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Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Senate GOP sees early Supreme Court vote as political booster shot Poll: 51 percent of voters want to abolish the electoral college MORE warned Trump was “talking down our democracy” while The New York Times called it a blatant “contempt for democracy” and many others were infuriated that a presidential candidate would have the gall to publicly pronounce a distrust of government.

In fact, these divine notions of American governance couldn’t be further from the truth.

America’s Founding Fathers predicated the Constitution on the notion that citizens not trust its government and distrust of government is fundamentally enshrined in America's governmental institutions and traditions — government being a necessary evil that needs to be suspect, supervised, curtailed and restrained.

As abolitionist writer Wendell Phillips once wrote, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,” and Trump’s response was strategically brilliant as it was patriotic — let me explain why.

This election is a vote on globalism versus nationalism; a corporate oligarchy versus the will of the people or, simply put, the anti-establishment versus the establishment.

Like him or loath him, Trump is the anti-establishment candidate rising up against a decaying, corrupt elite — embodied in Hillary Clinton. Trump is taking on both the Democratic as well as the Republican Party establishment which he has all but usurped. Trumps revolutionary proposals include a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress as well as what he calls “draining the swamp” of lobbyists in Washington DC.

With a Trump presidency, a lot of insider’s livelihoods are at stake.

Rigged

Throughout his campaign Trump has asserted that the system was rigged — meaning one side acquiring an unfair advantage over another.

During the GOP primaries Trump asserted the process was rigged and he was right — in some states the Republican nominating rules are designed to ignore the will of the voters and to promote certain candidates.

Trump also said the Democratic primaries were rigged against Bernie Sanders Bernie SandersButtigieg stands in as Pence for Harris's debate practice Bernie Sanders warns of 'nightmare scenario' if Trump refuses election results Harris joins women's voter mobilization event also featuring Pelosi, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda MORE and we know they were. Not only were the super delegates stacked against Sanders, Democratic National Committee leaked emails confirmed the party establishment were actively working to promote and elect Clinton, leading to the resignation of former DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Media

Central to Trump’s indignation and accusations is the “dishonest” media.

Any serious objective analysis of this election cycle can only conclude the mainstream media are almost universally biased against Trump and pro Clinton. The media, both left and right, continue to hound, misrepresent and criticise his every move yet blatantly shield his opponent from her scandal riddled campaign.

When Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape was leaked on the same day as the explosive Wikileaks email dumps exposing Clinton boasting to Wall Street banks that she had one set of policy views in public and another in private, the mainstream media networks treated the speech as an afterthought and proclaimed the Trump tape as the final nail in his campaign’s coffin.

In fact, from the Friday to the Monday of the weekend in question ABC, CBS and NBC gave 198 minutes of coverage to the tape and 13 minutes to the WikiLeaks emails in what historian and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said “is the largest example of total one-sided bias in the history of the American media."

.@newtgingrich: "This is the largest example of total one-sided bias in the history of the American media." #Hannity pic.twitter.com/13YYkZz0oj — Fox News (@FoxNews) October 19, 2016

It is no surprise then that 96% of disclosed donations from working journalists have gone to Hillary Clinton.

General Election Campaign

Recent undercover reports from Project Veritas appeared to catch DNC operatives on tape admitting to facilitating voter fraud and infiltrating Trump rallies to incite violence from his supporters.

This bombshell gained little or no traction on mainstream media until Trump himself referenced the tapes as yet another example of the campaign being rigged against him.

Clinton Scandals

Trump has argued Clinton should be precluded from office because of her alleged crimes as Secretary of State. He accused Clinton of lying to Congress, lying to the FBI, conducting quid pro quo deals, destroying emails after they were demanded by a federal subpoena, and her overall handling of classified emails.

The fact of the matter is many people have been imprisoned for far less and as former prosecutor Judge Jeanine Pirro said, “There are two systems of justice in America, one for everyday Americans — and one for Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

So Trump has been proven right in almost all his claims thus far, what then for voter fraud and/or voter rigging?

Voter Fraud

The common misconception is that systematic voter fraud on a mass scale would be necessary to influence an election and thus impossible to pull off. However because of America’s unique election process this is not the case; all it takes is a tiny percentage of votes in certain swing states to be tipped in the balance of either candidate to win the White House.

While Trumps detractors project an image of American elections as being inviolable, history tells us otherwise:

In 1960, there were several reported cases of voter fraud in Texas where John F. Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was Senator, and in Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley's powerful Chicago political machine. Had Nixon carried both these states he would have earned 270 electoral votes, one more than the 269 needed to take the majority and the presidency. Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results — as well as in nine other states voter fraud was found in.

Approximately 24 million — one of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate. More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters and approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

While this does not necessarily translate into actual votes, the behavior of the DNC throughout this campaign suggests they will go to great lengths to get their candidate elected — there are already instances of Democrats re-registering deceased people to vote.

And more than 14 percent of non-citizens in 2008 and 2010 surveys said that they were registered to vote.

With Trumps hard stance on illegal immigration, these voters will likely not be voting for the GOP nominee. In fact in one Podesta email, the campaign chairman says “if you show up on Election Day with a driver’s license with a picture, attest that you are a citizen, you have a right to vote in Federal elections.”

And with electronic voting vulnerable to all types of hacking there really are major doubts about the trustworthiness of the votes.

What do we expect?

In the very same debate Hillary Clinton accused Russia of hacking and rigging the election, it was Trump who was cornered by the moderator in a “gotcha” type question.

Trump, to his credit, stood firm in his beliefs and the media’s frenzied reaction to condemn him only served to underline and highlight the issue with election fraud now a central issue of this campaign as every polling station is set to come under intense scrutiny by vigilant citizens — all because Trump turned negative media coverage into a shrewd advantage.

Trump’s rhetoric is not anti-democratic, it is in fact quite the opposite — dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Dorgan is a geopolitical analyst and political commentator; he holds a degree in Politics and History as well as an MA in Historical Research specializing in United States Foreign Policy. You can follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.