When Donald Trump was asked on Wednesday whether or not he had confidence in the mail-in ballots program in North Carolina, he wanted people to test it by voting twice, wrote Lauren Egan and Pete Williams of NBC News . Trump said they should all try once through the mail and once in person. This, he reasoned, would show how many were caught double-dipping.
“So let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they’ll be able to vote,” Trump said.
He added that if the system that is supposed to catch someone doing that is “as good as they say,” then state officials would catch them.
The outlet noted that Trump’s suggestion was something that could be considered voter fraud. His comments about the state’s voting system came after he’s spent much of the summer claiming those who submit their votes by mail are themselves committing fraud, according to the report.
Trump has assailed states like Michigan, Nevada, and California for their absentee ballot programs. The Trump campaign has also launched several lawsuits over policies that have to do with those ballots, including who can send them in and who needs to go to the polls in person.
When members of the media asked Trump campaign official Tim Murtaugh about the president’s statements, he claimed they were being misconstrued.
Murtaugh told reporters Trump wasn’t saying they should submit two ballots. He said what the president was getting at was that people should send in their ballot and then go to their local polling place on election day. Once there, he said, they should check with the workers to see if their votes had been received and recorded.
Murtaugh then said he thought it was “amazing” that the media claimed there was no such thing as voter fraud whenever Trump claimed it existed but thought he was advocating it when he comes up with a way to show the problems with North Carolina’s program.
Trump’s encouragement of testing poll workers and election officials came after a member of the assembled press informed him more than 600,000 people in the state could qualify to use an absentee ballot.
He said he didn’t like that idea at all.
The NBC News report noted that recent analysis by The Washington Post showed voting by mail could be carried out by more than 83 percent of the country this November, thanks to several states adjusting their policies due to the coronavirus pandemic.
