Up In The Rigging

The Hive

With polls showing Donald Trump hurtling toward a landslide loss to Hillary Clinton, the Republican presidential nominee is already calling for a do-over. Whether it’s to save face or to set the stage for a post-election media play, Trump has effectively stopped talking about any policy issues, instead focusing his fire on the “rigged” electoral system itself. It is a message he reiterated Wednesday night during the final presidential debate, when he refused to say whether he’d accept the results of the election if he loses. “I will keep you in suspense,” he said.

A growing number of concerned Republicans are standing up and speaking out.

Among them is Chris Ashby, a lawyer specializing in election law, who has monitored elections in the United States for over 15 years. “The election is not rigged. In fact, it’s anti-rigged,” Ashby wrote in an article and in a series of tweets that went viral earlier this week. “To rig an election, you would need technological capabilities that exist only in Mission Impossible movies,” he explained—and implying otherwise risks damaging Americans’ faith in the electoral system.
We called Ashby up to walk us through why Trump’s “rigged election” rhetoric is wrong, and how it could continue to resonate beyond November 8.