I am sure that most of the elections in the past where rigged to an extent. The last 2 elections where so obvious, if you are going to rig an election why make it so close in back to back elections? Was is played out that way for a reason? I am assuming that the first election gave national acceptance to Diebold upgraded voting boxes. We had to sit through months of ballot counting on the news. That's a great way to solve the problem of punch cards and give the solution of new improved voting machines. Which could be even easier to manipulate?
"A proposed solution to these problems was the installation of modern electronic voting machines. The United States Presidential Election of 2000 spurred the debate about election and voting reform, but it did not end it."
"In the aftermath of the election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed to help states upgrade their election technology in the hopes of preventing similar problems in future elections. Unfortunately, the electronic voting systems which many states purchased in order to comply with HAVA actually caused problems in the following presidential election of 2004." wikapedia