by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
There was an old joke in politics that drifted around for years in which a seasoned politico would encourage his supporters to "Vote early and vote often!" Apparently somebody ran that by Donald Trump and he liked it so well that he adapted it to suit his purposes.
Yesterday Trump told an interviewer from WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina, that voters could easily test the security of mail-in voting, something that he has railed against for months, by voting a mail-in ballot, and then showing up at the polls on Election Day and casting a regular ballot as well. Trump said if the system was working correctly they would be stopped from casting the second ballot at the polling station.
There were of course, a couple of problems with that. First of all, it is illegal to vote twice in the same election, and people who chose to follow Trump's "suggestion" would be subject to prosecution. Second, it would result in confusion and likely cause a much slower tallying of votes as well as the possible invalidation of parts of - or possibly the entirety of - a state's election. Of course, creating chaos was undoubtedly the purpose of Trump's statement to begin with.
Josh Stein, the Attorney General of North Carolina, said:
"President Trump outrageously encouraged people to break the law in order to help him sow chaos in our election. Make sure you vote, but do NOT vote twice! I will do everything in my power to make sure the will of the people is upheld in November."
Trump has, of course, been fighting the notion of mail-in balloting all along because he feels that it will help Democratic candidates. Polling indicates that Democrats are more likely to vote by mail if given the opportunity, and Republicans are more likely to show up at the polls. This notion has grown stronger with the existence of the pandemic - a medical situation that Democrats seem more likely to respect than do Republicans. Democrats tend to refrain from being out in public, and when they do go out, they are more likely to wear masks than Republicans.
Some feel that Trump's pre-emptive strike on mail-in voting is his way of trying to set up an eventual fraud complaint regarding the election results. Trump claimed after he lost the popular vote in 2016 by over three million votes that there had been massive voter fraud with three to five million illegal ballots being cast. He set up a special commission to study the "fraud," but the commission, chaired by master vote-fraudster Kris Kobach, was eventually disbanded with no findings.
Trump's "logic" seems to be that if he loses, somebody must have cheated.
He also seems to operate under the assumption that anything he does or says is legal by virtue of his office, and that his words alone can justify criminal acts - such as voting twice in the same election. Donald Trump believes that he is the law.
The Attorney General of North Carolina begs to differ, and hopefully the National Association of Secretaries of State will upbraid Trump on the matter as well! The one official who is unlikely to challenge Trump's blatant lies regarding the "dangers" of mail-in voting is U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a large political rat who has a comfy nest in Trump's golf bag. Yesterday Barr equated large-scale voting by mail as "playing with fire." He also declined to criticize Trump's "vote twice" statement by saying that he is unfamiliar with voting laws in North Carolina.
Voting twice in the same election is illegal - in any state - regardless of who tells you to do it.
Vote early - and then telephone your local voting authority to make sure your vote has arrived and been tallied.
1 comment:
Before you call your election office try going online to verify the status of your ballot. If Kansas, which foisted Kris Kobach on an unsuspecting nation, can do online verification then it is likely other more enlightened jurisdictions do so as well.
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