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The suggestion of the US president would constitute a serious crime, in addition to electoral fraud.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, encouraged residents of key North Carolina state on Wednesday to test the security of their state’s electoral system by trying vote twice in the November elections, one by mail and one in person.
Trump’s suggestion, Deutsche Welle notes, would constitute a felony under North Carolina law in addition to a electoral fraud, which is precisely the type of problem that the president claims to want to avoid by all means in the November 3 elections, in which he seeks re-election.
“Let them send it (the vote by mail) and let them vote, and if their system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it is not tabulated, they will be able to vote ”, Trump said in statements to reporters during a visit to Wilmington, North Carolina.
The president repeated that idea directly to some of his supporters who were waiting for him when he landed in that city, when he told them: “Send (your vote by mail) early and then go and vote (in person). They cannot let them take away their vote, these people are playing dirty politics ”.
Fraud is unlikely
Trump has insisted, without evidence, that widespread mail voting, which many states are expanding due to the pandemic – to avoid large crowds on Election Day – can lead to fraud, despite numerous studies showing that this is extremely unlikely.
The president only justifies voting by mail when citizens are going to be away from the state where they are registered on election day, and has thus defended the fact that he himself has used this method to exercise suffrage in the territory where he has his primary private residence, Florida.
According to The New York Times, Trump has recently spoken privately with his advisers about the idea of urging people to vote twice, precisely because those around him are concerned that the president’s campaign against the vote by mail could dissuade their own supporters to vote.
Attorney general evades the issue
During an interview this Wednesday with CNN, the US Attorney General, William Barr, dodged the question of whether Trump was inciting illegal activity by calling for a double vote, by ensuring that he did not know the electoral legislation of the state of North Carolina.
A spokesman for the North Carolina state board of elections, Patrick Gannon, told the New York Times that the state’s electoral system would prevent a person from voting twice, because workers at the polls would have access to records that would show that that citizen has already exercised their right by mail.
“Voting twice on purpose is a serious crime”Gannon stressed.
North Carolina is one of the states where polls show the tightest contest between Trump and his rival in the November elections, Democrat Joe Biden, who leads the president by just 1.6 percentage points in that territory, within of the margin of error, according to the average of the FiveThirtyEight website.
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