New guest post from Ned Foley:

The news that President Trump suggested that North Carolina voters cast both an absentee and in-person ballot, to test whether the “system” would catch it, reminded me of the case a few years ago in which a Cincinnati poll worker was charged and convicted of something similar.  While the circumstances are not exactly the same, this sentence from the initial Fox News report struck me when I re-read it: “Officials charged that she voted in her own name by absentee ballot and also in person at the polls.”  Isn’t that essentially what the President was urging his supporters to do?   Back when I first heard of the Cincinnati case, I thought that prosecution was appropriate because it is important that government officials not encourage voters to attempt to game the system by intentional double voting.  It is one thing for voters innocently to be confused about the status of an absentee ballot and then go to the polls in an attempt to make sure that they have just one ballot that counts. It’s entirely different to have a premediated plan to vote twice, once by mail and the second time in person, in the hope that both votes might make it through without detection.  What troubled me most from an election integrity perspective about what the President said was the report, if accurate, that “Mr. Trump’s suggestion that people should vote twice is one he has discussed privately with aides in recent weeks.”  If true, this indicates a degree of deliberativeness that cannot be dismissed as an off-the-cuff remark.  While not suggesting that the President deserves prosecution, I do think it’s appropriate to express concern about an incumbent president skirting so close to conduct for which poll workers are appropriately punished—including, as in the Cincinnati case, by a lengthy term of imprisonment.