Review--Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Election

 

The Election of 2020 was Stolen and Everyone Knows It.

Mollie Hemingway is fearless.

 Her directness is refreshing in an industry that rewards spin. Officially she writes for the Federalist, but is a frequent guest on Fox News as an expert journalist. She’s a conservative reporter who doesn’t mind being labeled one. Probably because her work speaks for itself. Even the left wing Guardian took shots at her partisanship but said nothing of her sources or logic.  

The book contains almost 100 pages of endnotes, many with commentary. This was no small undertaking. Rigged shows how tech money and Democrat activists stole an election, and suppressed any mention of it. She retells much of the 2020 Covid lockdown year and the effort to remake voting along ‘safer’ lines. By throwing out, or just ignoring, restrictions on voter verification the fix was in.

Lockdowns Become the Excuse

Covid became the perfect chance to change laws en masse and push through sweeping election reforms. States like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan saw the largest changes. There isn’t enough space here to detail each state’s reckless disregard for using proper legal channels. The biggest steals were in vote by mail, signature verification, poll watching and a general loosening of standards.

 Mark Zuckerberg spread out over 400 million dollars through various non-profits to ‘aid’ in election safety. Dubbed Zuck Bucks, they funded a cottage industry of election shenanigans. 

The stated reason for the infusion of cash was to make sure elections “done in accordance with prevailing public health requirements”. The vast majority of money went to fund attorney fees for open record requests, salaries, laptops and other local hires for elections. Left wing groups like Power the Polls helped hire ballot curers. Curing is determining the intent of a voter on a disputed ballot. These are normally thrown out when in dispute. It’s an area ripe with fraud for good reason.

The problem with this outside money is it can overwhelm the normal, legal, function of election workers and election laws. That’s of course the point. Overwhelm the system and takeover the operation where possible. Private money isn’t necessarily new or unethical, but the scale and deployment points to why so much was spent on an election Democrats knew they’d likely lose.

Blame the Legal Team

In the second half, Hemingway blames Rudy Giuliani and his team of lawyers tasked with contesting the results in various states. If there is a weak point of the book it’s here.

 He focused on making public all the wrong items when other perfectly good strategies existed. Pennsylvania was the death knell for effective litigation of the election. According to Hemingway, there was an exceptionally good case for voters being denied equal protection. Mail in votes were being counted well after the statue strictly forbid it.

In challenge to this, the Pittsburg lawyers wanted to pursue the equal protection violation but Giuliani and crew focused on more sensational parts of the election. One particular poll watcher was denied entry, true but not as meaty. Rudy did a presser about it that rubbed some the wrong way. Some of the original Pittsburg lawyers were scared off the case by death threats. On top of that, the rest couldn’t agree with Rudy and his team and how the case should go. They asked to be dismissed from the case.

Uphill Battle

Hemmingway’s criticism is unfair here. I don’t remember the Trump team getting a lot of help in too many states. In fact most wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe Giuliani was abrasive and maybe they liked the sensational stuff because it meant the press would have to notice. Maybe they were sloppy and too concerned with optics. I’m not a lawyer but of all the cases anyone connected to Trump brought to court, how many were winners? As of February of this year, the times when it would have mattered, zero.

Am I supposed to believe this is all just Rudy and his bumbling legal team? No way. What about the Texas case to challenge Pennsylvania at the Supreme Court? SCOTUS wouldn't even hear the case because of "standing".

There has been very little courage from judges, elections commissions, and anyone tied to the voting process. Arizona has gone the farthest with its audit of Maricopa County. There is some evidence that Wisconsin might follow this same path. But I’m cynical. I think all this sudden ‘bravery’ is to shore up the suckers, the ones who haven’t said F*@K national elections.

It’s a way of saying “Hey guys, Republican official here. Gosh we’d love to do something about those pesky democrats and what they did in 2020. So vote for us and we’ll do what we can.” They’re dangling audit language like a string to a kitten and hoping we’ll chase it around. How do I know this? We’ve got an election coming up next year. You think they want to waste time with audits, recounts, litigation. Hell no. It’s time to raise money!

Don’t fall for it. You fix the fence then bring in the horses that escaped. They’re asking us to bring in the horses in while they work on the fence.  

Without real consequences for election theft, ballot tampering or any voter fraud we lose the ability to stop it. Justice Alito told Pennsylvania election officials to separate late arriving ballots after 8:00 on November 3^rd (election day). They didn’t. They counted them anyway. What’s been done about it? Nothing.

Conclusion

Pick any swing state you like from last year. Most of the same problems are there in bunches, no oversight, out of date voter rolls, election laws ignored, double counting, signature verification problems.

Rigged is a fascinating deep dive into election fraud, mismanagement and plan by the tech companies and the deep state to steal the election. If you’re skeptical about the claims of among right wing nuts like me, just read it. Her research and summary of events are impeccable.