Politics

Voting Twice? Trump Creates a New Headache for Election Officials


By encouraging North Carolina voters to test the integrity of the elections system by casting both mail and in-person ballots, and repeating some of the same claims in a series of tweets on Thursday, President Trump seemed to mimic a cynical slogan originating in 20th Century machine politics: Vote early and often.

Indeed, Mr. Trump’s repeated statements suggesting that the nation’s elections system is riddled with fraud fit a historical pattern — politicians in the Jim Crow South, for example, spread the myth of widespread voter fraud to encourage tighter restrictions on voting.

His comments have now created a new headache for state election officials, who are already dealing with the formidable task of holding an election during a pandemic. They insist that the type of double voting once suspected of tipping elections in big cities is virtually impossible today, citing robust systems to prevent a person from voting twice.

Douglas A. Kellner, co-chairman of the New York State Board of Elections, accused Mr. Trump of fueling concern in the minds of voters and, in doing so, adding more work to county elections boards already “stretched to the limit” by a presidential election and coronavirus.

Speaking to reporters in Wilmington, N.C., on Wednesday, Mr. Trump had suggested that people who vote by mail also “then go and vote” in person as well.

“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,” Mr. Trump said, responding to a reporter’s question on election integrity. “So let them send it in, and let them go vote. And if their system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote. If it isn’t tabulated, they will be able to vote.”

On Thursday, after Facebook said it would remove video shares of Mr. Trump’s comments, suggesting they had encouraged voter fraud, Mr. Trump seemed to try to walk back those comments in a series of tweets.

“Ohio voters are encouraged to choose one way to vote, as any additional effort to cast a ballot will not be counted and unnecessarily burdens election officials,” said Maggie Sheehan, a spokeswoman for Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state.

Officials in Michigan pointed to this year’s primary elections, the most recent including a massive expansion of vote by mail, as evidence that their system was reliable.

“Our election system has been stress-tested by three successful elections already this year,” said Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state of Michigan. “We have protections in place to ensure election officials track and verify every ballot they send and receive, and in every instance we ensure that each person gets only one vote.”

Reid Magney, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that each absentee ballot cast in the state is processed by poll workers on Election Day and checked against poll books to make sure the voter has not already voted in person.

In California, some counties use traditional, neighborhood-based polling places and others use larger, more centralized vote centers. At traditional polling places, voters who receive a mail ballot must surrender it if they decide to vote in person instead. At vote centers, electronic poll books allow officials to check if a voter has cast a ballot elsewhere before permitting the them to vote, according to a statement issued Thursday by Sam Mahood, a spokesman for the California secretary of state, Alex Padilla, a Democrat.

In New York City, Frederic M. Umane, a Republican who sits on the city’s Board of Elections, called its system to prevent double voting “fail safe.”

Votes in New York City are immediately uploaded to a central computer, Mr. Umane said. When a voter goes to sign in, if they already voted, the system would flag it. And before any mail-in vote is counted, a check is made to see if that person also voted either in early voting or on Election Day.

Mr. Umane said the city implemented a new electronic poll book system last November and ran a series of tests beforehand to make sure it worked, adding that he was not aware of Mr. Trump’s comments this week.

“I’m a Republican,” Mr. Umane said, “but I don’t necessarily listen to everything Trump says.”



Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *