Saturday, October 22, 2016

Trump: The Election is Rigged!

Sometimes we attack the message because we don't like the messenger.

Trump is absolutely correct that elections are rigged.

American elections are rigged and do not represent the will of the voters.

The error Trump made is saying the "voting" is rigged. Polling places and voting are the least of our problems (although it's been shown that absentee ballots are often misplaced, electronic voting systems can be easily hacked and there are occasional blocked polls or very long lines at key precincts). The voting isn't the problem: but the overall election process absolutely IS rigged:

- the electoral votes system provides complete mathematical disadvantage to certain people depending on their state - the worst example being Hawaii where those American citizens have zero (yes zero!) mathematical chance of having any effect whatsoever on the election

- the state by state winner take all electoral system is an embarrassment - among many problems this limits the number of truly meaningful votes to less than 10% of our population - if you live in a state like Massachusetts, your vote simply doesn't matter or have any realistic chance of affecting the outcome

- Gerrymandering: electoral maps are drawn with no resemblance to fairness or geography or to reflect the voters but purely for outright manipulation of the outcome

- a group of republicans and democrats vote to decide if other parties will be allowed in the debates

- the media and polling systems are laughably corrupt -for example, CNN and Fox both arbitrarily excluded people under age 35 (the largest voting block) and only used land lines for polling - a poll that excludes the largest voting block AND the most common means of communication is not a poll at all, its propaganda masquerading as data

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