Ex-Trump official voted twice during 2016 presidential primaries

A former Trump administration official, who is now making his own bid for Congress in New Hampshire, voted in two different states’ Republican primaries during Donald Trump’s first run for office back in 2016, the Associated Press reported.

Some legal experts say that the New Hampshire congressional hopeful may have even violated federal voting laws.

In a separate case involving a former Trump aide, earlier this month, the New Yorker dug up evidence that suggested that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows may have committed voter fraud himself after they discovered that he’d registered to vote at a remote mobile home in North Carolina where he had never resided.

The Associated Press uncovered that Mr Mowers, the leading Republican primary candidate in his New Hampshire race, cast an absentee ballot in New Hampshire during the 2016 presidential primary, while he was working in New Jersey on Gov Chris Christie’s failed presidential bid.

Four months later, the news agency found documents to support that Mr Mowers voted again, but this time in New Jersey by using his parents’ address to re-register in his home state.

Legal experts told the AP that what Mr Mowers committed during the 2016 presidential primary could violate a federal law that clearly lays out that voting more than once, in any kind of election, is illegal.

This recently revealed action by the New Hampshire congressional hopeful also puts the former adviser to Mr Trump, who later held a senior position in the State Department, in an uncomfortable position as his party continues to push for tighter election laws.

Alleged voter fraud was commonly scorned by the former president and his team while they campaigned in the weeks following the November 2020 election to reject its outcome.

These voter fraud theories peddled by the Trump administration team, which have since been debunked or remain entirely unsupported, included everything from a dead voter scheme, Sharpie-gate and trumped up allegations that ballots had even been burned inside voting stations.

Sharpie-gate, a conspiracy drawn out and amplified by pro-Trump tweeters, was a falsified claim that alleged that Sharpies were being distributed in pro-Republican areas of swing states in an attempt to spoil the right-leaning, and presumably Trump, voters’ ballots.

Sharpie pens, they claimed, couldn’t be read on voting machines. This theory gained so much traction that prominent Trump-backer Matt Schlapp, a lobbyist and chairman of the American Conservative Union, amplified the false Sharpie claims to his own Twitter following.

“Apparently the use of sharpie pens in gop precincts is causing ballots to be invalidated,” Mr Schlapp’s tweet read, which garnered thousands of retweets. “Could be huge numbers of mostly Trump supporters.”

Maricopa County, Arizona officials were then forced to come out and debunk the claim publicly, reassuring voters that the permanent markers do not invalidate ballots.

The revelation of the Republican candidate apparently voting twice in the primaries also comes on the heels of prominent cases in the US which are drawing attention to the racial disparities that Black voters who unintentionally violate voting laws face in comparison to their white peers.

Last August, The Independent reported on how Crystal Mason, a Black woman living in Texas who voted while on probation but who claimed she was unaware she was ineligible to do so, was handed down a five year prison sentence for violating the local voting law.

While Bruce Bartman, a white man who pleaded guilty to perjury and unlawful voting in the 2020 election after he pretended to be his dead mother in order to cast an extra vote, was only sentenced to five years of probation after being found guilty.

The Associated Press reached out to Mr Mowers campaign for comment, but they declined to make him available for interview, the agency reported, but his spokesperson did provide a quote that referenced the Republican candidate’s work for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“Matt was proud to work for President Trump as the GOP establishment was working to undermine his nomination,” John Corbett told the Associated Press. “Matt moved for work and was able to participate in the primary in support of President Trump and serve as a delegate at a critical time for the Republican Party and country.”

The Associated Press acknowledged that it is unlikely that Mr Mowers will be prosecuted for this violation, as the statute of limitations has lapsed, and there is no record of anyone being prosecuted under this specific section of federal election law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks the issue.

With reporting from the Associated Press.