Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed Wednes­day that peo­ple in North Car­oli­na stress-test the secu­ri­ty of their elec­tions sys­tems by vot­ing twice — an act that con­sti­tutes the kind of vot­er fraud the pres­i­dent has railed against.

Trump made the com­ment in a brief­ing with reporters, where he was asked about his faith in the state’s sys­tem for vot­ing by mail, which is expect­ed to be more expan­sive in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion than in pre­vi­ous years because of con­cerns about the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump encour­aged peo­ple to send in an absen­tee bal­lot and then go vote in per­son on Elec­tion Day.

“Let them send it in and let them go vote, and if their system’s as good as they say it is, then obvi­ous­ly they won’t be able to vote,” the pres­i­dent said. “If it isn’t tab­u­lat­ed, they’ll be able to vote.”

“That’s the way it is,” he added. “And that’s what they should do.”

Vot­ing twice in the same elec­tion is illegal.

But Trump’s sug­ges­tion that peo­ple should vote twice is one he has dis­cussed pri­vate­ly with aides in recent weeks amid con­cerns he is depress­ing turnout among his sup­port­ers by rais­ing alarms about the secu­ri­ty of mail-in voting.

As the num­ber of peo­ple plan­ning to mail in their bal­lots has increased, Trump has repeat­ed­ly made false claims about wide­spread fraud in mail vot­ing. With his advis­ers try­ing to tell him that he’s scar­ing his own sup­port­ers, includ­ing old­er vot­ers, with his broad con­dem­na­tions, he has sought to draw a dis­tinc­tion between uni­ver­sal mail vot­ing and more lim­it­ed absen­tee vot­ing in which the per­son is away from home or has a disability.

But even as he has made such dis­tinc­tions, he has con­tin­ued to float wild the­o­ries about exten­sive vot­er fraud that are not backed up by evi­dence. He has repeat­ed­ly detailed far-fetched, seem­ing­ly man­u­fac­tured sto­ries about bal­lots being forged.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Barr declined to com­ment on Trump’s sug­ges­tion Wednesday.

“We haven’t had the kind of wide­spread use of mail-in bal­lots that’s being pro­posed,” Barr said, adding that he wasn’t famil­iar with the specifics of North Carolina’s vot­ing laws.

States have long used a num­ber of mea­sures to guard against dou­ble vot­ing. Patrick Gan­non, a spokesman for the North Car­oli­na State Board of Elec­tions, said the sys­tem in North Car­oli­na would pre­vent a per­son from vot­ing twice, because only the first vote record­ed would be counted.

If a per­son has already mailed in an absen­tee bal­lot and goes to the polls on Elec­tion Day, records will show poll work­ers that the per­son has already vot­ed, Gan­non said. Or, if a per­son votes on Elec­tion Day and offi­cials lat­er receive that person’s absen­tee bal­lot, it will be “spoiled” and not count­ed, he said.

“Inten­tion­al will­ful dou­ble vot­ing is a felony,” Gan­non added.

He encour­aged vot­ers to request absen­tee bal­lots, send them in and track them on the elec­tions board’s website.

In an inter­view last year, Kim Wyman, the sec­re­tary of state in Wash­ing­ton state, where elec­tions have been con­duct­ed by mail for years, said it was unusu­al for vot­ers to vote twice.

“We can actu­al­ly run a list of peo­ple who appeared to have vot­ed more than once,” said Wyman, a Repub­li­can. “Out of 3.5 mil­lion bal­lots cast in 2018, it appears that rough­ly 100 peo­ple may have vot­ed more than once. Coun­ties are checking.”

“Is it per­fect? No,” Wyman said. “Is there ram­pant fraud? No. Do peo­ple some­times make mis­takes? Yes.”