Of Course Our Elections Are Rigged
Donald Trump thinks the elections are rigged, and he is (accidentally) right. So who is doing the rigging?
A. Legislators are rigging elections. They do this in three ways:
1. After each census, reapportionment takes place. In order to achieve 1 man/1 vote, legislative districts have to be redrawn, and some states lose, or gain, congressional representation. The party that controls the legislature after the census is in a position to redraw legislative boundaries as it sees fit, except that egregious gerrymandering is liable to result in court challenges.
2. Legislatures are able to suppress voter participation by setting up requirements that amount to a barriers to undesirable voters -- like having to have an official state ID. Or, the number of voting stations can be reduced, so that the wait in line is long.
3. Felons can be temporarily or permanently banned from voting. If there were just a few thousand felons, it wouldn't matter. There are, however, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two, felons. That's enough to make a difference. Given the pattern of crime in the black communities, and given the habits of law enforcement, a lot of the felons are blacks and blacks tend to vote Democratic. It pays Republicans to keep these riff raff out of voting booths
B. The political parties that organize the promotion of candidates to stand for, and win, elections control the process from precinct caucuses through the national convention, and then help or hinder the candidate who has been selected. The parties usually don't have to crudely control party members. If the party members are divided in who they want, the party has to negotiate to make the selection.
C. Candidates have control over their own campaigns, from sending up trial balloons to media blitzes in the last few days before the election. They make deals to win support. Deals = money.
D. Wealthy individuals can help bankroll a candidate, or give them meaninglessly small amounts of money. Candidates without money are SOL. (Running campaigns entails a host of large expenses.)
E. The printed and electronic press has a vital role to play, both in what they say, about whom, and what they choose not to say. If a decisions is made in editorial offices of a paper to ignore a candidate (maybe Jill Stein of the Green Party) then those who read that newspaper won't see any news about Jill Stein. If news room editors are all pretty much agreed that minor candidates aren't worth the bullets to shoot them with, then the public at large won't see much about any minor candidate. If Jesus was on a third party ticket, he could kiss his chances good bye. (It's safe to say that the two major parties wouldn't touch Jesus with a 10 foot pole.)
The standards news editors use to determine who is worth covering are not some recondite algorithm. It's pretty much plain and simple: we'll cover two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican. That's it. Minor party candidates can go fuck themselves. It's too messy and difficult to cover their various screwy, unpopular, odd-ball views on things--like single payer health insurance or passing a carbon tax.
So, are elections rigged, or not? I agree with Trump on this issue: Elections are most definitely rigged.
A. Legislators are rigging elections. They do this in three ways:
1. After each census, reapportionment takes place. In order to achieve 1 man/1 vote, legislative districts have to be redrawn, and some states lose, or gain, congressional representation. The party that controls the legislature after the census is in a position to redraw legislative boundaries as it sees fit, except that egregious gerrymandering is liable to result in court challenges.
2. Legislatures are able to suppress voter participation by setting up requirements that amount to a barriers to undesirable voters -- like having to have an official state ID. Or, the number of voting stations can be reduced, so that the wait in line is long.
3. Felons can be temporarily or permanently banned from voting. If there were just a few thousand felons, it wouldn't matter. There are, however, hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or two, felons. That's enough to make a difference. Given the pattern of crime in the black communities, and given the habits of law enforcement, a lot of the felons are blacks and blacks tend to vote Democratic. It pays Republicans to keep these riff raff out of voting booths
B. The political parties that organize the promotion of candidates to stand for, and win, elections control the process from precinct caucuses through the national convention, and then help or hinder the candidate who has been selected. The parties usually don't have to crudely control party members. If the party members are divided in who they want, the party has to negotiate to make the selection.
C. Candidates have control over their own campaigns, from sending up trial balloons to media blitzes in the last few days before the election. They make deals to win support. Deals = money.
D. Wealthy individuals can help bankroll a candidate, or give them meaninglessly small amounts of money. Candidates without money are SOL. (Running campaigns entails a host of large expenses.)
E. The printed and electronic press has a vital role to play, both in what they say, about whom, and what they choose not to say. If a decisions is made in editorial offices of a paper to ignore a candidate (maybe Jill Stein of the Green Party) then those who read that newspaper won't see any news about Jill Stein. If news room editors are all pretty much agreed that minor candidates aren't worth the bullets to shoot them with, then the public at large won't see much about any minor candidate. If Jesus was on a third party ticket, he could kiss his chances good bye. (It's safe to say that the two major parties wouldn't touch Jesus with a 10 foot pole.)
The standards news editors use to determine who is worth covering are not some recondite algorithm. It's pretty much plain and simple: we'll cover two candidates, one Democrat and one Republican. That's it. Minor party candidates can go fuck themselves. It's too messy and difficult to cover their various screwy, unpopular, odd-ball views on things--like single payer health insurance or passing a carbon tax.
So, are elections rigged, or not? I agree with Trump on this issue: Elections are most definitely rigged.
Comments (42)
I've never understood former felons' permanent voting disenfranchisement at all, or how it can pass constitutional muster. Once a person has served his (or her) debt to society, they should be able rejoin said society and cast their vote like every other citizen who is of age and who has registered to do so.
Even so, this is a long period of time during which a citizen cannot vote. Why shouldn't felons in prison vote? If they are citizens they should have that right, one might argue, if for no other reason to remind them that they are still part of the national community. After all, if they can vote while they are accumulating their debt to society; why not let them vote while they are paying it off.
I was researching that topic and came across an interesting approach by Brian Olson, which applies a relatively simple geographical algorithm to census and topological data to automatically create voting districts. here is his blog and his Ted Talk:
It creates supposedly fair districts. There is some arbitrariness on the edges, where it has been suggested that people can trade districts along those edges in public.
Looking at the algorithm, there seemed to be some possible abuse by forcing people to move between districts to unbalance the election again. It seems enough to simply prevent people who get elected from being able to choose how votes will be distributed.
1. Electoral boundaries are set by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), which is constituted in such a way as to give it strong independence from the government of the day.
2. Voting is always a Saturday, so as to inconvenience voters as little as possible, voting booths are located and administered by the (aforesaid independent) AEC, and no identification is required for voters.
3. Felons are only disqualified from voting in the Federal election if their sentence is more than three years and, unlike the US, disenfranchisement ceases when the sentence is completed. This is not ideal, as there's no justification for any disenfranchisement, but it pales into insignificance relative to what goes on in the US. The biggest factor though, is that the our incarceration rate is less than one quarter that of the US (although, to our shame, still about three times that of the North European countries).
The problems further down your list, we have too, but not nearly as badly as in the US - apparently the world's most free country.
They are "rigged" -- but I don't think as explicitly as they think. The system reached some basic evolutionary balance -- like predators and prey, in nature -- one can't survive without the other. In fact, the system seems to be rigged to protect Trump, regardless of whatever he does or whatever comes out of his mouth. Either side could have easily completely defeated their opponents if they wanted to, but they need each other to keep some psychological forward momentum.
But then, a lot of these calls for the election being "rigged", are really just "dog whistle" calls to create trouble during and after the election.
Yeah yeah, I know, dog whistles are very high pitched and supposedly only dogs can hear them. I don't remember hearing the expression "dog whistle" applied to provocative political speech until just recently -- like in the last 2 months.
"Kick the can down the road" was another one. "Kick the can" is a childhood hide and seek game, but all of a sudden, everybody was "kicking the can down the road" instead of putting action off until later. It arrived, became a noxious verbal weed, and then stopped abruptly.
Well, in the US, in a majority of states--40 out of 50--disenfranchisement ceases when the sentence is completed too.
Apparently, the term originally came from opinion polls in the 1980's.
Ironic. Trump claims the elections are rigged (against him) but it is the fact that they are rigged (to sustain a two party system) that has allowed someone so despised as he to have any chance at all of winning the presidency. As many of his voters will be voting against the other (also widely despised) candidate as for his candidacy. It's doubly ironic that most of the rigging is on the conservative side in working to deny likely Democrat voters their suffrage. But this is like Trump's complaints against the media - what he rails against is very often what has got him where he is.
Other studies support the same conclusion with less direct in-your-face evidence such as a twenty year study by Princeton that concluded no matter who was elected to office only the top 10% of the wealthiest ever got anything they wanted. Some 60% of Americans consistently insist that the government and mass media they call "evil" lie to them for their own protection even when as few as 7% approve of their own congress. Its Three Stooges slapstick of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil explaining why a huge professional wrestling fan and reality TV star has absconded with the republican party. The lights are on, but nobody is home and in ten years of asking people if they even know the simple distinction between a lynch mob and democracy I have yet to hear the correct answer.
Notably, Americans have always tended to vote along strictly racial and religious lines, yet, whichever candidate advertises more tends to win. The truth simply no longer matters when the only way to sway an election differently is to advertise more than your opponent. Its the mentality of cattle merely following the food right over the cliff when they stampede and arguing about who is blame all the way down.
The Democrats have done more to deny their own voters a voice by what they did to Bernie.
I agree that the elections are rigged to sustain a two party system. Obama has said that America needs a Republican, or opposition party, but this is only so that they can blame the opposition party for everything and anything - to divert blame and attention from one to the other. The whole point is to divide us and make us fight and blame each other instead of the whole system. People will still go and vote for Trump or Hillary - as if they are the only choices.
If you have a good idea as to how to make sure voters are authenticated so that they can't vote more than once, then I'm all ears. I don't see what the big fuss is about in making people identify themselves before voting. Why participate at all if there is no faith in the system?
This will have 4.5 million views in 2 days!
Part 2 is even worse!
Again with this O'Keefe video? You do know that O'Keefe is a demonstrated fraud and liar, right? I already pointed this out to you in another thread, but you apparently have an unwavering faith in O'Keefe's "journalistic" skills. You are just spamming now.
This just proves my point about Hillary: despite decades of scrutiny from the right, all they have to hit her with is fabricated scandals and non-issues. If this person is such a terrible politician and statesman (as the right has been bleating for years), why do conservatives need to constantly lie, distort, and dissemble in order to attack her? Wouldn't her actual words and deeds suffice? Perhaps there's no "there" there for them to find?
You forget one thing: in politics anything goes. If I can make my opponent even worse than he/she actually is, why not do it?
It's amusing/depressing that Trump is happy to accept polling results when they break his way, and yet doubts them or rejects them outright when they start trending away from him (the "taxicab fallacy"). It's also ironic that one hears the never-ending drumbeat from the right about how "the media" is against Trump, and yet Fox News has been basically nothing but a free source of good press for him (at least in the general election). Fox News, you will recall, is the most-highly-rated cable news station! It takes some cognitive gymnastics to claim that the media is out to get you when the highest-rated cable news station is in the tank for you.
I would also remind Trump supporters that the Wikileaks attacks have been exclusively directed at the Clinton camp. Julian Assange himself has a personal beef with Clinton (over what, exactly, I'm not sure), and is doing everything in his power to keep her from getting elected. Thus far, it hasn't really been working, because, as I've said, there's really no "there" there when it comes to Clinton. Most of the hot items (and there seem to have been few of those) pertain to things her staffers or surrogates have said or done, and not the candidate directly. That being the case, perhaps the Clinton campaign should go after Steve Bannon (the Trump campaign's CEO) for his awfulness, including spousal battery.
Ask the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) and Watergate-disgraced president Richard M. Nixon how well that approach worked.
So you're saying that in politics people will not use all weapons they have against each other, including propaganda and unfair ones?
Trump insists that the elections are rigged such that he and those who support him are the victims of a fraud that the riggers are not victim to.
What you describe is a rigging that affects all parties equally.
That is not what Trump is trying to communicate to his supporters.
Propaganda, I expect, but it shouldn't be presented as "fact". "Unfair" is a bit vague. What is fair and foul? What Nixon & company did was not merely "unfair", it was illegal. What was worse, is that he persisted in his illegality by attempting to cover up the crime.
You can't do business if people aren't honest. The economy, and most other institutions, are able to "do business" because most people are honest most of the time.
Politicians who are not honest undermine politics -- expressing the will of the people. One of the consequences of repeatedly failing to express the people's will is low-voter turnout. Why vote if the politicians are not being honest about what they are going to do once in office?
I don't think most politicians do "use all the weapons they have against each other" but it is very common for politicians to either not reveal their real plans for their term(s) in office, or to flatly misrepresent their plans. That is a bigger problem in some ways than dirty tricks, bugging your opponents phone, or stealing their mailing lists. Indeed, not revealing the truth about what is planned is pretty much de rigueur.
Is it illegal to send covert US foreign policy details via an insecure server to someone's gmail account, who doesn't even have security clearance?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/14068
Republicans in Congress tried very hard to nail Clinton for something illegal, and haven't been successful. Perhaps the lady is inconveniently innocent.
I have a tiny bit of experience in high security stuff. Imagine it is World War II and you have just intercepted a telegraph from Churchill. Are you going to take it at face value, or maybe be suspicious that they meant for you to intercept it. They still do things like that. I have worked with companies where most employees know to put "confidential" anywhere in the subject line to have the message encrypted -- and only send it to emails within the same server. My guess it is just a big distraction so people don't pay attention to the really heavy and dangerous crimes going on. I'm pretty sure you could pin treason or war crimes on her, which is really just a continuation of Bush and prior policies. The fact that nobody is addressing that part makes me wonder if there is a bigger con game going on.
I noticed during tonight's debate, there was a lot of blame for things in the past, without mentioning those who were responsible -- like blaming each other for supporting the invasion of Iraq, without any mention of Bush, Cheney or the rest. It seems weird that Republicans always have to reach all the way back to Reagan to find a Republican president they can be proud of. It seems like a lot of deflection and deception to avoid some deeper honesty.
Don't worry: Trump's rational and highly-educated team of poll watchers will ensure a fair election takes place. I can't imagine that causing any problems.
Well then you should understand the implications of Obama denying he knew about Hillary's illegal email server.
We now know, thanks to the 13th tranche of Podesta emails, published by Wikileaks, that Obama was lying, and that his Blackberry email address at the time was [email protected]
And, apparently you can be removed from the Terror List by giving a donation to the Clinton Foundation. That is what Algeria did:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22638#efmAbzAg1Ag2AhWAiAAiKAkEAsy
There is no implication about Obama denying anything. He, like previous presidents can call it a matter of "national security", and the condemn the wikileaks as a threat to that national security. But for some bizarre reason that issue is more important than, say, publicly targeting a US citizen for assassination for his political views, or finding out that the NSA records and searches records of US citizens without a warrant, (a violation of the 4th amendment). (Many liberals denounced and swore never to support Obama over those issues). Clinton has rarely even commented or disagreed with any of those policies.
By focusing on relatively minor issues, on both sides, it sounds to me like someone is trying to make sure that both sides are kept about even.
I'm reticent to formulate any conclusive opinions on this as of yet, I only just last night and have not gotten a chance to investigate things more deeply, but one thing I have found which lends credulity to this exposé is that the individuals it features seem to have been unceremoniously defrocked and excommunicated.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/18/undercover-video-shows-democrats-saying-they-hire-/
Generally in order to answer the question "how damning is this?" I would first try to get a sense of the actual gravity of the particular grievances the film airs before trying to get a sense of how representative of the democratic party (or even both major parties) these grievances are as a whole (which might be decidedly difficult).
This is what trump meant by "paying people to beat people up" I guess...
That said! There is over 4000 words in this thread and only two references to Jill Stein.
Don't vote for the idiot or the corrupt one, vote greens.
Having problems with that? Rewatch the Idiocracy scene when the discussion on watering plants with something other than Brawndo takes place. - Voting for Jill is literally as plainly obvious as watering plants with water. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3boy_tLWeqA)
I don't think anyone visiting these forums needs a reminder that there are idiots out there. So please, as cognitive thinkers, take lead and point out the obviousness of how to proceed, there has never been a better time, literally even the idiots are prep'd to listen to actual reason in face of an obvious rigged election.
Nope.
Not even strictly in support of all her policies. However, an inanimate walnut would be less of a threat to the species survival than Trump or Clinton, sooooo, vote Jill! ^_^
It seems like a lot of people are saying that the "elections are rigged", but then refer to the campaign not the election itself. What Trump seems to be saying is the actual ballot/voting process is "rigged", so if he doesn't win, you will know that it was due to some conspiracy to make sure he doesn't win, and not the true voice of the people. There is very little information on how they think the election will be rigged, although some are mentioning many people being registered to vote who "shouldn't be". But the evidence is that there have only been 31 official cases of voter fraud in the past 16 years.
If we are talking about campaigns. Well, we have evidence of tampering from every side for a long time. The Watergate scandal was probably the most public evidence. There was some evidence that the Democrat party had sought to sabotage Bernie Sanders' nomination. Politics was probably always dirty, we just have a better lens into it.
Quoting Lexovix
I've been planning on voting for Jill Stein since the election got started. But it is maybe not good advice for everyone. I live in a "blue state", with a 95% chance of going to Hillary. That is where my state goes no matter how I vote, so I might as well vote for whoever I want just to give them a chance next election. I would even support people voting for Gary Johnson since he has the largest following of any 3rd party candidate, voting for him might push him into "major party" status and a 3-party election would be more choices even if he doesn't win. Also, nobody has mentioned Gloria la Riva, of the Peace and Feedom Party, who is on my ballot, (3 women and 2 men!). If you are in a swing or battleground state, then you need a really good reason for not voting for Trump or HIllary.
Even though I like the movie Idiocracy, I don't think it is that persuasive an analogy, (anyone could say the same thing). Maybe a better approach is that Jill Stein is much closer to Bernie Sanders on issues, (main difference is she isn't silent on the issue of guns). She is the highest polling candidate who is against further military action in the Middle-East. I don't agree with her on a lot of the issues, or even what she says about the other candidates.
We could also all get behind Gary Johnson, because, as the Libertarian Party likes to say, "they want to get hired to a job so they can make it obsolete".
By rigged I was referring to the idea of presidents being selected, not elected. By that I mean; and firstly, I am nice person, except I would of put Goebbels out of business had I been insane enough to support that (whatever word is incredibly worse than depravity). Swaying public opinion and ensuring the selected, is elected.
I would like to point out that I am Australian and your understanding on whatever you lot call whatever is going on ever there, that at least, used to be called an election, is beyond my own.
Hadn't actually realized Gary Johnson's was closest to the point, for example.
Uh, so to offering what I can. Psychologically, the growing controversy over climate change will I think escalate throughout the next decade, this should in turn increase the amount of voters considering voting Greens. From what I understand, the threshold to get into the debates is 15%? Climate change is not exactly a casual topic and with that I do not feel as though reaching 15% would be overly difficult for a party that literally advocates environmentalism by way of it's name.
Getting the parties that aren't in it for the ego together for some hardcore strategy could literally be the reason life exists in 2099.
Side note, someone already connected over there wanna fly me over? Happy to unite the species in my spare time, this vehicle is confusingly ahead of its time.
Sometimes you feel like this in the US:
In US debates, nobody is talking about climate change. It seems most talk, even within the US Green Party has been to change the subject to investing in clean energy or carbon taxes. I've lived in several countries, even spent a month in Australia, and know that all that talk is useless. In fact, I've been following a lot of scientific discussions saying we have less than 15 years. The Green Party seems to have put more focus on Bernie Sander's promises about cancelling school loan debts.
Very little bothers me to a greater extent than fools that think their participation in existence is limited to once ever and they spend that time as advocates or at least facilitators, of violence, prejudice and greed.
Very few ways to create a greater amount of complacent and docile beings scared of speaking out against corruption incase their *'"only"'* appearance in existence is snuffed out, than to have them parroting yolo based monotheism ideology while being in 'the greatest country on earth'. Fairly sure a disgusting % of the population sidelines activism because they think an omnipotent being is going to fix everything.
-.-
Why only now that the election process has come under widespread scrutiny is beyond me.