When a candidate has been howling for weeks about a “rigged election” and early voting has started, what’s the logical next step? You start to make specific claims of rigging, as Donald Trump demonstrates:
We hear this “vote flipping” business every election, seems like, but—surprise—it turns out not to be some kind of nefarious yet clumsy plan to steal votes in a way people can actually see happening and raise the alarm about:
“Typically, we’ve found it’s voter error with the equipment,” Tarrant County Elections Commissioner Frank Phillips told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Sometimes they vote straight party and then click on other candidates ... or do something with the wheel. There is not an issue with the equipment.”
Also, it’s Texas. Why would the Republican officials who control the state be trying to steal the election from their party’s nominee?
Don’t expect any of that to stop Trump—or Sean Hannity, who beat Trump to the vote-flipping rumors—from continuing to allege vote stealing. After all, they have to find some way to explain away some astonishingly close polls coming out of Texas, and “it was rigged” is a lot more palatable to Trump’s massive ego than “I’m a terrible candidate running a terrible campaign.”
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