Was the DNC vote actually "rigged"?

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CaptainUnusual · 8時間前

Not really.

Clinton had widespread and early support from superdelegates, who are primarily Senators, Congresspeople, and important Democratic party members like past presidents and nominees and things like that. Sanders didn't really have any support from them early on. This is the most unfair looking thing that happened, but, of course, the reason that she had all that support was because she had worked with and campaigned for these people for decades. She made friends with voters long before Sanders even joined the party, and even then, Sanders refused to support anyone until they endorsed him, which really didn't do much to earn him any friends. Of course, from the outside, this looks like blatant corruption, when it was really no different from simply being a popular candidate at the start of the election.

For the DNC's bias in her favor, the whole scandal was really just a bunch of scary looking smoke. There's no evidence to suggest that any DNC officials actually acted on their biases beyond voting; they just sent catty and gossipy emails to each other with their work emails. Unprofessional, but not exactly the sort of thing that will sway an election.

As far as the actual will of the voters, there was nothing rigged about it. Clinton just had more voters. There were a few areas in NY and much of Arizona where the primary process just went to absolute shit (and both campaigns are, or were, suing the responsible counties over it) with voters being dropped or unable to vote, but there's not actually any way for that to target one candidate over another, because poll workers aren't mind readers. A lot of conspiracy theories arise from the differences between exit polls and vote counts, which tend to forget that, in many places, voting by mail is very popular. California in particular was a big target of this conspiracy theory, which discounts the fact that around 70% (that was the last number I heard, it could be wrong now) of votes were done by mail, and older people vastly preferred mail-in ballots.

tl;dr: No, the only real fuckery hit both candidates, and the rest of the claims of rigging it were just due to willful ignorance.

edit: a word

eagledog · 7時間前

Clinton won reliable Democratic voters in a landslide, Sanders tried to base his run on the most fickle voting base there is. It's not really rocket surgery, and there was no rigging. Exit polls aren't used for election verification here, Edison uses them for demographic sampling and media purposes. So exit polls deviations mean nothing, especially when paired with large amounts of early and mail-in voting.

Weirdly enough, the two places where we really saw problems, New York and Arizona, were both won handily by Clinton, and the areas with problems (Phoenix and Brooklyn) went heavily to her, and fit perfectly into her demographic base. So if anything, those election problems hurt her in the long run.

But seriously, she won in every metric there. Popular vote, pledged delegates, superdelegates, open primaries, closed primaries. Sanders only won caucuses, which report an average turnout of less than 10%. He was helped by the rules set up by the DNC and state parties, not hurt by them. The caucuses just gave a false picture of him actually being in the race for so long

EtriganZ · 8時間前

Clinton had more popular votes, delegates, and super delegates. She won by every metric.

Santoron · 7時間前

Not true. It's a narrative a segment of Bernie voters started with his loss in Iowa (remember when we thought "Coin Gate" was going to be the big primary drama? We were so young then...) and continued on to pretty much every loss thereafter.

They've been pointing to this release for a long time now as something that would vindicate their conspiracies, so when they came out people found the most salacious conversations they could find in an appeal to emotion, and declared them "proof", though they showed no evidence of election tampering.

Dorfidiot · 7時間前

No. There's no evidence of that. There's evidence of dws and some coworkers being pissed off at sanders camp.

dawgsfan1 · 8時間前

No, Bernie did horrible with black women, black men and pretty much everyone 35+. Bernie ran into a buzzsaw, black people have an admiration with the clintons thats unparalleled, same can be said for most liberals who lived through the Clinton Era. The fact that he got this far is remarkable is its own right.

ALostIguana · 3時間前

Bernie was up against the institutional inertia of the Democratic party but it was something that was not intentional.

Hillary Clinton was the preferred candidate by many and she secured the support of many important people ahead of her run. She had her pick of policy advisers and key support staff. She sought out the endorsement of elected officials who had strong influence and infrastructure in their areas.

Without this network of allies, Bernie was always facing an uphill task. (Personally, the fact that Bernie does not seem interested in making allies if he disagrees with part of their politics is why I felt he was ultimately a flawed candidate even if he did know how to say the right things to energize a crowd.)

zryn3 · 4時間前

Look, it's pretty obvious why Clinton won.

Take the 2008 primary, which was fairly close (not really, but much closer than this year). The Clintons are loved by black voters, but they went to Obama in 2008 (for obvious reasons). It's pretty obvious why picking up a demographic that can give you the democratic vote of several states (her Southern Firewall) on top of her 2008 coalition easily gave her the primary.

In fact, it pretty much ended up being that she won the same states as 2008 (California, New York), plus the Obama states with large black Democrat populations while Bernie won the other Obama states (like Hawaii)

Now was it rigged in that Hillary Clinton has been in the public eye, working for the Democratic party her entire life, and sitting in with black and Hispanic communities to ensure she's sensitive to their needs thereby getting the endorsement and support of the party establishment, minority caucuses, and LGBT and civil rights leaders like Huerta?

Well, that's not called rigging, that's called paying your dues.

The_Sloth_Wrangler · 1時間前

I supported Bernie in the primary, but I've always thought Clinton has been treated unfairly. If you agree that the primary wasn't rigged, it's interesting to look at this from an optics point of view for Hillary. For decades, Clinton has been scrutinized and demonized by the republicans because they fear a Hillary president. Anything that happens around her is a scandal that they try to paint her as hawkish, a liar, and an elite out of touch person (I think there are half truths to some of these). This is just another example of a scandal that makes Hillary look like a liar and a cheat, when in fact she just played the game better and won by a lot. (OMG she shouldn't have won! She is a liar! She is a cheater! ....sounds like repubs and bob people, right??) BOB people are using the same tactics as republicans have for years to paint a false narrative about Clinton because she is better at playing the game.

Also, the DNC is a bunch of garbage and bob people have a right to be upset about the emails for sure, but to say clinton stole this election or really had a hand in actively making the DNC support her seems to be unfounded.

thereisnoentourage2 · 7時間前

Sanders supporter/volunteer here. No, obviously not. Clinton had more votes, more delegates, etc. I think most would agree it's likely the DNC was pulling for Clinton, for a number of reasons, and had their finger on the scale a bit (the original debate dates in particular seemed embarrassingly heavy handed, though if anyone has a reason for the scheduling, I'm all ears). But Sanders still needed to win more States by better margins than he did at the end of the day, and he didn't.

But he did bring a bunch of new voters into the party, and moved the Overton window of this election much further left than it would have been otherwise with no strong progressive contender in the primary. I don't regret the Sanders campaign at all; damn proud of the result, actually. Not too shabby for a septuagenarian Jewish socialist against Clinton's support network and her allies.

SeekingEnoch · 2時間前

Clinton definitely benefited from a rigged system but not more than any other hand picked or favored candidate. The party's rules are set up to most easily facilitate the candidate(s) with the best shot of winning and/or the most clear support. Everything about the system favors incumbents, experience, connections, and a deep entrenchment in the party system.

mostly_fiction · 2時間前

No, it's just an accusation to hurt Hillary.

Trump, his people, or maybe just Russia interfering on his behalf leaked hacked internal email of the DNC to upset her convention.

The DNC has been controlled by Clinton allies for years now. This isn't nefarious, but rather how political parties and political machines operate.

There is no indication of any vote rigging.

There is some discussion planning against Sanders when he began attacking the DNC as corrupt. Such planning seems very limited to suggesting counter-narratives, contacting friends in the media to try to push certain angles. This along with a Politico story which was sent first to the DNC prior to publication, has led to some calls of a biased media and suggestions of improper contact between the two. The problem is, these contacts are typical of all campaigns--this is not Judy Miller, or even your typical Washington reporter relying on insiders.

There is one issue of how Clinton's "Hillary Victory Fund" was structured using the DNC that some have called into question. To raise vast sums, people will donate maximum amounts to all state committees, who have apparently then been giving the money back to central DNC who are coordinating its use (as far as I understand it--it may have been dispersed directly to Clinton, but I don't believe this to be the case). It's hard to say if this is shady or not (this is what the Politico story mentioned above concerned and something Matt Taibbi just wrote about).

Campaign finance is odd, and there are specialist lawyers who structure these organizations to take in the most money while not running afoul of the law. Unless the FEC says it violated some law, my guess is that Clinton and the DNC didn't hire second rate attorneys, and that it is legal. All that said; however, coordination this tight between the Clinton campaign and the DNC does raise questions.

Could Bernie have used a similar structure? Would the DNC have helped coordinate his fund raising in similar fashion? Perhaps they did. Perhaps there isn't any need for them to do so, after all, it is a private organization and if they decided to back Hillary for strategic reasons perhaps they need no justification. Coordination between nominee and the party is completely normal in both parties at the conclusion of the primaries, but it's unclear what their role should be before that.

So, that's the background as I understand it. Media, diehard Sanders people, and likely Trump/GOP have used these leaks to suggest scandal and foment discord at the convention. In the end nothing much seems to have happened except DWS has been moved to the Clinton campaign.

backtorealitywepour · 2時間前

Some of the biggest things that may have given an actual advantage seemed to helped Bernie. The email revelations were what people expected from day 1, and many people already were supporting Bernie just because of DWS. It's hard to really assess if her actions helped or hurt Clinton more. Then you have the caucus vs primary systems with Washington switching to Clinton in a primary but going to Bernie in the caucus. Clinton had the most negative media attention of any candidate. And the people targeted in the areas with the most egregious voter fraud issues (Arizona, Chicago and Brooklyn) were minority communities, and we all knew how those demographics favor Clinton. This narrative seems to be left out by the Bernie camp. Taken together with the issues on both sides and the fact that Clinton won by 3.5 million votes, there's really just not argument to suggest rigging

notbob- · 8時間前

When Sanders supporters say that the election was rigged, they could be saying that the leadership of the Democratic party did certain things that benefited Clinton, or they could be saying that the vote itself was rigged. There is a lot of evidence for the former and not very much for the latter.

Clinton's victories were generally in line with pre-election polling. It would raise red flags if Clinton consistently won states that polls suggested she would lose, but that is not what happened.

Sanders supporters will point to exit poll results that are inconsistent with election results as evidence of rigged results. The task then is to explain how a national conspiracy to rig the results would work, who would be involved, how they would keep it secret, etc. In order to rig a nationwide election, the DNC would have to have the cooperation of political organizations in every state. This seems unlikely.

Bob_Bobinson · 3時間前

No, for the very simple reason that rigging an election requires tampering with thousands of county election boards, which is a level of coordination and conspiracy that would require millions of dollars and would be highly illegal. On illegality alone, NO ONE wants to go to jail for any candidate. Those that do aren't exactly sane.

Keep in mind, barring a single state which Sanders won, the results matched up neatly with the polls.

Valanarch · 6時間前

As a former Bernie supporter, I have to say that it wasn't rigged. Hillary won a majority of the popular vote, a majority of the contests, a majority of pledged delegates, and a majority of the unpledged delegates fair and square. The party clearly favored Hillary, but we knew that from the start. Besides, the party establishment having a voice is a good thing. Look at the Republicans. Their party wasn't able to influence its own primaries and they ended up with Trump has their nominee. Obviously, Bernie is not similar to Trump. But the idea that the DNC could actively favor Hillary is not necessarily a bad thing.

Fidodo · 5時間前

Clinton win by large margins with or without super delegates. If it were rigged it would mean a huge conspiracy involving millions of faked votes. That would be incredibly hard to cover up, especially considering all the emails leaked. The system is not rigged (at least in that way).

Politicians who have seniority in the party do get better treatment and thus better chances by virtue of creating relationships with other higher ups within the party. Bernie was an outsider who only joined the party a year ago. That means he has a disadvantage in that regard.

But that doesn't mean that the party favorite will win every time even though they have better chances. I'm surprised by people's short memories. Our sitting president himself who had comparatively far less experience usurped the status quo and beat Hillary. I think that's clear proof the system isn't rigged.

DYMAXIONman · 3時間前

There was bias but no rigging.

spartangrrl78 · 2時間前

No. There were definitely voting irregularities in various states, but you can place the blame on the (primarily) GOP controlled state legislatures and election commissions. the DNC had nothing to do with that.

relax_live_longer · 54分前

No. And the bias against Bernie by the DNC should be measured against timing. I don't exactly know when all the scandalous emails were sent, but Bernie stayed in the race long after he was mathematically eliminated. The job of the DNC is 1) to be unbiased in candidate selection 2) to elect the candidate. So if they thought his sticking around with no hope for success was hurting their chances for the latter, AND he was blasting every Democrat along the way, their annoyance was understandable. And let's not forget that Bernie supporters actions in Nevada embarrassed the Party.

-____--__________--- · 8時間前

The DNC seems to have acted in a sketchy manner. But even if they had actively tried to cheat in Bernie's favor, he wouldn't have won. He just did not have as much support among the voters as Hillary did, and it wasn't close.

Ziggie1o1 · 6時間前

It wasn't rigged in the naked sense of "Bernie would have won if not for active voter fraud." Hillary simply received more votes.

Did the DNC play favourites though? I don't think its unreasonable to say that they did. While it doesn't seem as if they ever actually acted on their biases, it does set a bad precedent for the future. On the sliding scale of corruption this is relatively mild, but as much as I would like to I cannot completely give it a pass.

coolkirb · 2時間前

The DNC definitly wanted Clinton and thought she would win fairly easily, heck you could say they were preparing for a corination as many Sanders supporters would say but I don't think it was rigged. What I think is overlooked is that it took years of gaining support and respect in the DNC to get essentially the entire party behind her. This election did not start in January, or even this time last year, for Hillary this election likely started back in 2008 when she decided to become Secretary of State. People were prepared to just give her the nomination because all other serious contenders realized they had little hope of gaining the support to launch a campaing as they could not out manuever her in experience (except for maybe Joe Biden) and would have had to run to the right of her as at the time she appeared to have the left on her side before Sanders entered the race. The fact is Hillary did not even seem like a beatable candidate for many potential democrats until it was already to late to mount a serious electoral bid.

jhc1415 · 1時間前

No. People are greatly overestimating the amount of influence the parties have over their primaries. Just look at the GOP. They were doing much shadier stuff to try and keep Trump out. And they still failed.

Even if they were biased, there is very little the DNC could actually do to change the way people vote.

UniquelyBadIdea · 1時間前

Yes, but not necessarily in the way people say.

Hillary won more votes, more delegates, and more super delegates.

The reason Hillary won is the same reason Donald Trump won.

Both of them received far more coverage than their opponents to the point that the coverage being positive or negative didn't necessarily matter.

http://television.gdeltproject.org/cgi-bin/iatv_campaign2016/iatv_campaign2016?filter_candidate=&filter_network=NATIONAL&filter_timespan=ALL&filter_displayas=PERCENTDEM

This link shows how much each of the Democratic Candidates were mentioned you will notice that Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb barely were ever mentioned. Sanders was mentioned but, only because his grassroots support became to big to ignore entirely. The Democratic debates started later than the Republicans and were at terrible times which helped ensure that the the candidates didn't take off. O'Malley, Chafee, and Webb also received significantly less time to talk in the debates.

jonawesome · 29分前

Copypasta from an argument I had with a Sanders holdout:

The DNC emails were gross. There is one most important job of the DNC, and it is to be an honest broker in presidential primaries. They failed at that.

But that doesn't discount the nearly 17 million votes Clinton got, or the basic arithmetic that puts that over the 13 million Sanders did. I've seen a lot of claims that because people in the DNC emailed back and forth about which candidate they liked more (which, again, they shouldn't have done at all) it somehow proves that the election was stolen.

But it doesn't. Proof that the election was stolen proves that the election was stolen. And there isn't any.

Not in New York, where voters purged from the rolls disproportionately came from Latino precincts in a state where Latinos went to Clinton by more than 60% and reporting by the New York Post, the New York Daily News, WNYC, and investigations by the New York City Council found no evidence of anything but incompetence.
Not in Arizona, where a Republican County Recorder limited polling places, and a judge dismissed the lawsuit after finding that most of the angry voters' votes had actually been counted, and that the margins that could have been caused by irregularities were smaller than the margin Clinton won by.
And not in Nevada, where a (totally fair) attempt by Sanders supporters to get him more delegates than he won by the caucus that Clinton won through exploiting state convention rules was stymied by many of their state delegates not showing up, as was affirmed by the rules committee made up of half Sanders supporters.

Problems in our voting system are horrible. And I think it is abundantly clear that there needs to be election reform to standardize and monitor out election process. We should not have a system where even a single person eligible to vote is denied a ballot. And as this election shows, we should not have a system where at the end of several months of voting, people doubt the results were fair.

But to quote Symone Sanders, Bernie Sanders' former press secretary:

But let me be clear - NO ONE STOLE THIS ELECTION! Team Sanders we did AMAZING WORK. But we lost. It's a hard reality for some.

...

Now the contents of the leaked emails show individuals were definitely biased, but 7 folks on an email didn't "steal" the election.

cameraman502 · 2分前

I'd say the thumb was on the scale, especially towards the end when it was clear Clinton was going to get the nomination. But I think the votes were heavily in Clinton's favor beyond the influence the DNC could have pulled.

dppest7 · 7時間前

Yes and no. I mean the people went out and voted for her so it wasn't rigged. But the DNC actively supported Hilary. Imagine playing a sport and the referee was on your side. Of course the DNC being a private entity could do anything they want and it wasn't illegal.

KropotkinWasRight · 2時間前

Read the report.

In all eleven primaries where discrepancies between exit polling and official results exceeded the margin of error, the discrepancy favored Hillary Clinton.

Comparing the computer vote counts with the exit poll survey results for the Republican Party primaries, the total survey margin of error was calculated to be 32% greater than the usual statistical margin of error applied to such surveys. Ten of the primaries of the Democratic Party had computer vote counts that differed from the exit poll results by more than the augmented margin of error applied to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research.

The Massachusetts story is repeated in other 2016 presidential primary states. As the Democratic Party primaries table below demonstrates, in 21 of 25 primary states for which exit polls were conducted, the unverified computer count totals differed in one direction—in Clinton’s favor. In ten of these primary results, the discrepancies exceeded the augmented margin of error (MOE) for their respective exit polls (see discussion below for an explanation of the augmented MOE applied). In sharp contrast, the discrepancies in the Republican Party primaries were as likely to favor Trump as the other candidates (13 and 10 respectively).

It's worth saying that it is absolutely irrelevant whether or not Clinton actually rigged the vote and stole the primary. It's irrelevant whether or not it could someday be conclusively proved. What matters isn't even whether or not Sanders supporters think that the primary was stolen.

The thing that will really matter in all this is if the Republican voters, the Trump supporters chief among them, look at what happened in the Democratic primary, look at the report linked above, and decide that a fair general election is impossible, and that the results of that general election can't be trusted.

Because that's when you'll see some serious shit go down.

With what they perceive as evidence of vote-rigging and media collusion, they've already decided November will be stolen by Clinton. And with what Sanders voters perceive as evidence of vote-rigging and media collusion, a sizable chunk of the left will either stand by while Clinton and the DNC are under attack, or will join with the right. For many people the integrity of the electoral process is a priority of paramount importance, over even ideological differences.

GinjaNinja1596 · 1時間前

I think the bias showed by the DNC really affected the outcome. Not saying Bernie would have won if there was no bias, but it could have made a difference in a few key states, especially close races like Illinois

nhanvan · 2時間前

People need to grow up and face the fact that Hillary won fair and square. The Democratic party is being fractured by the lies that spews from the disgusting republican mouth. Bernie just came out and endorse Hillary Clinton, why cant the rest of his supporter fall in line like the enthusiastic unifiers in the convention? I sincerely believe that Madame Hillary Clinton will be able to easily defeat Trump and his hateful campaign, bringing us back to unity and that the voice of justice and equality will win this November. #ImWithHer

d_c_d_ · 8時間前

No, the DNC just didn't like Sanders, they preferred their cash cow. I'd be willing to bet the same things were said by the RNC about Trump.

bellcrank · 1時間前

I don't think there's any evidence that any votes for one candidate were suppressed, manufactured, or intentionally counted for the other candidate. But the dialogue in the DNC emails makes it clear that the DNC strategized against Sanders, which clearly violates the commitment to impartiality in their charter.

The DNC was improper in how they ran the primary, but there is no evidence they rigged anything.

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