White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany dismissed criticism of President Trump for calling on people to cast both mail-in and in-person ballots.
“The president is crystal clear here,” McEnany said during a press briefing at the White House on Thursday. “This is about verifying that every vote is counted.”
Voting twice is illegal.
“Just in the 2020 presidential primary, for instance, there were 100,000 ballots rejected in California,” McEnany said. “We also know that as research has shown, young black and Hispanic voters are more likely to have their mail-in ballots rejected.”
Trump, she said, “wants enfranchisement not disenfranchisement — that’s his goal with the comments that he made yesterday.”
While visiting North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump said people would “have to go and 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.”
“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,” he said. “So, that’s the way it is. And that’s what they should do.”
Trump has charged repeatedly that mail-in voting poses a risk of fraud.
On Wednesday, Attorney General William Barr dismissed charges that Trump had encouraged people to vote twice, calling it “cheap talk.”
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have sued states, such as Nevada, to stop legislation that would expand mail-in voting around the 2020 election.