Trump’s charges of a ‘rigged’ election are subversive

Donald Trump’s latest disqualifying comment concerned the actual voting process on the upcoming Presidential Election. Coming off a horrible week, when the wheels of his campaign were flying off, Donald Trump had this to say about the upcoming election:

“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged.”

That a Presidential candidate from a major political party uttered a statement like this is simply reprehensible. The electoral process, and by extension, the legitimacy of the government itself is based on trust – the trust of the people in the electoral system. A specious charge of a ‘rigged’ election by a major candidate is irresponsible because it needlessly erodes the people’s trust – trust that must exist for the system to be able to operate at all.

Take the Presidential election of 1960, between Richard Nixon and JFK. Until Bush vs. Gore, it was the closest election in American history – and it is likely the only contest where cheating may have affected the result. But when told that the Kennedy wins in Illinois (8,800 vote margin) and Texas (46,000 votes) may have been tainted by the major Dailey’s Chicago machine and LBJ’s Texas machine, Nixon declined to complain. His reason? Throwing the result of a presidential election into turmoil with allegations of fraud would destabilize the country.

But say, you ask, don’t political candidates contest election results all the time? Of course they do. But here’s the difference. They do it after the contest is over. And they almost never make generalized claims devoid by specific allegations. What every competent candidate does is to ensure that his scrutineers and observers are in place at as many polling places as possible. These people are instructed to record the discrepancies they see and to challenge any irregularities they witness. And if an election is close, the campaign takes the compiled list of irregularities to a judge and asks for a recount. The judge then orders a recount, or an investigation, or finds the complaint spurious. That is how it is supposed to work. The system of scurtineers and judicial oversight is one of the checks and balances within the system to help keep things fair.

I will give you an anecdote from a friend with a long history of political involvement. In an alderman race in Toronto - this would be going back 40 years or so – the alderman-candidate he supported lost by one vote. Yes, you heard me – one vote. So, the losing campaign asked a judge for a recount. The judge in turn asked what irregularities they had observed that would justify his granting a recount. They said they had none (they neglected to instruct their scrutineers to record any they may have witnessed) but they felt that a recount was warranted because of the closeness of the result. The judge declined the request, explaining that a mere dissatisfaction with the result is not enough to justify judicial intervention. To justify a recount, at least one specific complaint about wrongdoing in the process was needed. My friend told that story to every batch of new scrutineers he trained. His larger message was that complaints about voting irregularities are irrelevant if they are unsupported by evidence.

This is not the first time Donald Trump has made specious charges about a rigged election. The first time was after he got shellacked in the Wyoming and Colorado primaries where won no delegates. He lost because those states have a complicated caucus process that requires a strong ground game, one that Ted Cruz had and that Trump completely lacked. Instead of acknowledging his error and congratulating the winner like a good sport, he screamed that the system was ‘rigged’, and that it was undemocratic because he received no delegates. Surely, there must have been Trump supporters in those states, he charged (conveniently ignoring the fact that he won every delegate in the Florida primary in spite of the fact that the other candidates collectively won more than 50% of the vote).

That he himself believed these charges to be without merit can be seen from the fact that the Trump campaign did not legally contest the result of either state primary, nor did it make any specific complaint at any time. It was clear that Trump’s only purpose in his empty allegations was to tarnish his opponent’s entirely fair victories.

Though I had supported Ted Cruz until that point, I was not yet turned overtly hostile to Donald Trump. But after that disgraceful incident, the scales fell from my eyes. Donald Trump wasn’t merely less preferable than Ted Cruz. I was beginning to see that he is morally unfit to be President.

A widespread belief among the framers of the US Constitution was that a republic can be maintained only by a moral people. Among the many things this means, it means that the people contesting an elections have a moral duty to not be sore losers. Tracking and reporting specific irregularities and wrongdoings is fine. So is fighting for justice for yourself. In fact, doing so is your patriotic duty. (For this reason I think Nixon was wrong in not challenging the results of Texas and Illinois.)

But to call the fairness of an election into question simply because you don’t like the results – or because you had a bad week on the stump - is the height of bad sportsmanship. It is also fundamentally dishonest, irresponsible, and unpatriotic.

Comments

[WiseGuy]

In the 2012 Presidential election, there were 59 voting divisions in Philadelphia that reported zero votes for Mitt Romney. Black Panthers were widely reported to be intimidating voters in these divisions. They were recorded on video.
In Ohio there is a voting district that voted 108% for Obama. These incidents are subversive.
An experienced politician would not bring these things up, but Trump is popular because he is not an experienced politician.

[Cincinnatus]

I am aware of these discrepancies and am concerned about them. If Trump had confined his comments to concerns about past voter discrepancies in districts dominated by Dems, I would be wholeheartedly endorsing those comments.

But to imply that the entire election is hopeless because it is 'rigged', this goes way beyond any evidence. It is incendiary, irresponsible and needlessly poisons the body politic.

What Donald Trump is doing right now is auditioning to be a statesman. These comments (among many others) prove that he is flunking out,

[WiseGuy]

Traditionally these things were called "gaffs". Trump is judged to a standard Hillary is not. Hillary calously said "At this point, what difference does it make?"in reference to Americans, killed because of her actions,...which she lied about,...and continues to lie about. How can this be less of an issue than a series of gaffs by a neophyte politician?

[Gerry Ewert]

But statesmen have been what has created the mess so perhaps it is time for a non-statesman. I will admit a lot of ambivalence about Trump but he is right given the insistence by Dems against voter ID. I don't think he said it was hopeless but it was a warning that there needs to be better vigilance given that O'Keefe was able to vote as the rapper Einmen (spelling?) particularly in close districts

[monkey]

"In the 2012 Presidential election, there were 59 voting divisions in Philadelphia that reported zero votes for Mitt Romney. Black Panthers were widely reported to be intimidating voters in these divisions. They were recorded on video.
In Ohio there is a voting district that voted 108% for Obama. These incidents are subversive.
An experienced politician would not bring these things up, but Trump is popular because he is not an experienced politician."

While there may have been some who voted who shouldn't have it's mathematically impossible it would have flipped those states. Almost all those precincts were over 90% African-American and inner city so the GOP likely would have gotten in the low single digits. Although Romney got 6% of the African-American vote, I suspect he probably got over 10% amongst those living the suburbs or the middle and upper class African-American community. People's politics are heavily influenced by those around them so if everyone where you live votes one way, most will follow. I should note Romney did have some 100% precincts although all in rural areas with a lot fewer votes. In Utah is where you had the majority of them but a few in Mississippi as well. Otherwise voter fraud and intimidation is illegal, but only if you can prove it would have altered the results can you have them overturned and in both Pennsylvania and Ohio Obama's margin of victory while small as a percentage, was several 100,000 votes well above the number of votes in those precincts. In recent elections, Missouri 2008, Florida and Wisconsin 2000 are the only ones I can think of that were close enough where this might have mattered.

[Ward]

No he is not auditioning to be a statesman. That is the last thing America and the world needs. Another phoney

Trump did not come off a particularly bad week he came off a week where the media decided to amplify his comments while ignoring those of his opponent.

Remarkable that you seem to think this election is about statesmanship rather than the Dems fielding a candidate who should have been charged with espionage and treason among other things.

When you cannot recognize that the Dems, FBI, justice dept, and msm along with the federal bureaucracy are all on one side and are transparently corrupt, I am left to wonder if you are simply a liberal.

This honestly belongs on a dem chat forum

[Cincinnatus]

Dear Ward:

Just because America currently has the worst ruling class ever (as Instapundit's famously put it), it doesn't mean it can't get worse.

And just because its current leaders are incompetent, it doesn't mean the rules of statecraft cease to apply. Ignoring the timeless rules of strategy will only ensure that that a bad situation will get much worse.

[old white guy]

the system is corrupt to the core.

[WiseGuy]

The current leaders are not "incompetent" they are criminal, with malicious intent.

[Cincinnatus]

example #1 of a criminal leader with malicious intent: a mobbed-up NY real estate developer openly in cahoots with America's declared enemies.

[Autoguy]

Gotta disagree. Example #1 is the D candidate who rigged the system to get the nomination, who manages to get the media to run their stories through her campaign, who lies constantly, even lying about what Comey said about her emails, who should be in jail, who has been using her office as SecState to shake down foreign 'donors' for money for the Clinton Foundation.

THAT is example NUMBER ONE. Far more dangerous than Trump.

[Joe]

While I am by no means a Trump fan I have to agree with him that the American elections are no longer worthy of respect. The number of districts where more people voted than live and the number of districts that ALL vote for one person indicates voter fraud on a large scale. We Canadians are not immune either. Landslide Annie had a few (prestuffed) ballot boxes show up unexpectedly to put her over the top. It would seem people were voting from their office and their home. Once the fraud became well known landslide annie lost the next election.