Video: Presidential Election Rules And ‘Rigged’ Theories Explained
STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – We asked students at Mississippi State, most of whom will be voting in their first presidential race, what they think about whether an election can be fixed in favor of one candidate.
“I feel like it can be rigged, because at the same time, we do live in a day and age where money is big right now. Money is the root of all evil, so that depicts towards the world in general, but Donald Trump saying it’s rigged, come on. He’s a billionaire, so it’s just, it if was to be rigged, you’re probably the main one rigging it,” says senior, Jamal Knowles.
“The media is probably looking for that too. The people who are asking them questions, are looking for a specific thing in the candidacy, and I think they may be pushing in that direction of what they think a candidate should be, instead of asking questions of the individual. I think it might be bent a little in that direction, but I don’t know if I would say it was rigged for a specific direction,” says junior, Morgan Urich.
“We wouldn’t know as the people because we’re not the ones actually counting the votes. We can only vote, so depending on the people that has the higher power to elect the people we want to run the country, those are the people that actually know, but with me thinking, maybe it could be if you don’t want someone to win, or if you do want someone to win, you could rig it that way,” says junior, Antonio Barnes.
“I don’t think it could be rigged without people finding out that it is. I mean it’s going to be obvious if something is rigged,” says junior, Molly Redferen.
It has happened before; stuffing the ballot box or voting twice. We’ve all heard the stories, but technology and poll watchers now prevent almost all cheating at local levels.
There’s four years between presidential elections, and often eight years between major party runs, which makes it easy to forget that winning the election has nothing to do with the popular vote.
It’s the electoral college, established in the constitution, that has the final say. It is a process that has stood the test of democracy.
Presidential historian, Brother Rogers, walks us through what happens with your vote, and why it is practically impossible to rig an election.
“There is no federal government in charge of the elections. Fifty states are in charge, and within those fifty states, there are cities that run their elections in a different way within those states, and then within all of those cities and small towns, there are thousands upon thousands of polling places that makes it virtually impossible to coordinate some kind of mischief.”
In fact, the electoral college determines who the next U.S. President will be. The magic number of vote for the winning presidential candidate is 270.
“The best way to think about the presidential election is, it’s not one election, but fifty separate elections. That’s because we have the electoral college, and each state casts its electoral votes for President, and it’s based on population.”
Mississippi gets six electoral votes, and those votes are based off of the majority of votes in the state.
How do we get to that number? The number of electors equals the number of members in Mississippi’s Congressional Delegation: one for each member in the House of Representatives, plus the two Senators.
“People who think that it might be rigged, think maybe Hillary Clinton is rigging it. Many battleground states, like Florida and Ohio, have Republican Governors and Republican officials who are certainly are not going to rig the election for Hillary Clinton.”
Rogers believes the rigging theory pops up because the electoral college can be a bit confusing, and some people don’t trust the government.
“Every four years, there are moves to eliminate the electoral college, but if you look back to the year 2000, when Florida was such a pivotal state in the election of George W. Bush, think about if we had to examine all fifty states instead of just examining Florida, that would not have been so good. That’s one reason we keep the electoral college.”
Rogers also says that voter fraud by impersonation, or voter fraud by illegal voting is very rare in the United States.
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