Katie Porter, who did not make it into the top-two primary for the CA Senate race after coming in behind Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey put out a message saying “Because of you, we had the establishment running scared — withstanding 3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”

After she was attacked for appearing to attack the integrity of the election system, she put out a follow up message saying that by “rigged” she means that she means that “our politics are manipulated by big dark money….At no time time have I ever undermined the vote count and election process in CA, which is beyond reproach.”

I’m a former colleague of Katie’s at UC Irvine, and I know what she is trying to say. And I’m a big opponent of Citizens United and undisclosed spending in campaigns. (I wrote a whole book about it.)

But calling an election “rigged” in these times is irresponsible. These comments will be taken out of context to claim that Katie is as bad as Trump in saying that the election system is unfair. This will cause more people to doubt the integrity of the election process.

There are better ways to criticize the outsized role of money in politics than to use language that suggests the election process itself is not conducted in a fair manner.

As someone noted on Twitter, Katie’s real complaint is about the top two primary, and how Schiff tried to raise the profile of Steve Garvey, who would be a weaker candidate in the fall than Katie would have been.