Trump: Without ID law, voters will vote '15 times' for Clinton

Donald Trump said Tuesday that, without voter identification laws, fraud will be so rampant in November’s general election that voters will head to the polls “15 times" for Hillary Clinton.

Speaking at a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, Trump was making reference to the state’s voter identification law that was struck down last month by a federal appeals court, which ruled the legislation was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.” The opinion of the three-judge court said the law represented a clear effort on the part of North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature to suppress the state's African-American vote.


“Voter ID. What’s with that? What’s with voter ID? Why aren’t we having voter ID. In other words, ‘I want to vote, here’s my identification. I want to vote,’” Trump said. “As opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary. And I will not tell you to vote 15 times. I will not tell you to do that. You won’t vote 15 times, but people will. They’ll vote many times, and how that could have happened is unbelievable.”

Trump said the removal of the voter ID law would lead to widespread voter fraud that will favor Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Generally speaking, legislators backing laws like the one in North Carolina say that such legislation is intended to stop voter fraud, though the number of documented cases of in-person voter fraud suggests the crime is virtually non-existent in the U.S.

Suggesting that the November election might not be on the level is nothing new for Trump, who has regularly said that he expects the general election to be “rigged.” He has often expressed empathy for supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), many of whom voiced similar complaints during the Democratic primary.