Monday, October 17, 2016

Rigged?

No, the Election Isn’t Rigged
Excerpt: onald Trump is playing the sore loser, and he hasn’t even lost yet. The presidential contest “looks like a rigged election,” he tweeted Saturday. The “election is being rigged by the media, in a coordinated effort with the Clinton campaign.” At a rally on Friday, he suggested that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, a New York Times shareholder, is behind the paper’s recent negative coverage. Trump also contends that the electoral theft is happening “at many polling places.” Those who paid attention to the Republican primaries will recall this tactic. Back then, the conspiring parties were the Republican National Committee and the congressional “Establishment” and various conservative media outlets, whom Trump accused of trying to “steal” the party’s nomination from him. This time, Trump is suggesting that the entire electoral mechanism by which Americans choose their chief executive has become illegitimate. As a factual matter, this is, of course, bunk. The electoral process, from bottom to top, is managed by citizens and governed by a dense body of election law. Vote-counting is heavily scrutinized by party officials and independent monitors, and irregularities are subject to legal challenge. The voting equipment used is tested prior to Election Day and carefully monitored before, during, and after.

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