President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20.
Multiple sources report that Donald Trump explicitly encouraged North Carolina voters to commit felony fraud in an on-the-record TV spot (emphasis mine):
President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to encourage people in North Carolina to vote twice — once by mail and once in person — during the November general election to purportedly double check that their initial vote was counted, which is already receiving push back from state election officials.
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According to North Carolina law, it’s a felony “for any person with intent to commit a fraud to register or vote at more than one precinct or more than one time, or to induce another to do so, in the same primary or election, or to vote illegally at any primary or election.”
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“First, the legal perspective: all states have mechanisms in place to make sure a voter cannot cast both an absentee vote and an in-person vote,” Pildes said. “A typical rule is that if your absentee ballot has not yet been received and you show up to vote in person, your in-person vote will be counted and your absentee ballot will be rejected. But if your absentee ballot is already recorded as having been received, you will be asked to cast what’s called a provisional ballot and that ballot will then not be counted once it’s confirmed your absentee ballot has been received.”
“But from a public policy perspective, these comments are only going to stir enormous confusion,” he added.
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Encouraging voters to double up on their votes could be particularly problematic in North Carolina, which has a complicated history with election fraud. Recently, a political operative hired by a Republican congressional candidate was indicted for directing an illegal scheme involving absentee ballots. And an increased number of duplicate ballots in the middle of an election already seeing more mail-in ballots because of the pandemic could further slow tabulations in the swing state on Election Day.
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If you’re wondering whether or not Mr. Trump is being misquoted, see for yourself — starting at 1:50 in the interview:
“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, 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. So that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do. I don’t like the idea of these unsolicited votes, I never did. It leads to a lot of problems. They’ve got eleven problems already on very small contests so I’m not happy about it. At the same time, we’re in court for a lot of it, we’re going to see if it can be stopped. But send in your ballots, send them in strong whether its solicited or unsolicited the absentees are fine we have to work to get ’em you know unintelligible and you send ’em in but you go to vote. And if they haven’t counted it, you can vote. So that’s the way I view it.
Indeed, that’s the way it is — a sitting Republican president is explicitly encouraging widespread voter fraud.
We seem to be so numb from the relentless onslaught of publicly-committed crimes by this president that we just ignore them. We should not.
Donald Trump is literally and explicitly encouraging widespread voter fraud. Is anybody going to do anything about that?
He’s the smarterest Republican ever!!
I’m going to side with Trump on this one. I heard him say, and still maintain after reading the above, that it’s a good idea to go to the polls to double-check that your ballot has been received and counted. He even said that if your ballot were receive you would NOT be able to revote.
I can vouch that such would be the case in MA having served as a precinct clerk on Tuesday in Lowell. The mailed ballots are delivered to the correct precinct and the warden reads the names and addresses to the inspectors, which are checked off just as would happen if the voters appeared in person. If a voter comes later the inspector can confirm that his name is already checked off and he is all set. If the voter arrives before his mailed vote has been processed then he is allowed to vote, but if the mailed vote is found later that ballot gets spoiled (and it would have been my personal task to spoil it). I’m pretty sure the voter is not on the hook for fraud in that scenario.
Your naivete is appalling.
Here’s what I see happening in NC:
It is beyond the pale for any elected official to direct anyone to vote more than once, even as a “test”.
If NC is anything like MA, your number 1 would not be able to happen. They will be stopped from casting, or at least recording, their second vote. Even your number 2 can be disproven by anything remotely approaching competent record-keeping. Stipulated that Trump will bloviate either way, but that can and should be ignored.
NC is nothing like MA. Perhaps you forgot the conspiracy that the campaign of GOP candidate Mark Harris mounted, using fraudulent absentee ballots (https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/746800630/north-carolina-gop-operative-faces-new-felony-charges-that-allege-ballot-fraud).
North Carolina, like Florida, has a venerable tradition of GOP abuse of various electoral processes.
Donald Trump is cheering on his supporters to “test” the system so that he can claim “fraud” whatever happens.
Yeah this is part of his larger strategy of discrediting mail in voting. Trump is betting that on election night he will have a large lead in all the swing states since 70% of his supporters are saying they will vote in person compared to 40% of Biden’s.
Thus between a few and up to 11 close states will need the weeks long initial count of mail in ballots added to the totals. He will then argue that a ton of people voted twice, and lo and behold, many listening to him might have! He will then try and get those absentee ballots thrown out.
The good folks at electoral-vote.com think it will be hard for this Supreme Court to deny an initial count of the votes, but this voter fraud thing, back up by militias the president is encouraging, is going to be a real problem unless Biden is shown to be the clear winner on election night itself. I am truly praying for a quick and decisive victory for Biden. I think it’s the only way he can peacefully become President.
I know you’re quick to say this can’t happen here Christopher, but he just got away with a weeks long violation of the Hatch Act. Some businesses are following his unconstitutional executive order and withholding payroll tax collection (which could bankrupt Social Security in a year or two). He got caught trying to destroy the postal system to disenfranchise mail in voters.
There is no living president, perhaps to his political detriment, who was as deferential to our institutions as Barack Obama. He and his wife are urging an in person vote since they do not have faith that Trump’s federal government can hold a free and fair mail in vote.
Two former presidents from both parties took the opportunity to honoring a deceased voting rights activist to argue that our democracy is at stake this fall. That’s unprecedented in my lifetime and is the kind of slow burn erosion of rights we’ve seen in the Philippines, Venezuela, Russia, Hungary, and other former democracies (far weaker than ours when they were full democracies).
So it’s a red alert. I would never give Trump the benefit of the doubt
on elections.
The Hatch Act is among the least of my worries, more like the ultimate Rose Garden strategy.
The correct word to use when a man has a gun pointed at a crowd of innocents is not “bloviate”. It’s long past time to take his words seriously.
Donald Trump has a loaded gun. He’s pointing it at you and me.
And our republic. As Franklin reminded us “if YOU can keep it”. It’s up to all of us to stop this election from getting stolen.
I strongly recommend this piece which is from a conservative writer who worked in Dubya’s White House arguing that tribalism and blind authoritarianism has replaced reason and morality as lodestars for the right (if they ever were, a subject for a different debate).
They want to crush the left and keep it out of power no matter the cost. They are an overtly anti-democratic movement within our body politic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/predicate-fear/616009/
I think the word YOU are looking for is “hyperbole”.
After all that’s going down, you think Mr. Trump is merely “bloviating”?
I think you’re living in la-la-land.
My money continues to be on there being no necessity to escort Trump off the WH property in handcuffs come January 20th. He hates being seen as a loser so I still think the more likely scenario is that he pulls a John Adams and skips town rather than attend Biden’s inauguration. He actually has backed down a number of times after bloviating.
I think there’s a better than 50% chance that Donald Trump will still be in the Oval Office on January 22.
I see no evidence that anybody has the intestinal fortitude to forcibly remove him, and I think that’s the only way he’ll go.
I hope that I’m wrong.