A Brief History of Rigged Elections

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.”

You can see all of Alan Schulkin’s comments caught on hidden camera here.

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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