Rigging elections have been a passtime for thousands of years. Even Joseph Stalin commented on that practice famously saying its the people who count the votes decide everything, not the people who vote. That is so true and that rose to the surface during the Scottish Referendum. When the ethnic Russians of Crimea voted to separate from the mother-land of ethnic cleansing Ukraine with its Neonazi agenda, because the EU did not like the outcome they claimed Russia rigged the vote. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution declaring it invalid under pressure. They pulled the same stunt in Romania declaring the election invalid. The press routinely publishes fake polls to deliberately try to swing elections. The historical record for thousands of years is one continuous Greek tragedy when it comes to rigged elections.
In 1948, the Chicago Daily Tribune was so certain that New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey would defeat President Harry S. Truman that they ran the now-infamous front-page headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” This is considered one of the most legendary blunders in American journalism.