Are there any specific reasons why President Trump has suggested that his supporters illegally vote twice in North Carolina?

Question

Recently, the current United States President suggested that people in North Carolina vote twice in the upcoming election: once by postal vote and once in person. Apparently there are measures in place to prevent people from voting twice.

Is there any particular significance in picking North Carolina to suggest this to?

I suspect there is some motive behind it (though motives aren't something anyone can answer here so that isn't my question, only whether North Carolina is significant in any way).

Answer 1

This is the modern mass-media era. Trump may have been speaking in North Carolina, but he — like any other national level candidate — is aware that he is speaking to the nation as a whole. Note that after he made this statement — as the article points out — he followed it with a tweet on the same subject, explicitly aimed at a national audience.

If I were to read Trump generously, I would point out that the idea of verifying that your mail-in ballot has been received is a good idea. Many states have implemented (or are implementing) web portals where voters can check that their ballots have arrived. North Carolina in particular is currently implementing a portal called 'BallotTrax' (see the notes at the end of the link). In states that have strict deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots, it might be worthwhile checking the portal on election day. If the ballot has not yet been received, you can go to the polling place and ask the workers specifically if you can file a provisional ballot because your mail-in ballot has not been acknowledged. The rules for that will vary from state to state, but poll workers will have been trained for that issue, and if you explicitly ask for a provisional ballot for that reason you can avoid any accusation of fraud.

Everyone should check their own state's voting webpage to locate their state's tracking portal. As of this writing, neither the Federal government nor some zealously political Wikipedia editor has amassed a comprehensive list of this voting resource. The former omission is unfortunately typical, but the latter is (frankly) surprising.

However, Trump being Trump, I find it unlikely that he meant this statement as a Public Service Announcement to aid worried voters. It seems far more likely that this is yet another effort to troll the democratic institution of voting, generating conflict, doubt, and insecurity which delegitimizes the election process. Now that Trump has made this comment — one that he will undoubtable double-down on, as he doubles-down on all of his more outrageous statements — we can safely assume that a significant portion of his most energized base will follow through, leading to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people attempting to vote twice. There are only three possible outcomes from this, in increasing order of severity:

1. The vast majority of such attempts will be caught and the doubled-ballots discarded. This will have no effect on the election outcome, but undoubtably the large-scale attempt at fraud (or if you prefer, 'testing') will be reported by the news media. Since the duplicates will be discarded without reading or recording their content, there will be no way to correlate the influx with Trump's base, and so Trump (if he loses) will use the news reports to attack the election and accuse the Democrats of massive fraud. It's worth noting in this regard that Trump's statements might also convince his energized opponents to defensively cast doubled ballots — an extremely bad idea, but partisans are not always the most clear-thinking people — which will further confuse the issue.
2. A sufficient number of duplicate votes will pass through the system to affect the outcome. If Trump wins he will declare the election valid and fair and block any effort to investigate; if Trump loses he will again accuse the Democrats of fraud, and use his lame-duck period to try to overturn the election results.
3. Certain districts might independently use the influx of duplicate ballots to create fraud on a massive scale, selectively processing a number of the duplicate ballots on the assumption that no one will look if Trump retakes the oval office.

Any of these outcomes will ultimately benefit Trump, assuming he can leverage the resulting confusion and partisan hostility to his advantage. Trolling the institution of voting in this way has no immediate cost for him and several potential long-term benefits, despite the fact that it damages the institution in question.

Answer 2

As the BBC article explains, Trump frequently makes baseless allegations that the election system is prone to fraud. The only thing unusual about this most recent remark is that he's encouraging his own supporters to commit voter fraud. He happened to be in North Carolina when he made these remarks, and it is relevant to know that Trump and Biden are neck-and-neck in recent North Carolina polls. So the logical interpretation of Trump's motive here is simply that he's encouraging his supporters to do anything and everything they can to help ensure he wins in North Carolina. I can find no reason to think that North Carolina voters are especially likely to succeed if they attempt to vote twice.

Answer 3

Other answers about "testing" the system are close to the mark IMO; but based on my previous observation of Trump's MO: this is not about the election; this is about the campaign.

Trump has many times in the past tried to sell a narrative of the American left - the Dems themselves, news media that supports them, Twitterati, bloggers, academics, etc. - being hypocritical, insincere or otherwise "phony". What makes the most sense to me is that he wishes to provoke an immediate response from that political direction to the statement, and then criticize that response (or let the analogous people on his side do it for him).

The most likely messaging in response is that Trump is advocating for a specific means of voter fraud. This accomplishes two goals for Trump:

1. It keeps the topic of voter fraud in the national discussion.

2. It means that his critics implicitly endorse the notion that the proposed method of voter fraud would actually work.

That is: "if you don't think voter fraud is a real concern; if you don't think that voter fraud could be accomplished by doing X; then what legitimate reason do you have to care about me telling my supporters to do X? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Since you obviously care, you must think it would work. And that's the real reason you've been so insistent on universal mail-in voting in the first place. J'accuse!" So goes (or would go, I predict) the narrative.

Answer 4

I'm not aware that there is any significance to making this suggestion to North Carolina voters. The methods to check for duplicate voting attempts appear to be fairly uniform as it applies to voting twice (once by mail, followed by another attempt in person).

This video of the full exchange between Trump and a local broadcaster Link is useful to consider, while he was asked about North Carolina mail-in-votes, his response could be applied to any other state that has enabled any vote by mail system

If, however, tens of thousands of voters should attempt to "test" the system it will create havoc at the polling place. Ultimately the test of the system would be to have a provisional ballot rejected. That is really what the suggestion sets up.

I would anticipate that the "testing" voter at the polling place would be denied a regular ballot, but would be given the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot. The voter would now have to fill out that paperwork, and cast a provisional ballot. That provisional ballot would then have to be investigated, the only real proof that a mail-in-ballot had been received by the county would be to locate the security or authentication envelope with his signature. At that point the county would be faced with a question of charging the "testing" voter with attempted election fraud.

Unless there is evidence of intentional fraud (voter told neighbors his intent to "test" the system, the case against the voter will not be prosecuted aggresively (particularly if an older voter insists that he just forgot, "memory isn't what it used to be")

The result, IMO, of the suggestion to have voters "test" the system is to create chaos on election day and for days thereafter.

Answer 5

It could potentially give a line of attack. "Why are Democrats making a big deal of what I said, they said that vote by mail is fine and would detect and fix any problems. They must know how easy fraud can happen!"

At this point in the race, there is every indication that Biden is significantly ahead and likely to win absent any changes. He is trying the same formula that beat Hillary: cause as much chaos and hope that it shakes out in his favor.

With that being said, he also tried to sow doubt about election results in 16. Many sources make the claim that he thought he was going to lose and was looking forward to jump starting a media network. If true putting that election results in question would be very useful, even if only his hardcore fans believe it. This year there is an added twist: the time difference between when in person and mail on votes get counted. Having a good lead from the initial votes has obvious benefits for Trump (with respect to sowing election discord) if the final vote goes against him.

Answer 6

Trump desires to ensure ballot integrity in a key electoral state.

North Carolina is a swing state, so where majors parties win by thin margins, and a few uncounted votes can mean victory or defeat.

Another interpretation of Trump's comment is to not actually vote twice, but to verify the vote was cast by trying to vote and being rejected to test the system. Kind of like making two reservations for the exact same thing on a website: if the second attempt fails, good, if it succeeds, not good.

According to that interpretation, he would not actually be encouraging voter fraud. He's telling people to verify their vote was counted.

Next question to wonder is: Is this a good method? No. Trump's error here is assuming votes are tabulated quickly enough (put in some kind of central database) for people to be prevented to vote twice, but apparently it's not the case, so even if one voted with no problem, they'd be allowed to vote a second time. And like for a website's purchase, they are possibly better options: calling officials to check the vote was cast correctly, checking on an official website.

---

More on this interpretation of Trump's reasoning: it's possible Trump assumed voting in North Carolina was based on a system where you must first confirm you're eligible to vote before doing it, whereas the system is more like an honor-based system.

For example, in most places, you must have a valid ticket to take public transit, or any similar controlled area where only some authorized people are allowed in. However, it's not enforced the same way everywhere. In some places, you must first scan your ticket to ensure its validity (possibly similar to what Trump thought), and you are rejected if it's not, whereas in other places, you're allowed in, trusting you have a valid one, and if you get caught, you get a fine (more like reality in the case of voting). As a comment seems to suggest, it's possible in North Carolina, merely trying can get you arrested. In other places, you'd just be required to confirm you're allowed to vote before moving further.