By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Donald Trump’s incessant and profoundly absurd claim of a “rigged election” in the event of a loss to Joseph Biden rubs me raw at so many levels.
I keep wondering how county elections officials, regardless of their political affiliation, must feel when they hear Trump make those terrible and defamatory assertions about the fairness of the election in case he comes up short.
If you’re a county clerk and you run an election office you must wonder just how Trump believes you can “rig” an election to push Biden across the finish line ahead of the incumbent president.
I have known a number of county clerks in Texas and in Oregon, where I worked in journalism for all those years, and to a person — man or woman, Republican or Democrat — they are dedicated to their profession. They all take an oath to defend the same Constitution that the president swears to defend. They all swear to follow the law and to ensure that everything they do is above board.
However, we keep hearing from Donald Trump that they won’t do what they swear to do if they preside over an election system that produces a winner whose name isn’t “Trump.”
How in the name of good government can this fellow get away with making these specious, egregious and ridiculous allegations?
Donald Trump clearly is the first president in U.S. history to cast such a forbidding pall over a system we know has been compromised already by Russian spooks working to elect Trump in 2016. Indeed, the Russian interference four years ago and their second act that is underway as we sit here makes me wonder whether the “rigging” is working in reverse of what Trump says will occur if he loses his re-election effort against Biden.
None of that will shut the motormouth of Donald Trump. He will continue to defame local election officials. There is no other way to describe what he is doing.
It is defamatory language fit only for an autocratic demagogue. It has no place in a representative democracy that prides itself on the fairness of its electoral system.