A Brief History of Rigged Elections, Preserving the Freedom
and Prosperity That Made America Great
In the
wake of exposures by filmmaker James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas and other
sources, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has made claims that the 2016
presidential race is “rigged” and that there’s ample evidence of dirty tricks
being played by the Democratic Party.
The
Democrats have predictably protested, with prominent members of the Party from
the president on down denying illicit activities. But the Democrats are quick
to forget that they, too, have made claims of rigged elections in the past and
likely have engaged in vote fraud themselves.
In fact,
vote fraud is something of a Democratic tradition, especially in cities where the
party’s machine politics dominates, such as President Obama’s hometown of
Chicago. In the past, large numbers of deceased persons in the city have voted,
usually for Democratic candidates.
As
admitted by New York City Election Commissioner Alan Schulkin recently on
hidden camera, New York also is no stranger to vote fraud. In a video made by
Project Veritas, Schulkin is caught saying, “People don’t realize [in] certain
[New York City] neighborhoods in particular, [Democrats] bus people around to
vote [multiple times]; they put them in a bus and go from poll site to poll
site… They get busses, and they move people around.”
Schulkin
confirmed that many minority-specific neighborhoods were targeted and that the
organization employing these tactics is the Democratic Party. Schulkin stated
the process is easy because the state of New York doesn’t have voter
identification laws; by law, voters cannot be asked to identify themselves when
they go to cast ballots.
Schulkin
went on to admit that there’s additional fraud committed with absentee ballots.
“Oh, there’s thousands of absentee ballots. I don’t know where they came from,”
he said, shrugging his shoulders. Schulkin talked about the poor process of
identifying voters. “He gave out ID cards — [New York City mayor] de Blasio…
That’s in lieu of a driver’s license, but you can use it for anything. But they
didn’t vet the people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and
say, I’m Joe Smith, I want an ID card. It’s absurd. There’s a lot of fraud — not
just voter fraud — all kinds of fraud.”
Schulkin
also admitted that certain minorities such as Muslims can cover their faces to
the point where “people don’t know who they are… [de Blasio] doesn’t care; what
does he care? Who’s going to pay for it? You are. Your tax money… Your vote
isn’t really counting because they can go in there with a burqa on, and you
don’t know if they are a voter… your vote gets discounted because they come in
with a burqa on, and they can vote.”
Even
Schulkin says he’s personally offended by this practice, claiming, “People
think that it’s a liberal thing to do, but I take my vote seriously, and I
don’t want ten other people coming in negating my vote by voting for the other
candidate when they’re not even registered voters.”
While
Democrats are clearly engaging in these illegal practices, the Democrats
themselves claimed vote rigging in both the presidential elections of 2000 and
2004.
In the
former election, Republican George W. Bush won by a very small margin, eking
out a victory in the electoral college despite not winning the popular vote.
Problems
with voting machine usability and other technical issues — including the
infamous “hanging chads” from punchcard ballots — later spurred the Help
America Vote Act (HAVA), which assisted states in upgrading their voting
machines to electronic models, but this brought with it new issues of potential
fraud.
In
Florida, a close vote resulted in a machine recount there, and Bush’s margin of
victory was roughly 300 votes before overseas ballots were counted. Democratic
nominee Al Gore sought a manual recount, and the case went all the way to the
Supreme Court before being decided in favor of Bush.
In 2004,
systemic flaws and “data irregularities” in Ohio led to Bush’s narrow victory
over Democrat John Kerry.
Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean claimed, “I’m not confident that the
election in Ohio was fairly decided… We know that there was substantial voter
suppression, and the machines were not reliable. It should not be a surprise
that the Republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate
elections. That’s what we suspect has happened.”
The state
of Ohio did not pursue investigations of potential vote fraud at the time, and
there were connections between the parent company of the firm that made the
state’s voting machines and the campaign of George W. Bush.
That
firm, Diebold Election Systems, was found to have employed felons as developers
and consultants. Also, a large percentage of the machines did not record their
results on paper ballots, which election monitors have said helps protect
against vote fraud.
It was
long ago, but the presidential election of 1876 was also disputed over 20
electoral votes from the states of Florida, South Carolina, Louisiana and
Oregon.
Confusion
over ballots and a percentage of voters who were illiterate contributed to
uncertainty over the four states’ electoral votes, and Congress had to reach a
compromise that finally saw Republican Rutherford Hayes best Democrat Samuel
Tilden in what was the smallest margin of victory in an American presidential
election (185 to 184 electoral votes), with the greatest percentage (81.8
percent) of voters participating.
These are
only the largest cases of accused vote and election fraud; there are other cases
within states and numerous examples that exist outside the United States where
results have been disputed.
Experts
say that the best way to prevent election and vote fraud is to use mechanical
ballot machines that leave a paper trail and to mandate secure voter
identification that cannot be misrepresented.
Until
such time as the U.S. implements these measures, the country’s elections are
indeed subject to vote rigging as Donald Trump has charged.
~American
Liberty Report
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