Election Fraud

[Sadena Meti]

Is it me or does every election of the past 5-10 years have accusations of fraud? It seems every loser is now claiming that they won but had their victory stolen. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention before, but back in the 90's I don't recall allegations being leveled back then.

So what do you think? Are more and more elections being fixed? Or is it just standard operating procedures now for every loser to claim they won?

[Whitten]

I think its because its more relevent these days. Before the end of teh cold war most transitions of power in the third world were done through means of coup, revolt or revolution. Now that thats over and everyone is supposed to play by America's rules, the elections actually matter, and so thats where the governments and oppositions fight their battles.

[beabuenosaires]

I actually wouldn't be surprised if the elections in America at least were rigged. I may just be a conspiracy freak, but I really don't trust the American government at all, not a single aspect of it, no matter what party anyone belongs to. I think that there is a significant possibility that at least the last two presidential elections in the U.S have been rigged.

[izquierda80]

Most of the time I'd say that the allegations tend to be truer rather than not, representatively. Probably not with the same orders of magnitude though. In other words, if I were to guess, many of those elections could actually have been rigged on a certain level, but not necessarily from top to bottom, and the rigging didn't always radically change the final result (an exception would appear to be the recent Mexican elections, for example, which was too close for call to begin with and the fraud does seem rather decisive and thus worth protesting against).

Of course, from a purely revolutionary point of view, elections are of relatively little importance as long as the objective conditions and structural realities continue to favor capitalists and reactionaries, even when little to no fraud occurs.

Elections should be as free and as democratic as possible, but they are not truly representative of the best interests of the people when they are the result of socially manipulated or unconscious voting. This doesn't mean that they should be blindly ignored or automatically irrespected, not really, but that this should be kept in mind.

[Cheung Mo]

Every Canadian election has been rife with fraud: We call it Westminster though. :-( (A few went further when Westminster wasn't enough to get them elected: Like ultra-Papist Nazi-apologist Maurice Duplessis.)

[AlwaysAnarchy]

One word : Diebold.

It is rather unfortuante that people cant play by the rules and allow the people's will. Yes I agree that there has been fraud and deceit, in America and most likely other countries as well.