‘Electoral system rigged in other ways than Trump says’

With the US 2016 presidential election just a day away, the bruising election campaign between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her Republican rival Donald Trump is drawing to a close. Press TV has invited two political analysts to discuss whether they believe the US electoral system conforms to the principles of democracy, and how important the popular vote is in the election process.

Rob Kall, editor-in chief-of opednews.com from Philadelphia, believes that the electoral system in the United States is “rigged” because it is intentionally trying “to keep people away from voting.”

Kall argued, “People are removed from voter rows. This can affect tens of thousands. That’s what happened in Florida. There were tens of thousands of people with common names like Gonzales or Smith. And they were removed from the voter rows because they had the same name as somebody else who died or was in jail or something like that.”

“The other way [in which] the system is rigged is that some states have removed voting areas where minorities [are] likely to vote,” he noted, saying that a large number of people want to vote, but that both those who try to cast their ballots in early voting or on November 8 will face long lines and for many of them, it is impossible to stand in queue for a long time during the working hours.

He also mentioned that since the voting process is not easy for the disabled, they might refuse to vote and “this is not the way a democracy should function.”

The US electoral process is not rigged in the way that Donald Trump claims, but it is “rigged” in quite different ways, he said, adding, “The Democratic primary was clearly rigged by the collusion between the mainstream media and the Clintons and the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party leadership.”

Criticizing the kind of democracy that exists in the United States, he said, “We’ve got to get rid of that top-down power and we’ve got to make democracy totally bottom-up and grassroots. We’ve got to get the popular vote to be the way it works. There shouldn’t be super-delegates and there shouldn’t be the Electoral College. It is the popular vote and that’s the way that the president should be elected.”

He argued, “The problem is the United States originated modern democracy and we did it a long time ago and what we did is now archaic,” adding that democracy in the US is “out of date.”

“The real problem is that the states that have the least power have enormous influence and will prevent a realistic modernization of the constitution and the rules involved in the election,” he mentioned.

According to the commentator, “It is ridiculous that six states are going to decide this election. It’s ridiculous that two senators from Montana ... get the same representation and influence in the Senate as California.”

He further touched upon the fact that the United States invested billions of dollars in converting from paper ballots to electronic voting but the votes cannot be realistically verified and reliably recounted.

Meanwhile, Lawrence J. Korb, a US foreign policy and national security analyst from Washington, said that “we had the individual states before we had the nation and in order for them to come and set up the nation – the United States of America – they reserved certain power to the states. For example every state gets two senators regardless of their population.”

So, “if you try to change the Electoral College system, you would have to have a constitutional amendment, which two-thirds of states would have to approve when in fact they’re not going to give up their power,” he added.

According to the analyst, “It (the US) is not a perfect democracy, but we are a Republic. The states existed before the national government; so, the question was how much power they would give up?”

Ruling out suggestions that the elections would be rigged, he said, “I’m not worried about them being rigged, but what I’m worried about is if Mr. Trump loses, which I think is a reasonable prospect, and then the people who supported him are not going to rally behind Clinton."

The US presidential election system is not based on popular voting; rather, it is the electoral vote which will determine which candidate wins the top job. The Electoral College was formed after the founders of the nation sought a compromise between electing the president by a popular vote and electing the president in Congress.

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