Donald Trump Claims Election Is ‘Rigged’, Others say ‘No’ [POLL]

UNDATED - Donald Trump has called Republican leaders "naive" for dismissing his claims of a rigged election. Trump tweeted over the weekend "The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing crooked Hillary".

Dale Zacher is the Chair of the Mass Communications Department at St. Cloud State University. He says the debate about political bias in the media is not new. He says it's a topic that goes back at least 40 years.

From their self-described positions they do tend to skew a little more liberal. But, if you look at the owners of our media companies, they're predominately very rich well-to-do business people who certainly do not have a liberal bias.

Zacher says studies on this issue have been mixed, and it's difficult to come to a definite conclusion.

He says news coverage this election season is more about how journalists are trained.

If you work for  a TV station  you're going to go for the story that has better video, and has more shocking and unusual things in it, where you have a political candidate talking so lewdly it makes better television, it makes a better story.

Zacher says while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has a scandal of her own with the Wiki Leaks emails, there's no video and therefore it doesn't make as good of a television news story.

Trump is also doubling down on his claim that voter fraud poses a significant threat to the election. Stearns County Auditor-Treasurer Randy Schreifels says there are lots of checks and balances in place to ensure a fair election. He says two election judges are required to bring the results from each polling place to his office.

We also look to make sure that various things match, like the number of people that voted match the number of ballots. And also that the number of ballots they were given are all accounted for, including the unused ones.

He says after all the ballots are counted initially, they go to a Canvassing Board for a post election review.

Part of their job is they pick three districts randomly to have a post election review. So in those three districts a recount is done just to make sure what was on the ballots match what's on the tape that was printed out.

Schreifels says the Canvassing Board is made up the mayor, county commissioners, the court administrator, and others.

Schreifels says locally, and statewide, we have had some high profile recounts in the past few elections which have proven that our voting system works the way it's supposed to.