Trump asks supporters to vote twice, raising furore about felony

Trump predicted that the Republicans were going to win all the southern states

trump rnc reuters (File) US President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention | Reuters

President Trump floated the idea to supporters in North Carolina that they should try and vote twice—once in the mail and once in person. This caused furore about potentially appearing to urge potential voter fraud. “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,” Trump said.

Trump, who has been a critic of in-mail voting has said the system is prone to be fraudulent, even as experts have said that there is no proof of this. 

Trump was at Wilmington airport addressing a crowd of few hundreds when he attacked his opponent Joe Biden. He said, “Because we're running against people that have some big issues. They've got some big, big problems. They're stone-cold crazy. As you know Joe Biden, he doesn't have a clue, we can't let it happen to our country.”

Trump predicted that the Republicans were going to win all the southern states as they had in 2016. “So we're going to win North Carolina, we're going to win South Carolina, we're going to win Georgia, we're going to win New Hampshire,” Trump said. 

Voting more than once is illegal and it is a felony not only to vote more than once but to induce another to do so. 

North Carolina’s Attorney General Josh Stein, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter that Trump had “outrageously encouraged” North Carolinians “to break the law to help him sow chaos in our election”. 

Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for North Carolina’s State Board of Elections, said no one would be able to cast two ballots, regardless of whether they voted by mail or in-person first. “Voting twice in an election is a felony,” Gannon said. “If you put a ballot in the mail, and it hasn’t arrived yet, and then you vote in-person before your absentee ballot has arrived, your in-person vote will count,” he was quoted as saying in a Reuters report. 

Several Americans may vote by mail, especially this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Experts feel that with the surge in in-mail voting, the results may not be clear on election night as it might take time to count and verify all ballots.  

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