Trump tells North Carolina voters to vote TWICE, first by mail and then visit booth, though it's a felony
After doubting the mail-in-voting and undercutting people’s trust in the upcoming election, President Donald Trump has now made another pretty bizarre statement. On Wednesday, September 2, the president encouraged his North Carolina supporters to commit fraud as he suggested them to vote twice in the November election. In an interview with a North Carolina news station WECT, Trump said: “They will vote and then they are going to have to check their vote by going to the poll and voting that way because if it tabulates then they won’t be able to do that. So, let them send it in, and let them go vote.”
He added: “And if the system is as good as they say it is, then they obviously won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they will be able to vote. So that’s the way it is, and that’s what they should do.”
When United States Attorney General, William Pelham Barr, was asked to describe what actually the Republican leader meant in an interview on CNN, he said: “I don't know exactly what he was saying, but it seems to me what he's saying is, he's trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good. And if it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time you would be caught if you voted in person." In North Carolina, if anyone tries to vote twice, that person has to face a Class I felony offense.
Trump’s comments came as survey after survey showed him falling behind Democratic candidate Joe Biden. In the last few months, he has also faced a lot of criticism for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic that saw over six million cases and more than 180,000 deaths.
Earlier, Trump expressed his views against mail-in voting. He has repeatedly promoted his baseless theories against it and called it a “scam”. In May, he tweeted: “The United States cannot have all Mail In Ballots. It will be the greatest Rigged Election in history. People grab them from mailboxes, print thousands of forgeries and “force” people to sign. Also, forge names. Some absentee OK, when necessary. Trying to use Covid for this Scam!”
He has even refused to welcome the election result if he doesn’t win. "The only way we're going to lose this election is if this election is rigged," he said earlier in Wisconsin.
But election officials and experts across the US have rejected his doubts that mail-in voting would hamper the authenticity of the election. Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project told ABC News, “Voting by mail is not some kind of new, untested innovation. We've been using it in this country since the Civil War. And I think over 80 percent of Americans live in states that have committed to letting every eligible voter cast a ballot by mail in November. So it's not something kind of new or crazy. It's been something that people in this country have been doing for over a century.”