Barack Obama hits back at Donald Trump, calls his claims as `ridiculous`

Washington: Terming the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's claim that the upcoming elections are going to be rigged as "ridiculous", US President Barack Obama has assured to preserve the integrity of the voting process.

"I don't even really know where to start on answering this question. Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean? The federal government doesn't run the election process, it is states, cities and communities all across the country. They are the ones who set up the voting systems and voting booths," Obama said during a news conference yesterday when asked about Trump's allegations.

"And if Mr Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths. That is ridiculous," he said.

Trump's allegations does not make any sense and I don't think anybody would take that seriously, he added.

"We do take seriously, as we always do, our responsibility to monitor and preserve the integrity of the voting process. If we see signs that a voting machine or system is more vulnerable to hacking, then we inform those local authorities who are running the elections that they need to be careful," Obama said.

"If we see jurisdictions that are violating federal laws in terms of equal access and aren't providing ramps for disabled voters or are discriminating in some fashion, or are otherwise violating civil rights laws, then the justice department will come in and take care of that," he said.

Taking a dig at Trump, Obama said this will be an election like every other election and all of us at some points in our lives have played sports and sometimes some people, if they lose, they start complaining that they got cheated.

"But I never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over, or before the scored was even tallied," he said said.

"So my suggestion would be go out there and try to win the election. If Mr Trump is up 10 or 15 points on Election Day and ends up losing maybe he can raise some questions. That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment," the US president said.

Further attacking Trump, Obama urged the people of America to make their own judgements on the Republican presidential nominee.