Woodward’s revelations immediate an admission from Trump: “I’m a cheerleader.” It’s Thursday, and that is your politics tip sheet. Sign up here to get On Politics in your inbox each weekday.
Joe Biden delivering his pandemic-era speech yesterday in Warren, Mich.
What are the implications of voting twice, anyway?
One lady in Dothan, Ala., crammed out further absentee ballots to assist elect her boyfriend. A person in Rochester, N.Y., voted twice as a result of a bar was giving free beer to folks with “I Voted” stickers. A girl in Des Moines crammed out two absentee ballots in 2016, she stated, as a result of President Trump had hinted that her first poll could be altered to depend for Hillary Clinton.
Although voting greater than as soon as is uncommon, a number of instances make headlines. Leaning on these, Trump stirred concern and confusion about voter fraud on the marketing campaign path in 2016, and he’s at it once more this yr, repeatedly sounding alarms that one of the vital basic pillars of democracy — voting — might be mired in fraud.
He has pointed particularly to elevated reliance on mail ballots throughout the pandemic and the likelihood (which consultants say is slim) that enormous numbers of individuals would possibly misuse them. Trump even advised North Carolina voters to check the election system’s integrity by submitting a mail poll, then displaying up on the polls to vote.
Given all this alarmism over mail voting and voting twice, we puzzled in regards to the regulation and penalties surrounding double voting, in addition to how widespread it’s.
Our research shows that voting twice, even in states with all-mail balloting, is uncommon. In Washington, a mail-voting state, solely 147 instances have been suspected out of three.1 million votes forged there in 2018.
States have methods that flag voters who seem on the polls however have already voted by absentee poll. So it’s unlikely {that a} voter could be permitted to vote twice. But when one managed to take action, it’s a felony in most states. Federal regulation additionally makes voting twice in federal elections a felony, with a doable superb of $10,00 and 5 years behind bars.
In Georgia, double voters might face 10 years and a $100,000 superb. Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and a Trump supporter, stated this week he had found 1,000 cases by which folks voted twice in Georgia’s major and runoff elections this yr, vowing to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the regulation.
Citing all the disarray in Georgia’s elections this yr, public curiosity teams wonder if it was an accident. “Secretary Raffensperger has been on the lookout for causes to forged doubt on Georgia’s mail-in poll system for months,” stated Aunna Dennis, the manager director of Frequent Trigger Georgia. “He would have served us all higher if he had invested that point and power into stopping the issues that occurred in June.”
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