Short Take: A History Of Rigged Elections

BackStory

Education, History

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2016

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

President-elect Donald Trump said the election was rigged because millions of non-citizens voted (although there is no evidence to support the claim), 2016 Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein has requested audits in multiple swing states with Wisconsin being the first to begin a recount, and Hillary Clinton's campaign is willing to go along with a recount despite that Clinton allies are, according to Politico, "irritated with Jill Stein." Even with all of the talk of tampering, the actual chances of voter fraud are very slim now. The past, however, is a different story. In this BackStory short take, the Guys take a look at the history of rigged elections. (Image credit: Voting Machine Bumpersticker by GalacticWanderlust via Flickr)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Major funding for backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation, the National Endowment
0:05.7	for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining
0:10.8	Davis Foundation.
0:13.9	From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is backstory with the American History
0:20.9	Guys.
0:25.4	Hi podcast listeners, I'm Ed Ayers and I'm here with Brian Ballot and Peter O'Rona.
0:29.6	Hey there Ed.
0:31.6	And we're doing a special midweek podcast to discuss the history of rigged elections.
0:37.4	We're planning to have more of these midweek podcasts responding to major news stories in
0:42.1	the coming months.
0:43.3	But don't worry, we'll also be back on Friday with an hour long backstory episode on your
0:47.8	podcast feed on the history of advertising.
0:51.2	So be sure to check that out.
0:53.1	So to get back to the issue of rigged elections, President-elect Donald Trump said this
0:57.3	week in a tweet that in addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won
1:02.2	the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.
1:08.2	Throughout the campaign, Trump claimed that the system was rigged against him.
1:12.0	There's no evidence of large-scale voter fraud in this election.
1:15.2	And you're not hesitating any other way.
1:17.7	And yet this language of rigging, of being rigged, hangs over everything.
1:22.0	So, we thought it would be useful if we would actually talk about what it would mean
1:26.4	to rig American politics.
	...

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