“The election is going to be rigged!” What is Mr. Trump trying to do? Bring down the Republic, destroy faith the democratic process, foment rebellion?

I think it is time for him to finally heed Mr. Kahn’s advice and read that U.S. Constitution he will have to swear to “uphold and defend” should the unlikely and unthinkable catastrophe of his election as President actually occur.

Were he ever to indulge his short attention span in perusing the document, the supreme law of the nation, he would discover that Articles I and II clearly lay out the role of the Federal Government in conducting elections, which is minimal at best.

Article I concerns the powers, length of terms, representational apportionment and limitations on power of the two houses of Congress. This article confers the authority to conduct and regulate electoral procedures to the states. The only stipulation the Constitution imposes on the states is to say voters who are qualified to vote for the lower house of a state’s legislature are qualified to vote for members of Congress.

Article II does much the same with Presidential elections. The states have the duty to conduct the vote and regulatory authority over electoral certification and tabulation with an identical level of voter qualification. Article II’s only additional caveats are the formula for apportioning each state’s electoral votes, giving the House the duty of certifying the Electoral College results and explaining how to break an Electoral College tie vote.

Hence, we have more than 9,000 electoral districts nationwide, employing hundreds of thousands of loyal, patriotic, conscientious workers to record, tabulate, and certify the people’s votes. A majority of these districts are under the political control of Republicans. Therefore, the notion that there could be even a possibility to “rig” Presidential elections is absurd.

Those of us opposed to Mr. Trump can do nothing about this dangerous assertion, so I beg all patriotic Trump supporters to please urge your candidate to stop using the “rigged” phrase; the very future of our Republic may well depend on him finally becoming a responsible, mature, and patriotic candidate.

Tom DeBor
Poulsbo