President Donald Trump on Wednesday made the case for voter ID laws again by using a grocery store analogy to make his point — claiming that shoppers need to show their ID to buy cereal.
“The disgrace is that, voter ID. If you buy, you know, a box of cereal, if you do anything, you have a voter ID,” Trump told the conservative news website The Daily Caller.
As the midterm election votes keep continue to be counted for the Georgia’s gubernatorial race, as well as the recount effort for the Florida governor and senate positions, Trump has claimed that Democrats are trying to steal the election, The Huffington Post reports. Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) even said last week that there was no evidence of voter fraud.
As soon as Democrats sent their best Election stealing lawyer, Marc Elias, to Broward County they miraculously started finding Democrat votes. Don’t worry, Florida – I am sending much better lawyers to expose the FRAUD!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2018
“The Republicans don’t win and that’s because of potentially illegal votes,” Trump said on The Daily Caller. “When people get in line that have absolutely no right to vote and they go around in circles. Sometimes they go to their car, put on a different hat, put on a different shirt, come in and vote again. Nobody takes anything. It’s really a disgrace what’s going on.”
“If you buy a box of cereal — you have a voter ID, ” Trump added.
The president’s comments left many scratching their heads. Is he saying that in order to buy cereal, one must have identification on them? Or is he perhaps referencing to how some businesses require that you show your identification when paying with a check or, sometimes, with a credit card?
It appears it might be the second one, since the president made a similar argument this past summer — that if you need identification for something as basic as buying groceries with a check, it should be required to vote.
However, there isn’t a mandatory rule that one has to show their identification when purchasing cereal in the United States. Photo identification is required when purchasing things like alcohol, some medicines and cigarettes. According to CNN, in a small number of states, identification photos are included on food stamp cards for low income families.
“You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card, you need ID,” Trump said in August. “You go out and you want to buy anything, you need ID and you need your picture.”
“The only time you don’t need it in many cases is when you want to vote for a president, when you want to vote for a senator, when you want to vote for a governor or a congressman. It’s crazy,” Trump said at the time.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, following Trump’s August comments, said the president was referring to alcoholic purchases.
“If you go to a grocery store and you buy beer or wine, you’re certainly going to show your ID,” Sanders said. “He’s not saying every time he went in. He said, ‘When you go to the grocery store.’ I’m pretty sure that everybody in here who’s been to a grocery store that’s purchased beer or wine has probably had to show their ID. If they didn’t, then that’s probably a problem with the grocery store.”
There is, however, well-established evidence that voter fraud is extremely rare, and as the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law says, stealing someone’s identity to vote is less likely to happen than being struck by lightning.