“France had mail-in ballots. ... And France had it, and they went back to paper ballots. And I saw their election, and their election was over at 9 o'clock, and their numbers came in at 10:05, and there were no complaints.”

White House remarks to the National Governors Association

France's election-night numbers come fast, but they are projections, not official results. French pollsters base their estimates on ballots already counted by hand at sampled polling stations, and France's Constitutional Council declared the official first-round results of the April 9-10, 2022 presidential election on April 13, three days after the vote.

His history of France is right: France abolished postal voting by a law of December 31, 1975, after significant electoral fraud, and it votes on paper, in person, with ballots counted by hand. What does not follow is that his numbers were final results: they were projections, and the official count came days later.

Trump's companion claim that the U.S. is "one of the only countries" with mail voting is also false. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance documents 32 countries that allow in-country postal voting, including Germany, the U.K., Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand, and Europe has the largest number of countries offering it. France itself allows postal voting for citizens abroad and voting by proxy. "It's certainly easier than the U.S., where there are often many more races you are dealing with." — David Levine, elections integrity fellow, Alliance for Securing Democracy, to PolitiFact