Ivanka and Eric Trump won’t be voting for their father in the New York closed primaries on April 19 because neither registered as Republicans in time.
Ivanka, who identifies as an independent, said at a CNN town hall on April 13 that the New York rules on voting are “onerous”:
“We’re not a family of politicians. We haven’t been in politics very long,” Ivanka Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
“New York has one of the most onerous rules in terms of registration, and it required us to register a long time ago—almost close to a year ago—and we didn’t do that. We found out about it sort of after the fact.”
Eric echoed Ivanka, saying that they’ve made educating others on voter registration a central message in the campaign:
“It was our first kind of foray into politics,” he said.
“We didn’t realize how the whole system worked. It was amazing. We actually made it a very big part of the campaign and there’s no one that’s been more visible on the campaign than the two of us, but we made it a very big part to get that message out (to register and vote).”
Their father, Donald Trump, has a wide polling margin in his home state of New York, with a recent Quinnipiac poll showing him up by 35 points.
Commenting on his kids problems with voting, the Republican candidate said that they feel “very guilty”:
“They had a long time [to] register and they were, you know, unaware of the rules, and they didn’t, they didn’t register in time,” he said. “So they feel very, very guilty.”
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