:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/62330698/1067113360.jpg.0.jpg)
President Donald Trump baselessly claimed that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in 2016. He’s repeatedly pushed evidence-free claims about Democratic elections officials fabricating ballots to steal elections. But his latest claim about illegal voting may be his wildest yet.
In an interview with the Daily Caller conducted on Wednesday, Trump claimed people commit voter fraud by casting a ballot, returning to their cars to change clothes, and then going back to polling places in disguise to cast additional ballots.
“The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes,” Trump said. “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.”
Suffice it to say Trump didn’t present any evidence for his claim.
Voter fraud is exceedingly rare
The type of in-person voter fraud Trump is claiming is exceedingly rare. In early 2017, the Brennan Center for Justice pegged voter impersonation rates at “between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent” — meaning a typical American is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit the type of fraud Trump has in mind.
This table — put together days after Trump’s inauguration, when he was pushing claims about fraud in the 2016 election — gives you a sense of how rare credible voter fraud accusations are.
In December 2016, the Washington Post combed through Nexis to find reports about absentee or in-person voter fraud in the 2016 election. They found a total of four cases. Ironically, three of them were committed by Trump supporters, and none of them involved people changing their clothes in cars.
Eventually, even the White House was forced to acknowledge there’s no evidence for Trump’s claim that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. Trump, however, won’t be deterred.
Trump is confused about many things
In another part of the Daily Caller interview, Trump made a case for a national voter ID law that would purportedly solve the problem of voter impersonation.
“If you buy a box of cereal — you have a voter ID,” he said. “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.”
As anybody who has been to a grocery store can attest, however, you do not need an ID card to buy cereal. Nor are voter ID laws needed to prevent election fraud. But what voter ID laws do accomplish is discouraging poor and minority voters — a result that generally gives Republicans an edge.
