On Saturday, Trump yet again called on voters in North Carolina to commit a crime. Specifically, he insisted that North Carolina voters should try and vote twice in order to try and ensure that their earlier mail-in ballot was counted. Trying to vote twice is a crime in the state of North Carolina, and the problem that Trump is proposing the crime as a solution for — a systemic issue with mail-in voting — does not exist. North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, who is a Democrat, publicly rebuked the president after his latest rant, insisting to North Carolina voters that they should not abide by what the president was saying.
Stein posted the following on Twitter:
‘NORTH CAROLINA: Do NOT do what the President directs. To make sure your ballot COUNTS, sign and send it in EARLY. Then track it ONLINE with BALLOTTRAX. Do NOT vote twice (it’s a felony), or waste your time, or unnecessarily risk exposure to more people.’
NORTH CAROLINA: Do NOT do what the President directs. To make sure your ballot COUNTS, sign and send it in EARLY. Then track it ONLINE with BALLOTTRAX. Do NOT vote twice (it’s a felony), or waste your time, or unnecessarily risk exposure to more people. https://t.co/jOKYoR4hnr https://t.co/1cF6tJoHA4
— Josh Stein (@JoshStein_) September 12, 2020
Trump has been ranting and raving against mail-in voting for awhile, claiming that the process is full of systemic fraud although it’s definitely not. Amidst the Coronavirus-induced concerns about gathering in person, especially for people in high-risk populations, Democrats have been working to expand access to mail-in voting across the country. Trump has accused them of conspiring to rig the election in their favor via the process, but that claim is nonsense. Trump has even claimed, among other things, that foreign countries could meddle in mail-in voting via submitting fraudulent ballots to be counted. There’s no evidence for that claim — and it’s unclear how it would even be successfully accomplished.
Rather than some kind of legitimate systemic issue with mail-in voting, Trump seems like he might simply be paranoid about the possibility of losing if Americans have a chance to make their voices heard. As of Saturday morning, Biden leads Trump in national polls by an average of over 7 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. That site’s Nate Silver says that if Biden is able to hang onto a lead at that level in the national popular vote in November, then there’s an about 99 percent chance of him winning the majority in the electoral college as well.
Chance of a Biden Electoral college win if he wins the popular vote by X points:
0-1 points: just 6%!
1-2 points: 22%
2-3 points: 46%
3-4 points: 74%
4-5 points: 89%
5-6 points: 98%
6-7 points: 99%— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) September 2, 2020
