{"id":13619,"date":"2016-10-17T04:50:51","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T04:50:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=13619"},"modified":"2016-10-17T04:50:51","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T04:50:51","slug":"officials-fight-donald-trump-claims-of-a-rigged-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/officials-fight-donald-trump-claims-of-a-rigged-vote.html","title":{"rendered":"Officials Fight Donald Trump Claims of a Rigged Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Officials Fight Donald Trump Claims of a Rigged Vote<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Officials Fight Donald Trump Claims of a Rigged Vote:-<\/strong> Republican leaders and election officials from both parties on Sunday sought to combat claims by Donald J. Trump that the election is rigged against him, amid signs that Mr. Trump\u2019s contention is eroding confidence in the vote and setting off talk of rebellion among his supporters.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a vivid illustration of how Mr. Trump is shattering American political norms, the Republican nominee is alleging that a conspiracy is underway between the news media and the Democratic Party to commit vast election fraud. He has offered no evidence to support his claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary \u2014 but also at many polling places \u2014 SAD,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump made the incendiary assertion hours after his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, tried to play down Mr. Trump\u2019s questioning of the fairness of the election. Mr. Pence said on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d that he and Mr. Trump \u201cwill absolutely accept the result of the election.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s words, though, appear to be having an effect on his supporters, and are setting off deep concern among civil rights groups. According to an Associated Press poll last month, only one-third of Republicans said they had a great deal of confidence their votes would be counted fairly. And election officials are worried that Mr. Trump\u2019s continued pressing of the issue could dampen turnout or cause his supporters to deny the legitimacy of the results if he loses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, Mr. Trump called the presidential election \u201cone big fix\u201d and \u201cone big, ugly lie.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jon A. Husted, the secretary of state of Ohio, said it was \u201cwrong and engaging in irresponsible rhetoric\u201d for any candidate to question the integrity of elections without evidence. Mr. Husted, a Republican, said he would have no reason to hesitate to certify the results of the election.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have made it easy to vote and hard to cheat,\u201d Mr. Husted said Sunday in an interview. \u201cWe are going to run a good, clean election in Ohio, like we always do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

American elections are, unlike those in many democracies, largely decentralized, rendering the possibility of large-scale fraud extraordinarily unlikely. Further, the balloting in many of the hardest-fought states will be overseen by Republican officials, individuals who would be highly unlikely to consent to helping Mrs. Clinton rig the vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Ashby, a Republican election lawyer, said Mr. Trump\u2019s attacks on the electoral process were unprecedented and risked creating a fiasco on Election Day. Mr. Ashby also said that Mr. Trump was \u201cdestabilizing\u201d the election by encouraging his supporters to deputize themselves as amateur poll monitors, outside the bounds of the law.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s going to create a disturbance and, played out in polling places across the country, it has the potential to destabilize the election,\u201d Mr. Ashby said, \u201cwhich is very, very dangerous.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s claims, a little more than three weeks before the election, are once again forcing elected Republicans into a difficult spot as they try to balance offering assurances of the integrity of the election while not undercutting a standard-bearer many of their voters fervently support.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur secretary of state, Ken Detzner, has been very focused on making sure we have a smooth election,\u201d said Jackie Schutz, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, noting that Mr. Scott\u2019s \u201cgoal is 100 percent participation and zero percent fraud.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Representatives of other Republican governors offered only a terse \u201cyes\u201d when asked if their state\u2019s balloting would be conducted fairly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet other Republicans are appalled at Mr. Trump\u2019s claims of widespread fraud, which are now a staple of his stump speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so irresponsible because what he\u2019s doing really goes to the heart of our democracy,\u201d said Trey Grayson, a Republican and former secretary of state of Kentucky. \u201cWhat is great about America is that we change our leaders at the ballot box, not by bullets,\u201d Mr. Grayson said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, some of Mr. Trump\u2019s loyal backers are rousing one another with talk of insurrection should Mr. Trump be defeated.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Wisconsin, David A. Clarke Jr., the sheriff of Milwaukee County, posted on Twitter on Saturday that it was \u201cpitchforks and torches time,\u201d along with a photograph of an angry mob wielding weapons. Mr. Clarke addressed the Republican National Convention in July and appears regularly on television as a Trump campaign surrogate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, elements of Mr. Trump\u2019s crowds have turned violent. At a rally in North Carolina on Friday, in which he alleged a large-scale conspiracy against him, one supporter lashed out physically at a protester in the crowd. And a CBS affiliate in Virginia reported over the weekend that pro-Trump demonstrators had flashed firearms outside the office of a Democratic congressional candidate near Charlottesville, in a threatening signal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Republicans are also facing signs of menace: A party office in North Carolina was set on fire and spray-painted over the weekend, an act Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter was the act of \u201canimals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, Mr. Trump\u2019s campaign surrogates have not hesitated to join him in questioning the fairness of the electoral process: Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, both advisers to Mr. Trump, used TV interviews on Sunday to suggest that Democrats tended to cheat in elections, accusing them of counting votes from dead people.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Mr. Trump\u2019s closest congressional supporter and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has warned that \u201cthey are attempting to rig this election.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Civil rights groups have begun to express alarm at remarks from Mr. Trump that they see as goading his supporters to intimidate minorities at the polls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Arturo Vargas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials Education Fund, said he planned to formally contact the Justice Department as soon as this week, to ask that it guard against the kind of voting disruptions Mr. Trump has encouraged.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a major concern that we have this candidate promoting vigilante poll watching,\u201d Mr. Vargas said.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Michael Podhorzer, the political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that progressive groups were deeply concerned about the possibility of disruptions at the polls on Election Day. Mr. Podhorzer said that Mr. Trump\u2019s recent comments about a rigged election had the potential to \u201cincite violence and bloodshed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Podhorzer said that Democrats would be closely monitoring polling places for signs of interference in states where voters can cast their ballots before Election Day.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe will start to see whether folks are out intimidating voters in predominantly African-American communities, and at least get a sense of what direction that might be going in,\u201d Mr. Podhorzer said, adding of Mr. Trump\u2019s speech, \u201cThis is beyond the pale.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Other Democrats were just as bothered but also amused about the unlikely prospect of a vast fraud plot unfolding at thousands of disparate polling places. \u201cHe\u2019s fine with the system when he wins the primary, but now he\u2019s pre-emptively claiming precinct-level fraud?\u201d said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, calling Mr. Trump\u2019s language \u201cunambiguously racist, but also absurd, ludicrous and pathetic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Even Paul D. Ryan, the speaker of the House, who just last week all but removed himself from the presidential campaign, was forced to issue a statement. \u201cOur democracy relies on confidence in election results, and the speaker is fully confident the states will carry out this election with integrity,\u201d said Mr. Ryan\u2019s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Pence is trying to walk a fine line. The governor, in a series of Sunday television interviews, sought to portray Mr. Trump\u2019s criticism of the electoral process as relating entirely to what he described as unfair news media coverage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/10\/17\/us\/politics\/donald-trump-election-rigging.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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