President Donald Trump encouraged voters to cast their ballots multiple times during an appearance in North Carolina on Wednesday, which not only is a crime, but the exact scenario that he has used as an argument against states expanding mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.Asked in Wilmington if he was confident in the vote-by-mail system in North Carolina, a swing state where more than 618,000 registered voters—nearly 9 percent of all voters in the state—have so far requested absentee ballots, Trump responded, “I don’t like that.”"They’ll go out and go vote and they’re gonna have to go and check their vote by voting that way, and if it tabulates they won’t be able to do that,” Trump said on Wednesday. "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.”“I don’t like the idea of these unsolicited votes, I never did. It leads to a lot of problems,” Trump added. “But send in your ballots, send them in strong, whether it’s solicited or unsolicited.”North Carolina is the first state to begin voting for president, as the state will send out its first round of absentee ballots on Friday. Unlike some other states that Trump has railed against and his campaign has sued, North Carolina does not send voters unsolicited mail-in ballots or even ballot requests. Instead, the voter or their relative has to request a ballot themselves.This has resulted in some third-party groups—including the North Carolina Republican Party—sending voters the requests themselves to expedite the process of securing a ballot. Once they’ve mailed in their ballots, a North Carolina voter will be able to make sure it was counted through a portal on the North Carolina State Board of Elections website.While Trump has criticized vote-by mail, it’s functionally the same thing as voting absentee, which he appears to have no problem with. Trump voted absentee in New York in the 2018 midterms, and he and First Lady Melania Trump voted absentee in Florida last month.People have been prosecuted for much less than what Trump is suggesting voters do, which is attempting to vote multiple times in the same election. In Texas, a mother of three named Crystal Mason was sentenced to five years in prison for voting with a provisional ballot while on supervised release; earlier this year, a state appeals court upheld her conviction.The Trump campaign denied the president was telling people to commit voter fraud. "President Trump encourages supporters to vote absentee-by-mail early, and then show up in person at the polls or the local registrar to verify that their vote has already been counted," Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told NBC News."It’s amazing that the media can go from insisting that voter fraud doesn’t exist to screaming about it when President Trump points out the giant holes in the Democrats’ voting schemes.”Trump did not tell voters to show up to “verify” that their vote had been counted, however, but to “send [the absentee ballot] in and then let them go vote.”Later, Attorney General William Barr claimed that mail-in voting is “very open to fraud and coercion,” and warned that states changing their systems in order to adapt to the coronavirus “are playing with fire,” during an interview with CNN.Asked to respond to Trump’s encouragement to vote twice, Barr said he didn’t know North Carolina’s voting laws, but defended Trump anyway."I don't know exactly what he was saying, but it seems to me what he's saying is, he's trying to make the point that the ability to monitor this system is not good," Barr said. "And if it was so good, if you tried to vote a second time you would be caught if you voted in person."Cover: President Donald Trump talks to a crowd of supporters after arriving at Wilmington International Airport, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020, in Wilmington, N.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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