As the last days of the 2016 presidential election are near, the political climate has become increasingly charged. From accusations of sexual harassment being levied on the character of Republican Candidate, Donald Trump, to the newly revitalized e-mail scandal weighing on Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The rift between Trump and Hillary supporters has been of such a grand scale. It seems as if no bridge seems to be big enough to help find common ground between supporters of either party. For the first time, in the author’s opinion, one can finally see how the term “political circus” came to be.
One concern that seems to creep up almost every election is that recently voiced by Trump, wherein he warned that the election would be “rigged.” As reported by the Associated Press, that large scale voter fraud is happening. The truth, according to the AP however, seems to be the opposite. The AP reported that only three cases have been brought forward in the recent election, and were attributed to simple mistaken identification.
Experts state that rigging an election through voter fraud would be highly inefficient, given that there are over 9,000 jurisdictions nationwide, and hundreds of thousands of polling places. It doesn’t take much to see that, to try and coordinate such an effort and get away with it, would take a tremendous amount of resources. This being said GOP election commissioner Al Schmidt stated that it does happen from time to time, and these offenses are vigorously prosecuted.
“The real threat to the integrity of elections is irresponsible accusations that undermine confidence in the electoral process,” Schmidt stated. Let us hope that his words will help assuage any concerns people will have of the presidential election being rigged, and instead, do our civic duty and vote responsibly.
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