Maine Gov. LePage Echoes Trump, Says Elections ‘Rigged’ Without Voter ID

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) claimed Tuesday that his state’s electoral results would be “rigged” without voter ID laws.

“Will people from the cemetery be voting? Yes, all around the country,” LePage said during an interview on Maine radio station WVOM, as reported by CNN’s KFILE.

“The media and the Democratic Party want everybody to vote whether they’re citizens or not,” he said, echoing a frequent charge from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, whom LePage supports.

Like in many other states, Mainers show forms of identification, such as drivers licenses or utility bills, when they register to vote. No identification is necessary at polling places.

Maine’s secretary of state, Democrat Matthew Dunlap, told the Bangor Daily News Tuesday morning that voter ID laws were a “political issue.” The state’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives blocked a voter ID proposal in 2015.

“I can enumerate safeguards that govern the process of conducting elections,” he told the publication.

LePage sees things a little differently.

“You gotta have photo IDs when you cash checks, you gotta have photo IDs every place you go,” LePage said in the radio interview. “In fact, I don’t know how many times you gotta take your license out of your wallet to show it to people. And so until we do that, I don’t think that elections in the state of Maine or in the United States are legitimate. I mean, we know that there are counties in this country that get more votes than there are citizens in their county, so what’s that tell you?”

According to the Brennan Center, a voter is more likely to be struck by lightning than they are to impersonate somebody else at the polls. The Washington Post found just 31 credible cases of voter impersonation—the kind addressed by voter ID laws—out of 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014.