[EL] my latest op-ed in THE HILL/Trump is right: The election is rigged — but in his favor

Sun Oct 23 08:59:59 PDT 2016

In nearly 48 years of dealing with elections officials as a political consultant, the greatest frustrations have involved an attitude on the part of some that their system was the best and everyone else is wrong. It’s a turf mentality. Sure, there are the annoyances of individual polling place workers deciding to interpret things as they see fit, ask for IDs from voters when none is required, tell people they can’t have a provisional ballot because they received a vote by mail ballot, etc. That’s why we have poll watchers, armed with the phone number of the elections office to report such issues. But these kinds of things are anecdotal and infrequent.

Then there’s Pennsylvania, where apparently they have electronic voting with no paper backup and seem to think that’s just fine. (See reference to turf mentality, above.) Swing state with no ability to conduct a recount. Talk about a high value target for Putin, or whomever. 

Larry

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Schultz, David A.
Sent: Sunday, October 23, 2016 5:59 AM
To: Ilya Shapiro <IShapiro at cato.org>
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] my latest op-ed in THE HILL/Trump is right: The election is rigged — but in his favor

A nice piece Ilya.  Good job.  To embellish upon your point, there are fine lines between an election system being rigged and one that is not perfect.  No election system or democracy is perfect.  Our election system recognizes errors and therefore allows for election judges to serve as front line checks.  We then have the election officials who review them, then canvassing boards and then there are options for protesting and contesting elections and then there is the possibility for judicial review at the appellate level, and at the presidential level, we finally have the checks of Congress.  My point is that  there are multiple checks built into the system to guard against explicit rigging.  And keep in mind how decentralized the election system is and we can see the difficulty of mass conspiracy to rig elections.

In addition, there are fine lines between a candidate doing poorly because of his own performance versus others out to get him.  If candidates are performing badly in debates, have failed to reach out to new voters, or otherwise lack a compelling narrative that broadens their political base the problem is not rigging but in reality the idea that in a democracy such as ours it is about something approaching majority rule in elections.  

Finally, as I pointed out in my piece in THE HILL, the rigging of the system is not partisan so much as structural.  The structural "rigging" or bias is really one based on race and class or even one based on a bias in favor of the two major parties.  There is powerful if not overwhelming political science evidence and scholarship regarding a structural class or racial bias in American politics.  This is a bias that transcends party.

On Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 12:24 AM, Ilya Shapiro <IShapiro at cato.org <mailto:IShapiro at cato.org> > wrote:

Since we're sharing our views on the election's riggedness, here's mine in Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyashapiro/2016/10/22/theres-plenty-wrong-with-our-political-system-but-the-elections-not-rigged/

Ilya Shapiro 

Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies

Cato Institute

1000 Mass. Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20001

Tel. 202-218-4600 <tel:202-218-4600> 

Cel. 202-577-1134 <tel:202-577-1134> 

www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html <http://www.cato.org/people/shapiro.html> 

twitter.com/ishapiro <http://twitter.com/ishapiro> 

On Oct 22, 2016, at 11:40 PM, Benjamin Barr <benjamin.barr at gmail.com <mailto:benjamin.barr at gmail.com> > wrote:

My latest op-ed in the Daily Caller about how Democratic operatives rig the election--but in their favor. 

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/22/project-veritas-i-filed-an-fec-complaint-against-the-clinton-campaign-and-the-dnc/

Forward,

Benjamin Barr

Counsel

Project Veritas Action Fund

On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 11:19 AM, Schultz, David A. <dschultz at hamline.edu <mailto:dschultz at hamline.edu> > wrote:

Trump is right: The election is rigged — but in his favor

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/301747-trump-is-right-the-election-is-rigged-but-in-his

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Editor, Journal of Public Affairs Education (JPAE)
Hamline University
Department of Political Science

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My latest book:  Presidential Swing States:  Why Only Ten Matter

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FacultyRow SuperProfessor, 2012, 2013, 2014

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