rid of mail-in ballots because once you have mail-in ballots, you have crooked elections," Trump said in his victory speech after the Iowa caucuses in January. One of the key factors in bringing Trump around on early and mail-in voting was the data advisers were able to show him that suggested the campaign could effectively broaden its outreach to swing voters in battleground states if the Republican base was comfortable with voting early.