On Wednesday President Trump claimed, without evidence, that people illegally voted multiple times in the midterm elections by changing clothes.
In an interview with the conservative website Daily Caller, Trump said that was why Republicans performed poorly in the midterms. He also argued that GOP-favored voter ID laws should be adopted because you need ID to buy cereal.
“The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes,” Trump told the Caller. “When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on,” he added.
Trump also made the case voter ID laws — which have been shown to disenfranchise minority voters — by repeating his assertion that Americans need ID to purchase groceries.
“If you buy a box of cereal — you have a voter ID,” said Trump. “They try to shame everybody by calling them racist, or calling them something, anything they can think of, when you say you want voter ID. But voter ID is a very important thing.”
This week, Trump has criticized Florida election officials as recounts in the state’s governor and Senate races continue. He and Senate candidate Gov. Rick Scott have alleged, without evidence, that voter fraud has occurred in the state to the detriment of Republicans. Scott has said that Democrats are trying to “steal the election” by insisting that recounts go forward.
Early in his term, Trump said, without evidence, that three million people had voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election. The White House eventually admitted there were no facts to support the president’s claim.
Voter fraud has been found to be exceedingly rare, particularly the in-person voter fraud Trump describes. In 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice said voter impersonation rates stand at “between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.”
According to the Washington Post, only four cases of in-person voter fraud were found in the 2016 presidential election. Three of them involved Trump supporters. None of them involved people changing clothes in their cars.
