Tag Archives: rigged election

national news

Trump undermines our electoral system

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

When have you ever heard of a president contend that an election will be “rigged” in any context? When has a president been so callous, careless and contemptuous of our electoral system to suggest that it would be corrupted enough to produce a result that he doesn’t prefer?

I am astonished beyond measure at the rhetoric that is coming from Donald John Trump as he seeks to undermine the very electoral system he took an oath to protect.

Trump has been beating the “Democrats will rig the election” drum. He stands before rally crowds and declares that the Democratic Party is seeking to “rig” the 2020 election by sending out “millions of ballots” to people who aren’t entitled to receive them.

For starters, there is not a single shred of truth to Trump’s specious assertion. Beyond that particular lie — which is precisely what it is — there is the very idea that Trump would seek to undermine the electoral system.

Just ponder that for a moment.

Trump’s presidential oath included a pledge to protect the system of government he was elected to run. What in the name of constitutional integrity is Donald Trump seeking to do here? I think I know. He seeks to torpedo the very electoral system by sowing seeds of doubt over its integrity.

His target du jour is mail-in voting. Several states have been conducting all-mail voting for years. Trump says the system invites widespread voter fraud. No! It does nothing of the sort!

My home state of Oregon was the first state to enact a vote by mail system. It did so in 1998. A study by the Heritage Foundation, a noted conservative think tank, has revealed some fascinating data.

During the time Oregon has allowed voting by mail, Heritage uncovered 15 cases of outright voter fraud. How many ballots were cast during the time period examined? Nearly 15.5 million of them!

Fifteen cases of fraud against 15.5 million total ballots. Does that look to you like a case of “rampant voter fraud?”

And yet … Donald Trump keeps hammering at the voter fraud red herring as if it’s the real thing. It is a figment of Trump’s political strategists. It poses a serious danger to our very system of free of fair elections.

To think that this is all coming from the president of the United States. Despicable.

national news

Trump defames elections officials

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.

national news

Rigged election? Yeah, maybe

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I think I have figured out how the 2020 election is going to be “rigged.”

Donald Trump has launched what might become a self-fulfilling prophecy with his incessant yammering about how the election will be the “most corrupt in history.” The corruption well might come from Trump his own self.

He is seeking to withhold funds for the Postal Service to prevent the USPS from conducting mail-in voting. He contends that mail-in voting is inherently corrupt; he makes that accusation without a scintilla of evidence, quite naturally.

So he wants to suppress the vote. He wants to discourage Americans from voting, even as many of us fear being infected by the coronavirus pandemic that is killing about 1,000 Americans each day.

Trump wants to deny Americans the right to vote? That, I submit, is corruption at its worst.

So, what Trump is proposing is to taint the voting process, to produce the “most corrupt election in American history.”

Is that what Donald Trump would call a promise kept?

political news

GOP ‘canceling’ elections in effort to ‘rig’ POTUS’s re-election?

I am sure you remember when Republican Party presidential nominee Donald J. Trump accused Democrats of trying to “rig” the 2016 party nomination process to favor of Hillary Clinton.

He never really offered any scenario on how that would be done, but he kept yammering and yapping about it.

Well, the GOP now has a strategy to “rig” its nominating process to favor Trump’s effort to be nominated by his party in 2020. They’re planning to cancel primary elections in various states in an effort to protect a weakened incumbent.

Trump faces possibly three party challengers, former U.S. Reps. Mark Sanford and Joe Walsh and former Gov. William Weld. States party organizations are seeking ways to cancel the primary elections because they fear a possible Trump loss in any upcoming GOP primary.

Is it “rigged”?

I know this isn’t exactly unprecedented. Democrats have done the same thing in recent election cycles, such as what happened in South Carolina in 2012 when President Obama sought re-election; the South Carolina Democratic Party canceled that state’s primary eight years ago. One thing, though: No Democrats rose to challenge the president.

This one seems a bit different, given the expressed interest among three Republican politicians in challenging an incumbent GOP president.

Yep. It looks like they’re “rigging” the outcome.

political news

Was the 2016 election ‘rigged,’ Mr. POTUS?

Mr. President, I lost count of the number of times you said that the 2016 election would be “rigged” if Hillary Rodham Clinton were to win the presidency.

I remember how it became a sort of campaign stump speech mantra. You kept hammering away at what you said would be a “rigged” result stemming from what you said were “Crooked Hillary’s” instincts. I recall how you said the Democratic Party rigged its nomination outcome to ensure Clinton would carry the party banner against you over Bernie Sanders.

Well, your victory surprised a lot of us, Mr. President.

But then came the reports of Russian hackers interfering in our electoral system. I accept that Robert Mueller’s investigation said you and your campaign didn’t conspire to collude with the Russians.

However, his insistence that the Russian interfered on your behalf brings to mind the question: Was the 2016 election “rigged” to benefit you, Mr. President, over your opponent?

You have kept so very quiet about that aspect of the election. I know you have stood by your pal Vladimir Putin’s denial that he interfered in our electoral process. I also know how you’ve undercut the nation’s intelligence network that says categorically that the Russians interfered in our election.

I once thought out loud that the Russian attack didn’t have a discernible impact on the election result. I have changed my mind.

national news

Vote recount = election theft? Hardly!

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Donald J. Trump is so adept at tossing out unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations it’s getting difficult to zero in on matters deserving of comment.

But here’s one that does. The president has tweeted an allegation of electoral theft in Florida — without any evidence, quite naturally — because officials there have ordered a recount of ballots in the races for U.S. senator and for governor.

Democrats and Republicans are locked in vise-tight battles for both offices. Trump now has warned of possible theft of the election moments after the recounts were declared.

Hey, he’s a pro at this kind of fear-mongering. Remember how he contended that “millions of illegal aliens” voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, accounting for her nearly 3 million vote lead in the popular vote?

America is still waiting for proof of that allegation, Mr. President.

He once warned of a “rigged election” were he to lose the 2016 presidential contest. Hah! He won that election, but hasn’t said a disparaging word about the allegation over whether Russian interference might have “rigged” the results in his favor.

How about letting the recount proceed, Mr. President. We don’t need to hear another word from you on whether there’s any “theft” involved. If the Republicans end up winning the Senate seat and the governorship, at least they will have ensured that all the ballots are counted. The same thing will hold true as well even if the Democrats emerge victorious.

That’s how the system works.

national news

Blast the leadership, you blast ‘rank and file,’ too

Donald Trump seeks to cherry pick his targets of scorn.

Such as the FBI and the Department of Justice. The president has been blasting the smithereens out of the “leadership” at the FBI and and at DOJ. But, oh, he says the “rank and file” are great.

His Twitter tirades make me yawn most of the time. However, I often cannot get past the idiocy of some of his messages.

We are witnessing a virtually unprecedented skirmish between the president and the nation’s elite law enforcement community. When the president assails the leadership of the FBI and the DOJ he infers — perhaps unwittingly — that the rank and file are carrying out the policies established by incompetent/crooked/biased leadership.

We are witnessing an intolerable slandering of professional law enforcement officials who do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

It’s not the first time Trump has trashed the troops on the front line of their professions.

He did the same thing to local election officials when he alleged without a scintilla of proof that “millions of illegal immigrants” voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016, giving her the nearly 3 million popular vote margin she scored over the president. Before he actually won the election, the GOP presidential candidate suggested that a Clinton victory would be the result of a “rigged election.” Again, he managed to defame the hardworking local election officials who perform their duties with diligence, dignity and distinction.

Trump has slandered the media, too, in the same way. When he embarks on his “fake news” mantra, singling out individuals and specific news outlets, he scars all the rest of the media. He then tells us the only media outlets he trusts are those that decline to report news that he deems to be “negative.” In Trump World, “negative” equals “fake.” If the news isn’t positive, it’s untrue — as Trump views it through his bizarre prism.

Here we are now, with the president of the United States denigrating, disparaging and disrespecting the finest law enforcement establishment on Earth.

Never mind his thinly veiled equivocation that the “rank and file are great,” but that he’s targeting only the leadership.

He is denigrating all the professionals at every level with his dangerous tweets and other public pronouncements.

This man is a menace.

national news, political news

Hillary need not heed activists’ plea to challenge election

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Activists, by definition, I suppose are those who cannot let certain things go.

Their belief in their correctness makes them a bit frenzied in their desire to achieve a desired result.

Thus, we hear that some political activists are encouraging defeated presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton to challenge the election results in three key battleground states in an effort to overturn Donald J. Trump’s Electoral College victory.

Don’t do it, Mme. Secretary.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/activists-urge-clinton-campaign-to-challenge-election-results-in-3-swing-states/ar-AAkD4w7?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The three states in question are Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Clinton lost all three of them to Trump — although Michigan hasn’t yet been called officially for the president-elect, as it’s still determined to be too close to call.

According to the Daily Intelligencer: “Hillary Clinton is being urged by a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump, New York has learned. The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked. The group is so far not speaking on the record about their findings and is focused on lobbying the Clinton team in private.”

This would be a futile exercise. It also would be virtually unprecedented. Moreover, how long would it take to prove such an event occurred and how much damage could such a probe do our political system if the plaintiffs fail to make the case?

I feel the need to remind these activists of other close elections in which the loser chose to let the results stand. The most fascinating example occurred in 1960. Vice President Richard Nixon lost the presidential election to Sen. John F. Kennedy by fewer than 150,000 votes nationally, out of more than 60 million ballots cast. Questions arose about the vote totals in Cook County, Ill., which Kennedy won handily and which helped tip Illinois into the Democrat’s column.

Nixon didn’t challenge the result. He chose instead to let it stand. Kennedy went on to take the oath of office, over the expressed anger of the GOP activists who wanted Nixon to make an issue of an outcome that didn’t square with their desire.

Hillary lost the election under the rules set forth by the Founding Fathers. Even those of us who dislike the outcome ought to be able to accept it.

Just as many of us said in dismissing Trump’s assertion of a “rigged” election, I don’t believe that is what produced the stunning result.

national news, political news

The ‘system’ elected Donald Trump

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The irony of the 2016 presidential election outcome is too good to let go.

Donald J. Trump bitched continually about the possibility of losing the presidential election to a “rigged electoral system.” He even threatened to forgo accepting the result if he came up on the short end of the count.

Then he won. He was elected president of the United States with a healthy Electoral College majority. It stands currently at 290 electoral votes, with more likely to come in once they declare that he won in Michigan, which is still “too close to call.”

But wait! Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected nearly a million more actual votes than Trump. That number is likely to increase once they finish counting all the scattered ballots … and there appear to be many more to be counted in California.

So …

As someone has pointed out already on social media, the people voted for Hillary, but the system elected Trump.

national news, political news

Hey, isn’t the electoral system ‘rigged’?

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This just in.

A “rigged, crooked and corrupt” political system has just elected Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States of America.

The president-elect his own self made that declaration for months while he campaigned for the office he has just won.

He made the assertions, of course, while the polls showed Hillary Rodham Clinton leading in the horse race to the Oval Office. Trump wasn’t buying it. Not only that, he said the system was “rigged” against him and that he possibly wouldn’t accept the result if Clinton won the election.

She didn’t. Trump did.

Did he benefit from a “rigged” system?

Well, I didn’t believe the system was “rigged” when Clinton was leading. I don’t believe it is “rigged” now that Trump has won.

I think one of the unity messages Trump needs to deliver is to assure Americans that the system that elected him is on the up-and-up.

Perhaps an apology, too, might be in order to the local election officials who take their jobs seriously and are committed to protecting the integrity of our political system.