If there was actual evidence the Presidential election was rigged, would you want to leave it as is, or do it again?
Even if the election were rigged in my candidate’s favor, I would like to believe that I would still want a re-do. A short term bad president is better than a long-term distrust in the electoral process, in my opinion.
Define “rigged”. Because “Russian hackers told the truth” doesn’t do it for me. But if it turns out the voting machines were tampered with, vote-counters were secretly Trump stooges, etc., then I’d want to re-do. But I highly doubt that was the case, as it would be far more difficult to pull off than, say, faking the moon landings or the government carrying out the 9-11 attacks.
It doesn’t matter for this question-imagine a way where you believe that the election was rigged enough to call the end result into question, then go on from there.
Bingo…especially in combination with " Media that was predominately Clinton friendly wasn’t interested in finding or reporting the truth".
If rigged, then Congress does not cert and it goes to them to sort things out. There is no constitutional provision for a Mulligan Election, so it would not be legitimate.
And I agree with DrCube. In my case, “rigged” would only mean actual vote tampering. Russian hacking and releasing emails is “shit happens”.
It’s a hypothetical, where
- You are convinced it was rigged, and
- You can have a do-over if you wished.
It’s like a poll where someone asks you whether you would want a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley. Popping in with “But no one is going to give me either, so this is meaningless!” is a waste of time.
No, it’s not, and there is no reason for you to force us into some narrow way of thinking about this. If you didn’t want to hear “other”, then why did you include the option?
Good god, no!!
The precedent of re-doing an election would be a new avenue for knuckleheads and partisans to challenge EVERY election in perpetuity. Every. Goddamn. Election. would turn into the 2000 court challenges on steroids. We are far better off having finality, and dealing with the effects through future elections or impeachments, as situations dictate.
I’m not trying to force you into doing anything-I was just clarifying that this was a hypothetical, and repeating that the the method of “rigging” as it pertains to the question at hand really doesn’t matter as long as you(the poll-taker) are convinced that it was rigged.
I think doing the election over would be a nightmare. Let Congress handle it.
Through many years of doing this I have learned that, no matter how hard you try to come up with all the possible options, someone will invariably come up with one you never thought of.
I vote leave it as it is. We may finally deal with the Trump administration as it was done in the good old times.By letting the public know that the current president is know as “His fraudulency” thanks to winning the electoral vote under very controversial circumstances and losing the popular vote.
It made Rutherford B. Hayes shameful enough that he promised and kept his promise to serve only one term to help keep the peace. Unfortunately, Trump is a man with no shame. So the removal of the Republican congress critters will be the first priority followed by the impeachment of Trump.
But Congress has already certified in this case. I don’t think there’s any constitutional provision for un-certifying and then letting Congress choose again. Either way, it’s going to be a nightmare and it will come down to the Supremes.
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I think if the current candidates are found to be involved in the vote tampering, they should both be impeached.
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If the Presidential candidate is found to have tampered, but the VP was found to have been innocent, I would still want him impeached because he was part of the joint slate.
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If the speaker was also found to be involved, he should be impeached and not allowed to move up.
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Go on impeaching/arresting motherfuckers until you hit someone on the list with clean hands
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That person gets to be President (Sorry, dude. Try to be more venal next time.) until the next election, which is happening in the near future, regardless.
I don’t think I’d bother scheduling a re-do, because the first four steps are going to be time-consuming enough. By the time we’re done with all that, it will be election time again anyway.
Normally when it comes to questions about proper electoral procedure I try to lay my partisanship aside and make decisions based on what is the most fair regardless of which side would benefit. In this case I’m unable to do that. If it were any other candidate than Trump (be it Republican or Democrat) I would say that we are better off treating it like water under the bridge rather than disrupting our Democratic process by starting the whole thing again.
But Trump himself is too much of a threat to America and any opportunity that could get him replaced needs to be taken.
ETA: on review I would probably support Merneith’s solution rather than a redo.
We have provisions for the only type of do-over that makes sense - impeachment.
Which would make sense if the sitting president had been part of the rigging. If some outside group does it, one might argue against impeachment.
That makes sense, if it can be shown that the sitting president had no knowledge of the rigging prior to the investigation.
by do-over, do you mean with the same candidates? or throw the whole thing out and start over at the primaries (with possibly different nominees?)
That is the rub; some people would consider it to be illegal since there is no constitutional remedy.