Was The Election Actually RIGGED?

[SoCalMusicLover]

Did Russia gain access to the tabulators and switch votes? I'll go to my grave believing that Shrub rigged the voting machines in 2004, otherwise Kerry would have won that election. But of course, the gop managed to call everyone who questioned the results, a "conspiracy theorist," and shut down any sort of investigation. Because everyone knows that our elections are secure and infallible.

I'm not talking about disenfranchised voters, or the Wikileaks release. I'm referring to the fact Clinton was so obviously in belief that she was winning, until all of a sudden she lost, and went quietly into the night. Seems to me that with all the talk about the Russian hacking, everybody is still acting as if the election itself was above board.

And what happened to DU on election afternoon, JUST as the polls were about to close? Did some conservative hacker manage to bring down this whole site for a week, or was it more than that? Were the Russians involved? I don't recall Skinner or anyone here releasing any information, except to say the site was hacked. One would think that it warrants notifying the authorities(not that they would do anything about it). So is the site NOW secure? No chance of that happening again? Or should we just wait for the next shutdown in 11/2020?

If this Electronic Voting Bullshit continues, I see myself not bothering to vote, because what point is there when the outcome has already been decided, and the whole game is just a big fundraising campaign for the parties.

[LaydeeBug]

1. YAS! And they will continue to do it. nt

[SticksnStones]

48. Read through unhackthevote.com

And the investigatory work of Mike Farb

He's been deep digging through the numbers, state by state, county by county.

https://www.unhackthevote.com/

Link to tweet

[LaydeeBug]

60. I've been following him for a little while now

Some serious stuff.

[SticksnStones]

62. With plausible data to back his findings...

I wish Rachel would dive into his work and do a segment on unhackthevote.com

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. They baited us and our naive spokespeople

said hell no..the vote not hacked. Played right into their slimy hands. Proper answer "we do not know."

[Hekate]

19. This

[Alice11111]

30. !!!

We should be Investigating that too!
We need uniform voting machines, but voting is a state's rights issue...except when the US Supreme Court stops the votes from being tabulated, a la Bush v Gore.

[Chemisse]

53. In retrospect, that was a slam-dunk for the Russians.

We were well played.

[uponit7771]

69. +1

[dchill]

3. U. BET. CHA!

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

4. With all the noise drumpf made during the campaign,

About the election being rigged for HRC and with what has come to light since, I am convinced it was rigged and that drumpf knew it the whole time.

[3catwoman3]

32. Mitch McConnell knew it, too.

Hence his unforgivable tenacity against Merrick Garland. He KNEW the fix was in. I hate him more than I hate Trump, and that's a pretty high bar .

[LenaBaby61]

43. "The fix was in."

Last edited Wed May 24, 2017, 08:52 PM - Edit history (1)

Agree with the rigging part.

Also, I stand by MY assertion that we STILL don't know all of HOW the ruskies interfered in our elections. Did they hack databases? Were they in on Dems being taken off of voting rolls in "key" states? We know thuglicans lead a massive voter purges and voter-crosschecks of Dems in the various states that the treasonous pig needed to win to be installed into the White House: Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina. AND I stand by my assertions that Florida and Ohio have STAYED interfered with concerning Dems since 2000 and 2004 respectfully. There are SO many people out there like the Southern Poverty Law Center and various other organizations sounding the alarm NOW about how our voting apparatus is extremely hackable and can be easily compromised. tRumputin has gotten rid of the laws which maintain our voting machines, and per Cliff Watts, the ruskies are STILL meddling in our affairs.

What's scary is that under THIS crooked DOJ lead by beauguard as it's AG, do you even THINK thuglicans will slow down with their voter-suppression efforts vs Dems? Do you think the ruskies will lay off of us? Hell, tRumputin may be telling them via back channel to get their "shit and dirty tricks" etc. ready for 2018. beauguard is as ruskie-loving as tRumputin is, and he doesn't want Dems, minorities etc to vote. We know Scott Walker in WI. has been behind Dem voter-suppression efforts. thuglicans are drunk with power, only care about party over country, and we KNOW they'll be drunk on voter-suppression STEROIDS in 2018 and 2020, especially since they're close to having enough state houses to change the Constitution like the Koch Brothers want it changed. HOW in hell do we combat that with NO ONE in this tRumputin DOJ to look out for us? Yes, we've won some rulings IE: In NC where the Supreme Court ruled in Minorities favors (Clarence Thomas believed there was racism in NC, and voted with the majority ) citing that racism played a part in voter-suppression there, but as we know there will be a few tough voter-related decisions that may come before 2018 where Dems are ham-strung by a 5-4 thuglican Court ruling for vote-suppressors.

I've no doubt that Dems are mad as HELL , and have the will to vote against thuglicans, tRumpDON'Tcare, tRumputin's fat, nasty treasonous ass, against putin and the ruskies--a whole host of issues. However, even if we mobilize and get out the vote, use a 50 state strategy and launch candidates who are on message and on point (Not always how Dems roll :laughing), what if our votes once again are purged, voter-suppressed, crosschecked or "zapped" off of Dem voting rolls? What if the ruskies have another different strategy the next time around to "get rid" of Dem votes? What about Dem voting bases?

WHAT are Dems to do concerning and about voter-suppression under a tRumputin DOJ?

[CrispyQ]

68. I want to see McConnell in an orange jumpsuit even more than Trump. -nt

[onetexan]

45. You're absolutely right

It was a ploy so people wouldn't suspect what really was going on. He & his handlers were a little too confident in winning.

[bdamomma]

5. I will keep on voting

no matter what, that is our right.

[tinrobot]

6. I was with you 100% until you said you might not bother to vote.

That's not a valid solution.

[brooklynite]

7. "If this Electronic Voting Bullshit continues, I see myself not bothering to vote,..."

Yeah! Thanks to an unsupported conspiracy theory, Conservatives have one fewer vote to worry about!

[napi21]

8. For sure, there were active methods used to prevent spicific groups of people from voting,

whether it was unreasonable demands for ID that is very hard to get, purging voter rolls, closing voting locations near collages, or the many other illegal ways the Pubs have of preventing likely Dems from voting. I honestly don't believe there was rigging of voting machines . I didn't mention what they did to voting districts because Dems do that too when they have the governorships. Unfortunately, the Pubs have th majority of Governorships now. We NEED to fix that and SOON!

[furtheradu]

9. heck, YEAH!

It was ALL Hillary, till, suddenly, towards the end,
She LOST.
I believe this is the 3rd election that was illegally turned :
w, KERRY, HRC.
& if WE can't fix this, I see NO reason to live here, OR VOTE.

[brooklynite]

11. Guess they just slept through 2006,2008 and 2012?

But I guess some bloggers know more than the candidates, Party Chairs and Campaign Managers, none of which say they believe the voting machines were rigged.

[furtheradu]

14. I find it MORE than disturbing (weird )

that major party players do NOT want to discuss this.
What is the DANG DEAL? ?
'Squze me, but that makes NO DANG SENSE.
WE have to fix the "system"!!

[frankieallen]

66. maybe due to the lack of any proof?

[TheDebbieDee]

23. I also believe the Russians have been meddling with our elections since 2000 as well...

I also believe that Russian TROLLS have been posting here in DU since the 2008 Dem Primaries (it was a really ugly time to be here on DU no matter which candidate you were supporting) and perhaps as early as the 2004 Dem Primaries...

[C Moon]

36. +1

[NRaleighLiberal]

10. Yes they did.

[onecaliberal]

12. Yes, it was. We have to jail everyone involved to ensure it doesn't happen again.

[DaleFromWPB]

59. Easy to say but ...

Jail exactly who?
for exactly what?

You need a law to reference when convicting someone of something.

Again, who and for what?

[onecaliberal]

61. McConnell and Ryan were told in August and did nothing, Nunez was clearly involved in cover up.

The president clearly tried to obstruct justice. When Comey testified there in fact was an investigation, trump took steps to try to stop it. These people took an oath to the constitution to protect from all enemies foreign and domestic. They're all guilty. He invited Russians into our fucking Oval Office and released code word secrets to them with only Russian media present while barring American press. It's time to remove this dangerous maggot from the people house high crimes and misdemeanors or whatever the congress says it is. Republicans impeached a president for lying about s blowjob. I'd say we went far beyond that long ago.

[Bradical79]

13. No idea

Which is kind of the problem. Need independent non-partisan audits of the machines and tabulation.

[jimlup]

15. I suspect that it was

there are various avenues for hacks. If I were US intelligence, I would be looking VERY CAREFULLY at this. The machines are not as "secure" as they want us to believe. And all of the security assumes no insiders with Russian "sympathies."

I believe that the election itself was indeed hacked and perhaps at all levels. Tabulator, precinct, district, county and state. Just some key places in critical states is all that is needed. And it is randomized enough to be below the threshold of obvious detection.

Obviously, since tabulators are not "hooked to the internet" you need operators on the ground. But you don't need that many and they only need to randomize key tabulators (ones in heavy Clinton precincts rendering those districts irrelevant). Such a hack would be undetectable.

Something was very badly wrong on November 8th that much we all know. How or what exactly was wrong, I don't think we know and we may never know.

[L. Coyote]

16. Russia wouldn't need to rig the voting, the Republicans already have that covered.

Last edited Wed May 24, 2017, 08:41 PM - Edit history (1)

[Alice11111]

31. Got that right

[PoiBoy]

38. +1,000,000

...and not a word from our "free press"...

[mountain grammy]

17. YES, YES and YES!

Purging of voter rolls, voter suppression in hundreds of little ways.. Just enough to make the difference in WI, PA, OH, MI.

We hear that 46% of voters didn't vote.. how many couldn't vote?

[Hekate]

18. Once you realize that everything Trump says is a projection and/or admission of guilt...

...his constant whining about the election being rigged becomes crystal clear. Yes folks it was rigged -- against all Democrats in general and against Hillary in particular.

As for you or anyone else not bothering to vote, that's just dumb. Securing our democracy is SO much more than voting.

Counting the vote honestly -- you've discovered how crucial that is. I suggest you start learning about how it's done.

Have you involved yourself in any way in the process of understanding how electronic voting works? Who builds, codes, and maintains the machines? Who persuades the County Registrar of Voters and the Secretary of the State of (wherever you live) that these are the wave of the future and they should dump the paper trail as obsolete?

Electronic voting/vote-counting equipment is eminently hackable and always has been. The debacle of 2000 in Florida, with all the hanging chads was a golden opportunity for Diebold and others to bring out their shiney wave of the future product, and that the owners were family friends of the Bushes was just a bonus.

As a place to start, look up the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It's one of the things they are involved in. Join Indivisible and take this issue up with them. Educate your state and local officials -- people are intimidated by electronics, and need guidance.

Above all, don't give up.

[Alice11111]

33. Good post

[trueblue2007]

37. VOTE BY MAIL LIKE WE DO IN OREGON.

REGISTER TO VOTE AUTOMATICALLY !!! We can do it.

[MFM008]

44. Very good point

90 percent of repukes knew it.
They are all in.
They know they have 18 months
To destroy the social safety nets/ ACA.
So unless maggot starts crapping himself in public or
Until there is a turnover in Congress next year they are just giddy.

[triron]

20. Check out this paper by Dr. Ron Baiman

http://www.cpegonline.org/2016/12/12/u-s-2016-unadjusted-exit-poll-discrepancies-fit-chronic-republican-vote-count-rigging-not-random-statistical-patterns/

except add in "and Russian" after "republican"

[mythology]

54. Unadjusted exit poll theories aren't worth taking seriously

https://www.thenation.com/article/reminder-exit-poll-conspiracy-theories-are-totally-baseless/

[TheDebbieDee]

21. I think the states that use wifi to aggregate and tabulate

vote totals WERE meddled with by the Russians... I can't prove it but it's what I believe.

[Sancho]

22. I know the DREs flip votes

I've seen it here in Fl

[Jopin Klobe]

24. "I see myself not bothering to vote, because what point is there ..." ...

... because, if someone or some group of people figure out the con ...

... your name will not be in the number to count for the win ...

... you give up hope, you give up life ...

... never give up ... because evil is counting on you to do that very thing ...

[aeromanKC]

25. I'll go to my grave believing that Shrub rigged the voting machines in 2004

DEIBOLD paperless easily hackable software machines in Ohio.

[LenaBaby61]

80. "I'll go to my grave believing that Shrub rigged the voting machines in 2004."

Same here

Bush's Co-conspirator:

[Warren DeMontague]

26. very little surprises me anymore

[Jack Bone]

27. I believe it was

I can't recall which program it was on The Progressive Talk Radio network, The Bradcast or The David Packman Show... but during the recounts they found tabulators in WI that should've only had two authorized operators, 1 DNC and 1 RNC, but these had 4...and those tabulators had phone number accessed by known Russian hackers on election night.... haven't heard a peep about it since though....

[notdarkyet]

28. I always thought Ohio was stolen in 2004. Kerry was winning in the exit polls and bush

Flew in at the eleventh hour to meet with Secretary of State? In charge of elections Michael Steele who was made recently chair after the election. I think ossoff had this last election stolen from him. .4%?

[Doodley]

29. I see no evidence that machines were hacked. Nate Silver gave Trump about a 1 in 3 chance of winning

So a Trump win was a strong possibility based on polls. However, the electronic voting system is not verifiable and cannot be trusted, so it is completely unacceptable.

[Dan]

34. My thoughts....

I thought on election night that the voting systems had been hacked and the votes changed.

There had been some new accounts that indicated that certain election officials had their account information 'borrowed' . But the articles that I read seemed to state that this would not have impacted the voting. I always thought that was a misunderstanding of how computers/servers worked.

If I had a supervisor (management) computer account and access - then based on their access rights and permissions, it would determine what level of access I would have to the election system, tabulation application (also a factor of what type of database system) - without concern to the balloting component. If the account had permissions - then between the reports (election counts) provided and the next tabulation counts added - a person could in theory change the existing tabulation results. The report is out (counts are provided several times over the course of the day) and each count builds on the results. So, if the existing count totals are changed - the next tabulation results builds on what is already known and assumed is accurate. But if the previous results had been changed, the new tabulation hides the older results changes...because by definition you don't know the new tabulation values or how it is allocated... Plus of course, for each vote changed for someone - it cost the losing person two votes....

I hope that makes sense.. anyway, my opinion.

[SaveAmerica]

35. Yes, but not vote switching, by taking Dems off of rolls

Gaining access to the voter rolls in each precinct and making a handful of Ds per precinct as not eligible to vote had them showing up on election day but being told they couldn't vote because they had been flagged as not eligible. These are folks who have voted religiously over the years, have lived at the same address for years so no real reason to remove them. The hope then, is that they will not have time or will give up on waiting to have the BoE confirm they are actually able to vote and they will run of to work without voting.

We used BoE voting rolls to call those who have not voted in early voting and encourage them to get out on election day. That same list can be accessed by an outside group, say Russia?* and flag 10 per precinct as not eligible to vote, hitting those die hard, never miss an election Democrats. Then, depending on how many can't fight that removal, you have the opposite of the Dean 'every precinct, every state counts' election day. #northcarolina


*There was a conservative group that submitted challenges in the weeks before the election on thousands of NC voters. The guy who created this group said he had trained his volunteers to use their 'instincts' when deciding who should be challenged as being to be removed from the voting rolls. And this was legal in NC. Election reform can't happen soon enough, between legal challenges and possible outside BoE tampering, we don't have confidence in our elections.

[58Sunliner]

39. I have always figured that we need to beat them by more than 10% to account for fraud.

It is simple enough in terms of numbers. They don't have to hack all states, just enough to throw it. They don't have to hack a whole state, just the important areas. Dade County FL.

[TheFrenchRazor]

41. correct; hacking a few strategic precincts could throw an entire presidential election. nt

[TheFrenchRazor]

40. the machines need to go; we need all paper ballots, all hand counted, all the time. nt

[ucrdem]

42. Yes, in at least 3 ways, none of them Russian:

1) Some red states' early, provisional, and mail-in votes appear to have been incompletely counted or not counted at all (e.g. Florida);

2) Some states' vote tallies, when transmitted from precincts to state headquarters, appear to have undergone revision (e.g. Wisconsin);

3) A digital operations center in Houston, reported on NPR as a "social media" messaging center, appears to have controlled the final reporting of key swing states, which were manipulated so as to win the electoral college vote.

Based on my own observations.

[pansypoo53219]

46. yes. the GOP + photo IDs.

scrubbing democrats off lists. gerrymandering. cheating is cheating.

[Achilleaze]

47. the russians installed the illegitimate republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

Comrade Casino and his illegitimate Cabal of Colluding republican Comrades.

[Lee-Lee]

49. Having looked into it a lot I don't see how- I think it's a denial mechanism for some

And nobody has been able to explain to me how it could have been.

Here is why. These electronic machines don't connect to the internet at all. There is one model that has an optional ability to have a cellular modem that I found, but even on those unless the local government has that feature turned on and it paying for service for each one it's not connected at all.

That means that in order to hack the machines you need to gain physical access to the machines in every county, in every precinct you want to change totals in and have the person gaining physical access to them gain access long enough to make the changes. Some could have been changed by uploading new firmware and that would require removing the machine from storage, powering it up, powering up a laptop, putting the machine in a lb upgrade setting, uploading new firmware, testing the machine, powering it back down and putting it back in storage then repeating for every machine. Others can't be upgraded like that and would require they be taken out of storage, physically opened up, the existing firmware chip removed, a new chip put in, the machine put back together, the machine powered up for testing, powered down, packed back up and put into storage.

And those steps must be done for every machine.

That's a risky operation to do in one county.

Now, you can't make the hack swing votes more than a certain percent or it's obvious, so to swing the election requires a lot of machines in a state be hacked like this.

So you need to repeat the above steps in a lot of counties in every state you want to influence.

That would require first a large number of very skilled agents, and second a lot of luck. Breaking into hundreds of county offices and doing time consuming software or hardware updates on thousands of voting machines without anyone getting caught or any sign it happened would be almost impossible. It would be such a huge scale operation that someone somewhere would have detected something amiss.

The only other ways would be to somehow intercept vote totals sent from counties to state tabulators or change the computers used at the state levels, but that would be easily detected. The states all publish results by county and by precinct and county officials would quickly note that what was listed by the state wasnt what they sent.

Then you have the post election audits that every state does on top of that.


Based on the above, I don't think it was actually hacked. And I find it telling that people who insist it was can't tell me how it would have been done, they are just sure it was.

And I think resting the blame on conspiracy theories like this harms our cause, because it allows an easy out to avoid introspection and getting to the root causes of defeat. Because if you keep blaming the boogeyman who you can't even explain how he did it for your loss you never can change anything.

[Amishman]

50. I agree, glad to see there is at least a few people being rational about this

The logistics involved to actually rig the vote itself make this virtually impossible.

[Lee-Lee]

51. Exactly. To be undetected would require a MASSIVE undertaking

That would require physical access to thousands of machines without anyone noticing and perfectly executed hacks across a wide variety of different systems that went undetected in pre and post election tests and shakedowns.

I don't see how it could be done.

Anything that changed totals after the machines would be easily noted in post election audits and reviews. The local and state boards of elections have people double and triple checking math as are lawyers and poll watchers on both sides. If the total reported for a county didn't match the totals of the precincts that would be very obvious.

[TheFrenchRazor]

74. wrong. nt

[Lee-Lee]

77. Then please explain the logistics of it

Because I have yet to see any realistic explanations.

[Chemisse]

55. Thanks for that info. It makes sense.

It's important that we make the effort to understand what really happened.

Reality matters; facts matter.

[JoeStuckInOH]

64. "it's a denial mechanism for some" ... I 100% agree.

[m-lekktor]

65. excellent post. nt

[uponit7771]

70. Hacked state and local electoral boards ... that's a fact .... that's about how easy it is

[wildeyed]

71. Yep. They did steal the election, but not with electronic voting machines.

We KNOW how they stole it already. They weaponized their propaganda machine with some very astute use of big data and added a heaping dollop of voter suppression.

[Botany]

52. Yes

n/t

[justiceischeap]

56. Why put this on Russia? It was the GOP that "rigged" this election

Between voter ID's, voter suppression and gerrymandering and their willingness to go along with the Russian propaganda/hacking of our election, it really falls on the backs of the GOP apparatchik.

[Stellar]

58. Yep, I believe they did help a lot nt

[Stellar]

57. IDK,but I keep thinking Comey gave the undecided just long enough time to change their mind about..

..Clinton when he bought up her damned emails again. I'm thinking mostly about early voters.
People were still concerned about her damned emails and now we see Trump was much, much worse. I was going to vote blue no matter who.

[cynical_idealist]

63. In most contests cheaters are disqualified.

pugs can't win without cheating since there platform is almost 100% wrong.

[TheFrenchRazor]

75. true, and there is literally no penalty for stealing a presidential election. nt

[judesedit]

67. Order a paper ballot. Copy before sending for record

I do it to have a paper trail. We have to start somewhere.

[wildeyed]

72. It was rigged, but not in the way you are saying.

You kind of give your game away at the end when you encourage people not to vote.

[ecstatic]

73. YES, the rethug primaries AND the GE were both rigged!

Today as I overheard how Trump's Russia circle was being cultivated up to 5 years ago, I was thinking to myself: Why would Russia spend YEARS and millions on a long shot candidate like Trump unless they were certain they could install him?

Come on now.

We've been had. Obviously.

The republican primaries were rigged, then our GE was carefully rigged in select states.

Prior to the GE, Trump made sure to back everyone into a corner by declaring our elections "rigged," which forced people like Clinton and President Obama to stand up for our "democracy" and election system. When TrumPutin stole it, Clinton/Obama/etc. were already primed into accepting the outrageous result as our democracy in action.

smfh

[Eliot Rosewater]

76. There are way more of us than them, yes they flipped votes, lots of them

[moondust]

78. Maybe.

If I were investigating, a couple things I'd want to look at:

Who makes the voting machines used in WI, MI, PA, and OH? What are the company's political leanings, if any? Would it be possible for a "rogue" programmer at those companies to build a back door into the software allowing an external party with insider credentials to access the tabulators and manipulate the totals? Apparently Russia was involved in "microtargeting" voters in those states which indicates some Russians knew exactly where to focus their efforts.

How much control did governors Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, John Kasich and their operatives have over the voting machine systems in their states?

The voting machines are presumably networked somehow to relay vote tallies up to the central tabulators. Can the network be accessed from the outside by anyone with the proper credentials (perhaps provided by the "rogue" programmer or other employee of the machine manufacturer)? If the totals at the central tabulator can be altered then a person wouldn't have to hack into anything else; it might only take a minute to flip the numbers.

[still_one]

79. really, "you see your self not bothering to vote, because it is just a big fundraising campaign for

the parties."

I assume from your DU name you are from California, which makes your statement even more inane.

If you have an issue with the voting machines, California allows absentee ballots. Any registered voter can request one, and vote by absentee ballot. All ballots in California are counted, including absentee ballots

[sharedvalues]

81. You must vote. We have one chance to save America from one-party dictatorship: 2018.

[Blue Meany]

82. To rig an election electronically, would require either rigging individual machines,

which mostly could not be done through hacking, or manipulating central tabulators, which are often offline and usually better protected. Insiders, of course, could easily do this, but remote hacking is less plausible.

Where hacking definitely occurred was in the Arizona voter registration database sometime before the primary. Around the same time there was an attempt to hack the Illinois voter database. The FBI issued an alert at the time, and alluded to the possibility that it was Russian hackers.

[sellitman]

83. Most important thread ever

More importantly though is how to stop this crap?

How do we get our elections back?

[Fluke a Snooker]

85. Actually, the entire Republican Party is rigged against the citizens of the US and the world

Let's fact it: We have enough diversity of political discourse when we make sure that certain necessary items are beyond the realm of oppressive political oversight. For instance, Climate Change should not even be a votable item; it should be implemented without question or vote. Single-payer medical care should not be subject to a vote; it should be implemented without question or vote. Even taxation should have a minimum level for each salary tier; that shouldn't even have to be discussed.

We have laws against murder and other crimes. THEY aren't subject to voting. Why should other issues not be considered crimes? So rigging elections actually means legalizing murder, metaphorically.

[GBizzle]

86. So far it looks like it wasn't quite "rigged" - but heavily, heavily influenced.

Russia was likely laundering money and funneling it to the Republicans, and Jill Stein of the Green Party.

Trump literally asked them to hack Hillary's e-mails, which they did.

We know now that they planted fake documents in the Hillary e-mails, which influenced Comey's decisions on the matter, thus hurting Hillary.

Voter suppression efforts through bullshit "voter ID" laws likely disenfranchised thousands, if not millions, of people who could've otherwise voted.

And we know the margin was very slim, in 3 states, and only about 88,000 votes decided it, in the end.

So far, we haven't seen any evidence that they've "rigged" it - although that may yet happen.

But it looks a lot like they were putting their thumb on the scales, arguably enough to change the outcome. A minor, but important, distinction.

[William769]

87. Yes. nt.