‘Credible Elections Can’t be Harvested from Rigged Primaries’

“Credible Elections Can’t be Harvested from Rigged Primaries” is a commentary arguing that the legitimacy of any general election is fundamentally compromised if the primary contests that select the candidates are manipulated or unfair. It asserts that rigging primaries—through biased rules, voter suppression, or party‑controlled processes—undermines voter confidence, distorts candidate choice, and ultimately prevents the resulting election from being truly credible, regardless of how clean the general‑election voting may be. The piece calls for transparent, open primaries as a prerequisite for trustworthy democratic outcomes. Views Nigeria