U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to clarify Thursday comments he made a day earlier urging his supporters to vote twice to ensure their votes are counted, comments that have sown confusion over his intended message and caused Facebook to label his claims as misleading. In tweets on Thursday, the president asserted that sending in absentee ballots and then going to the polls to check that your ballot arrived and if not to vote in person would serve as a check against a mail-in voting system he has repeatedly predicted, without evidence, will result in corruption, miscounting and unacceptable delays. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One to attend a campaign rally in Latrobe, Pa., Sept. 3, 2020, at Andrew Air Force Base, Md.”On Election Day, or Early Voting, go to your Polling Place to see whether or not your Mail In Vote has been Tabulated (Counted). If it has you will not be able to Vote & the Mail In System worked properly. If it has not been Counted, VOTE (which is a citizen’s right to do),” said Trump on his personal Twitter account. We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Sept. 3, 2020.”The president does not condone unlawful voting,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany replied repeatedly when pressed at a briefing Thursday on whether she would acknowledge it is illegal in the United States to vote twice in the same election. The press secretary accused the media of taking out of context Trump’s comments. “The president wants enfranchisement, not disenfranchisement,” McEnany added. “It is illegal in all 50 states and under federal law to vote twice,” said Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner and former chair of the Federal Election Commission. Weintraub, a Democratic Party appointee, also said on Twitter “there’s still no basis for the conspiracy theory” that postal balloting will lead to a rigged election, as Trump has repeatedly asserted. There are 61 days until Election Day. It is illegal in all 50 states and under federal law to vote twice. As any federal officeholder or law-enforcement official should know.And there’s still no basis for the conspiracy theory that Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden meet with people in a backyard in Wauwatosa, Wis., Sept. 3, 2020.The Democratic Party nominee, Joe Biden, challenging Trump in November’s election accuses the incumbent of “trying to delegitimize” the process. “The way to overcome this is to vote. Vote, vote, vote,” the former vice president told Atlanta’s WSB-TV in a Wednesday interview. “And there’s not a shred of evidence, not a shred of evidence that mail-in voting is fraudulent.” National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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