Rigged Election Just Another Trump Falsehood

Whether or not you agree with Mr. Trump on immigration, the economy or just about anything else there is one thing that should frighten every American whether a patriot or not. Trump’s repeated and apparently serious remarks that he will only accept the validity of the election results on November 8 if he is the winner ought to put fear in the heart of us all. His claims that the election is already rigged against him without a single reference to why he believes that or offering a sliver of evidence should cause anyone who believes in Democracy and the peaceful transition of power to disavow him.

Confidence in the validity of election results is the cornerstone of our democracy and while Texas Republicans claim, also without evidence, that the only way to insure the integrity of the vote is to require a limited number of photo ID’s in order to vote they haven’t offered any evidence of voter impersonation fraud either. In fact, as reported by the Washington Post, there have only been 31 credible cases of voter impersonation fraud since 2000 with over 1 billion votes cast in that time. Even the Republican Secretary of State in Ohio, Jon Husted, who is on record pushing the voter impersonation fraud story, has admonished Trump for has baseless claims.

Not only is there no evidence that voter impersonation fraud is wide spread as Trump asserts it would be a remarkably inefficient way to steal a presidential election or even a gubernatorial election. To insure a change of result in Texas someone would have to motivate and coordinate hundreds of thousands individuals to vote twice or 50,000 to vote 5 times each. Now can you honestly say that a conspiracy of that magnitude could possibly be kept quiet? If you can, I’ll send you a roll of tin foil because you need more than just the tin foil hat you’re already wearing.

As for computer hacking to swing the election that too is a bridge too far since such a conspiracy would require simultaneous intrusions into the voting systems in a dozen swing states most of which like Texas use different systems or at least different versions in various counties. Then because most are never connected to the internet and therefore not able to be remotely accessed hacking would require conspirators on the ground at many counties in many states. Again it is unimaginable that such a conspiracy could be kept quiet.

Since we should therefore be comforted that our electoral process is secure from perfidy and anyone running for office or leading a campaign should know it; the only purpose a presidential candidate of any party can have for making such baseless claims is to cause the chaos and disruption that would start a civil war.

Most of you have seen pictures of Syrian or Iraqi cities and read about the millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands of dead civilians there. Imagine major cities in the U.S. torn apart on the basis of false accusations of a stolen election and consider the damage such careless remarks could do here. Trump’s comments bigoted comments on various ethnic and religious minorities suggest he’s preparing to offer scapegoats just like Europe once did to Jews and Gypsies.

I had planned to write a positive column on the benefits of Democratic Party policies but “The Donald’s” unacceptable claims are too dangerous to ignore.

Published in the Seguin Gazette October 28, 2016