Foresthill
EOG Addicted
From electoral-vote.com:
When Is an Election Rigged?
Edward Foley, a professor of constitutional law at Ohio State University, has written an important piece about how to tell the difference between an imperfect election and a rigged election. It should be required reading for all Trump supporters and maybe Biden supporters as well. The central premise is that all elections have flaws. None of them are perfect. But the key difference between a flawed election and a rigged election is that in the former, the people's choice won despite the flaws whereas in the latter (rigged election), the faults changed the winner.
The elections of 1876 and 1884 were incredibly close. Samuel Tilden (D) won the popular vote in 1876 and should have won the electoral vote but for multiple shenanigans. In the end, a congressionally appointed commission composed of eight Republicans and seven Democrats voted along party lines to hand Rutherford B. Hayes (R) the keys to the White House (in exchange for ending reconstruction). This was a rigged election. In 1884, (Stephen) Grover Cleveland (D) won New York over James Blaine (R) by 1,047 votes despite allegations of ballot stuffing and more. But in the end, the leading Republican newspaper of its time, the New York Tribune, concluded that despite all the irregularities, Cleveland really did get more legitimate votes in New York, so Blaine conceded. This was a flawed election, but not a rigged one.
Foley says that a core tenet of the American electoral system is this: "Not every defect in the voting process renders an election invalid." There are some points to absorb here. If a foreign adversary spews out disinformation and manages to convince a large number of voters to vote a certain way and they vote that way of their own free will, that does not invalidate the election. Of course, if the adversary hacks the computers and changes vote totals, that is a different story. Also, disenfranchisement of voters through the legal process (as in Florida, where an appeals court upheld a state law requiring felons to pay fees and costs before voting) may be abhorrent, but does not invalidate the election. After all, the state legislature that passed the law was elected by the people and the judges were appointed by elected presidents and confirmed by the Senate according to law.
This year again, there is sure to be disinformation, both foreign and domestic. But an argument that "the voters were too stupid to realize they were acting like useful idiots" doesn't cut it. On the other hand, if thousands of voters are illegally removed from the voting rolls by a partisan secretary of state and their absence was more than the margin of victory in that state, that would invalidate that state's results. Similarly, if the postmaster general decides not to postmark absentee ballots and they are subsequently rejected for lack of a postmark, that would invalidate the election if the number of rejected ballots exceeds the winner's margin. Another thing that would invalidate the election is not letting people who arrived before the polls closed but who were still standing on line due to chaos in the polling place at closing time cast their ballots.
Foley suggests that if the election is flawed, but not so much that it has to be thrown out (i.e., the flaws didn't change the winner), leaders of the loser's party should declare that the other party won, even if the candidate won't. Of course, if the flaws change the result, we are in deep doodoo. As (Z) has pointed out before, the South's refusal to accept the result of the 1860 election (not because it had irrefutable flaws, but because it didn't like the result), led to the deaths of 800,000 Americans (in the Civil War). There might be a lesson there. (V) (bolding, underling, and underlined parenthetical thoughts mine)
When Is an Election Rigged?
Edward Foley, a professor of constitutional law at Ohio State University, has written an important piece about how to tell the difference between an imperfect election and a rigged election. It should be required reading for all Trump supporters and maybe Biden supporters as well. The central premise is that all elections have flaws. None of them are perfect. But the key difference between a flawed election and a rigged election is that in the former, the people's choice won despite the flaws whereas in the latter (rigged election), the faults changed the winner.
The elections of 1876 and 1884 were incredibly close. Samuel Tilden (D) won the popular vote in 1876 and should have won the electoral vote but for multiple shenanigans. In the end, a congressionally appointed commission composed of eight Republicans and seven Democrats voted along party lines to hand Rutherford B. Hayes (R) the keys to the White House (in exchange for ending reconstruction). This was a rigged election. In 1884, (Stephen) Grover Cleveland (D) won New York over James Blaine (R) by 1,047 votes despite allegations of ballot stuffing and more. But in the end, the leading Republican newspaper of its time, the New York Tribune, concluded that despite all the irregularities, Cleveland really did get more legitimate votes in New York, so Blaine conceded. This was a flawed election, but not a rigged one.
Foley says that a core tenet of the American electoral system is this: "Not every defect in the voting process renders an election invalid." There are some points to absorb here. If a foreign adversary spews out disinformation and manages to convince a large number of voters to vote a certain way and they vote that way of their own free will, that does not invalidate the election. Of course, if the adversary hacks the computers and changes vote totals, that is a different story. Also, disenfranchisement of voters through the legal process (as in Florida, where an appeals court upheld a state law requiring felons to pay fees and costs before voting) may be abhorrent, but does not invalidate the election. After all, the state legislature that passed the law was elected by the people and the judges were appointed by elected presidents and confirmed by the Senate according to law.
This year again, there is sure to be disinformation, both foreign and domestic. But an argument that "the voters were too stupid to realize they were acting like useful idiots" doesn't cut it. On the other hand, if thousands of voters are illegally removed from the voting rolls by a partisan secretary of state and their absence was more than the margin of victory in that state, that would invalidate that state's results. Similarly, if the postmaster general decides not to postmark absentee ballots and they are subsequently rejected for lack of a postmark, that would invalidate the election if the number of rejected ballots exceeds the winner's margin. Another thing that would invalidate the election is not letting people who arrived before the polls closed but who were still standing on line due to chaos in the polling place at closing time cast their ballots.
Foley suggests that if the election is flawed, but not so much that it has to be thrown out (i.e., the flaws didn't change the winner), leaders of the loser's party should declare that the other party won, even if the candidate won't. Of course, if the flaws change the result, we are in deep doodoo. As (Z) has pointed out before, the South's refusal to accept the result of the 1860 election (not because it had irrefutable flaws, but because it didn't like the result), led to the deaths of 800,000 Americans (in the Civil War). There might be a lesson there. (V) (bolding, underling, and underlined parenthetical thoughts mine)