Trump says North Carolinians should vote twice –
despite it being illegal
US president suggests people vote in person and by
mail and if system works it will stop two votes
Reuters
Thu 3 Sep
2020 09.03 BSTLast modified on Thu 3 Sep 2020 09.33 BST
Donald
Trump has suggested that people in the state of North Carolina should vote
twice in the November election, once in person and once by mail, although doing
so is a crime.
“Let them
send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said in an interview with WECT-TV in
Wilmington, North Carolina, on Wednesday when asked about the security of
mail-in votes. “And if the system is as good as they say it is then obviously
they won’t be able to vote” in person.
Voting more
than once in an election is illegal.
“President
Trump outrageously encouraged” North Carolinians “to break the law in order to
help him sow chaos in our election,” said the state attorney general, Josh
Stein, in a tweet. “Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice! I will do everything
in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November.”
The US
attorney general, William Barr, told CNN that Trump “was trying to make the
point that the ability to monitor this system is not good”. When told that
voting twice is illegal, he said, “I don’t know what the law in the particular
state says.”
Barr said
mail-in ballots for the election on 3 November could be vulnerable to fraud,
echoing an argument Trump has made to denounce the use of voting by mail. Trump
has previously said the voting method is susceptible to large-scale fraud,
although experts say voter fraud of any kind is extremely rare in the United
States.
Voting by
mail is not new in the US – nearly one in four voters cast presidential ballots
in 2016 that way. A record number of mail-in ballots are expected for the
election due to concerns about in-person voting during the coronavirus
pandemic.
Trump has
accused Democrats of trying to steal the election by pushing the use of mail-in
voting. The re-election campaign of Trump has recently sued states like New
Jersey and Nevada for expanding access to mail-in voting.
Democrats
have said Trump and fellow Republicans are attempting to suppress the vote to
help their side.
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