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Is the Presidential election rigged?

Smeagol

Smeagol

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One of the major party candidates for president is suggesting the election in November might be rigged. Do you agree?
 
Nope. Not "rigged".

However, anyone who insists it is, I implore you to just stay home and not vote.
Why waste your time if you feel it's rigged?
 
It does not work right, this we know.
 
No it's not rigged in the sense that Trump means. There's certainly documented cases of fraud and cheating and people trying to game the system. Has it ever affected the outcome? No.

it is rigged in the sense that we have very limited choice in who's going to be President.
 
Was the playing field slanted against Bernie Sanders?
 
Hawkeye10 said:
It does not work right, this we know.
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To help the democrats the arguments are:

- voter fraud, ballot stuffing, people voting on behalf of the dead
- the mainstream media's bias for democrats


To help the republicans the arguments are:

- voter suppression, requiring expensive proof of identity, curtailing early voting options on days popular with democrats, revoking the right to vote for life of people who have ever been convicted of a felony, erring on the side of disqualified if multiple people happen to have the same names and one of them had their right to vote revoked.

- Russia committing ongoing cyber-watergate against the democrats and giving the stolen campaign documents to the US media via a third party and openly encouraged by the republican candidate.

- the republicans having an entire genre of media with a dedicated mission of advocating for conservative political policies and candidates. They produce radio talk shows with audiences well into the tens of millions and are often the most listened to programs in each city. They operate 24/7 cable news/commentary channels. By their own admission (although usually not as often in election years) their reach (and by implied extension their influence) far surpasses that of the mainstream media.
 
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Of course the election is not rigged. But Trump pushing this idea demonstrates very clearly that he lives in his own reality and far too many on the far right are more than willing to check into willful delusion. And that sort of detachment from reality to live in your own mental construct is dangerous - both to the holder of the delusion and to larger American society.

I find it more than ironic that the same man who was created by the news media coverage in the primary part of the election is now claiming the media is against him. Trump would not be the GOP nominee if not for the gross imbalance in free time gifted to him over the previous eighteen months by major media outlets in the USA.

The press can make you. The press can break you. That is not exactly news. But apparently to Trump its only right when one part of that axiom holds in his favor.
 
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Smeagol said:
- voter suppression, requiring expensive proof of identity, curtailing early voting options on days popular with democrats, revoking the right to vote for life of people who have ever been convicted of a felony, erring on the side of disqualified if multiple people happen to have the same names and one of them had their right to vote revoked.
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After a court ruling on voter ID being like a poll tax, Texas has a FREE voter ID option, So it has no cost.
 
In a close election, the race could come down to fewer than 100 counties in several states.
One recent Project Veritas tape has a democratic Voter registration person talking about
how they get the democratic supporters to check the vote by mail box, and even saying if someone
is a trump supporter, their registrations get torn up.
 
If by rigged you mean did one party pick a candicate so awful that they are making sure the other party`s awful candidate will win then yeah its rigged.
 
Yes it is rigged. It is called the electoral college. But it has been that way for years.
 
Smeagol said:
One of the major party candidates for president is suggesting the election in November might be rigged. Do you agree?
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No.

At least not near to the degree that Trump and other Republicans often go with. There may be pockets of voter fraud, and in some districts it may be worse in context. But what we do not have evidence of an organized and logistical applied effort to render the entire Presidential Election as "rigged."

Trump is simply engaging in what he usually does, going with rhetoric that resonates with his supporters and gives them all a debate point for when Trump loses this election. The day after this election all the right-wing blowhards will have plenty to talk about and it will all boil down to "Hillary stole the election."

SNL will end up with material to carry them well into the new year.
 
Crosscheck said:
Yes it is rigged. It is called the electoral college. But it has been that way for years.
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The electoral college is around so that California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Georgia (all the states with better than 10 million residents, so North Carolina and Michigan are close) do not end up electing the President rendering Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska and the Dakotas as irrelevant.

It is not the best system, and is full of flaws... I am sure we can agree on that point.

However, if we purely go with the popular vote across the nation then at least 10 States will never see the first candidate and become completely irrelevant to the political process (even more so than they already are today.)
 
Smeagol said:
One of the major party candidates for president is suggesting the election in November might be rigged. Do you agree?
Click to expand...

Well, it depends on what is meant by rigged. But rigged in the sense of fairness, freedom from manipulation, collusion, and deceit, yes, of course it's rigged. There are emails and video's that prove it. How anyone can deny that is a bit baffling.

It is the right of every candidate to appeal election results. There are laws and process in place for just that purpose.

https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/Contested%20Elections%20&%20Recounts%201.pdf
 
Gaius46 said:
No it's not rigged in the sense that Trump means. There's certainly documented cases of fraud and cheating and people trying to game the system. Has it ever affected the outcome? No.

it is rigged in the sense that we have very limited choice in who's going to be President.
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Many historians argue fraud effected the outcome of the Kennedy-Nixon 1960 election. The two key states were Texas and Illinois and between Lyndon B. Johnon's Texas were in some counties more people voted than lived there and with Mayor Daley's magnificent reputation for fraud in Illinois there is a strong case to be made.

Today we have elections not where there are more votes than people but where there are more votes than there are registered voters. Imagine that.
 
Smeagol said:
One of the major party candidates for president is suggesting the election in November might be rigged. Do you agree?
Click to expand...

I certainly think it's possible both in the literal sense (vote tampering, etc) and the figurative (selective MSM coverage, etc.)

In the literal we have the Okeefe videos which has so far caused 2 people to lose their jobs, in Dem related PAC/organizations.

Not only that, but there is some circumstantial evidence, that it could of occurred in 2008.
Based on the Wikileaks drop, the guy in the Okeefe video, was involved with a group (again Dem connected) that brought 50k people.
In a state like Indiana, which was mentioned in the video, that would of meant that Romney should of won.

https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/18755#searchresult

On top of that, we're getting news reports about "occurances" is a couple of states, right now.
Interesting that it's swing states.

8 INVESTIGATES: Hillsborough woman spots phony info on her voter ID card | WFLA.com

Indiana officials investigating possible voter registration tampering - CNNPolitics.com

Anyone saying an affirmative no, must be some kind of omnipresent god.
The more likely cause is the visceral rejection of anything Trump says.
 
Many people, over the years, have claimed that elections are either rigged or able to be rigged...including liberals. Here is an article that quotes several of them.

As John Gibbs wrote, voter fraud is very much a real thing. According to a 2012 Pew Charitable Trust report, roughly 18 million voter registrations are either “significantly inaccurate” or invalid — enough to tip an election. Yet somehow when Donald Trump echoes the concerns about election integrity many Americans have had for years, it’s totally insane. I guess election-rigging only matters when Democrats lose.

8 Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged
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Dragonfly said:
Yes - Trump is truly and honestly concerned about the way the Dems nominate their candidate.
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I dont believe that was the question, was it?
 
If it was not "rigged" in some fashion, I think Hillary nor Trump would not have been the nominees. Every person I talk to considers them both bad candidates. At least Bush and Obama had some loyal fans that would not say things like "they are the lesser of two evils" more so than this election. Maybe I wasn't following those elections as much, but I still remember fan boys of Obama who would never consider him to be a bad candidate or the lesser of two evils.
 
Between all the various levels of local government, state, and federal levels, a national rigging of an election is virtually impossible, simply from the logistics involved.
 
Smeagol said:
One of the major party candidates for president is suggesting the election in November might be rigged. Do you agree?
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I don't agree with Trump that it's rigged, especially considering the fact he uses the "It's all rigged!" line as an excuse to put the blame on something else, instead of acknowledging the faults of his own presidential campaign.
 
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