President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his call for voters to try to vote twice in the presidential election, to ensure that the vote is counted. In a Twitter thread, Trump told supporters to “MAIL IN your Ballot as EARLY as possible” and “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),” he added.

Voting twice is illegal. Twitter put up a label on Trump’s tweet as it “violated the Twitter Rules about civic and election integrity”.

Meanwhile, the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had been taken out of context and just wanted voters to verify that their first vote had been registered, AFP reported. 

He “does not condone unlawful voting,” she said.

Although Trump has expressed doubts on postal voting on numerous occasions, he for the first time told supporters to vote twice in North Carolina.

Also read: Russia promoting distrust in US vote-by-mail plans: US Homeland Security

“If you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in, and then go — make sure it counted. And if it doesn’t tabulate, you vote,” he said on Wednesday. 

“So, send it in early, and then go and vote,” he said.

Although mail-in voting is prevalent in the US, it’ll increase in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump says that increased mail-in voting will allow mass ballot tampering and rigging of the result. Interestingly, he himself uses the absentee mail-in option to vote in Florida while living in the White House, AFP reported.