WASHINGTON Under definitions used by President Donald Trump and many of his Republican allies, election fraud has been taking place at the nations most prominent address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

There at the White House, Trump and his wife marked ballots that an intermediary had received from elections officers in Florida. Those ballots were then hand-delivered back to West Palm Beach for tabulation a process that is legal under Florida law, but which Trump himself has equated to fraud.

According to documents HuffPost obtained under Floridas open records law, the person who picked up the ballots was named Alejandro Garcia the same name as one of the Republican National Committees top Florida operatives.

Garcia declined to discuss the matter with HuffPost and referred questions to RNC headquarters. A spokesman there did not respond to queries.

Thats ballot harvesting, isnt it? joked Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Florida Republican consultant and onetime chief of staff to former GOP Gov. Bob Martinez.

Using political operatives to handle absentee ballots is among the practices most prone to fraud and abuse by Democrats , many Republicans argue even though it was a North Carolina GOP operative in a congressional race who has provided the most dramatic example of this. Leslie McCrae Dowless, 64, faces numerous charges of illegal ballot handling and conspiracy and is accused of systematically collecting, filling and submitting ballots on behalf of the candidate he was working for in 2016 and 2018.

Its OK for the RNC Florida guy to harvest Trumps ballot. But its not OK for a friend to harvest a ballot for a neighbor, Stipanovich said. This is just voter suppression, is all it is.

Despite his own use of a mail ballot, though, Trump has recently been on a crusade against their use.

Mail in ballots substantially increases the risk of crime and VOTER FRAUD! Trump wrote in an April 11 tweet.

GET RID OF BALLOT HARVESTING, IT IS RAMPANT WITH FRAUD, he wrote three days later in a rare, all-capital-letters screed. THE USA MUST HAVE VOTER I.D., THE ONLY WAY TO GET AN HONEST COUNT!

Trump has acknowledged voting absentee in Floridas March 17 presidential primary, but the White House would not say how his and first lady Melania Trump s ballots made their way from Garcia, who picked them up in Florida on March 9, to the White House, and then back to the elections office in West Palm Beach, where they were dropped off on March 16.

While some states make using third parties to handle ballots a crime, neither Trump nor the first lady appears to have violated any Florida laws by having their ballots delivered to them and then returned to Florida.

Im allowed to, Trump said at an April 7 news conference in which he railed against voting by mail. Thats called out of state. You know why I voted? Because I happen to be in the White House and I wont be able to go to Florida to vote.

In a tweet the following morning, Trump wrote : Absentee Ballots are a great way to vote for the many senior citizens, military, and others who cant get to the polls on Election Day. These ballots are very different from 100% Mail-In Voting, which is RIPE for FRAUD, and shouldnt be allowed.

Trumps statement, however, is false. Absentee mail ballots work precisely the same way as standard mail-in ballots. And in Florida, any voter not just those who happen to be out of state is permitted to vote that way.

Indeed, the state Republican Party there mastered the strategy of banking votes early in the weeks leading up to an election in the 1980s and 1990s, long before Democrats began countering it with their own absentee ballot program.

We have no-fault absentee. We have been voting that way forever, said Stipanovich, who, after working for Martinez in the late 1980s, then ran Jeb Bushs first, unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1994. Republicans have been historically ahead of Democrats in mining absentee ballots.

Most experts agree that election fraud is an extremely rare occurrence in a country where over 100 million votes are cast each election cycle. Still, Republicans have recently made it a top priority to pass laws requiring state-issued photo identification documents at polling places and imposing restrictions on early and absentee voting.

Republicans have claimed that they are only interested in stopping ineligible people from casting ballots, while Democrats counter that they are simply trying to make it more difficult for poor people, students, Black people and Latinos from voting at all. Democrats have long campaigned on the idea that if all eligible voters actually voted, Democratic candidates would win far more often.

In some Republican-controlled states, such as Alabama or Texas, what Trump did have someone other than a spouse or relative handle his ballot is illegal, and could have been prosecuted. That Trump himself used that method while simultaneously calling it fraudulent is no longer surprising, said Myrna Perez, the director of voting rights and election projects at the Brennan Center for Justice.

This is not the first time we heard this president say something like that, she said. That is a common lie.