What makes you think that this sort of thing ( search engines or those who have access to the search histories of the "makers and shakers" and other possibly "compromising data" influencing political/economic policy and political outcomes in the U.S.A and elsewhere ) has not already happened/ is not already happening ?..

Enormous sums of money are already being spent to flood the web with mis-information and lies. An overwhelming flood is difficult to stop in any circumstances, and the problem is compounded because search engines haven't evolved to the point, if they ever will, where they can reliably distinguish between truth and lies.

Of course many real humans can't recognize lies either, thus you can't expect search engines to do much better.

So no intentional "rigging" is necessary. Just overwhelm Google and the other search engines with an enormous flood of lies and mis-information, and some of it is sure to get through.

I didn't mean to imply that things like this don't happen or haven't happened. As webmasters we are all too cognizant of the whims of this almighty algorithm so it's nothing new to most of us on some level. What I find interesting is the main stream media bringing the issue to a larger audience in a way that's likely to get some people thinking about Google in ways they never have before. I agree that no intentional rigging would be necessary which then begs the question "Does Google have a responsibility to ensure it's not improperly influencing something like an election (inadvertently or otherwise)? Actually, I think the answer is no because just look at the way the media is practically shutting out virtually every candidate in this election cycle right now while essentially turning the news cycle into the Donald Trump show. There doesn't seem to be any accountability in this arena and I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't feel the need to justify it's results on this topic any more that it feels the need to justify all the Amazon pages sitting at the top of its SERPs right now. Probably the biggest injury from an article like this is just another level of erosion of voter's faith in the political process (which is already at an all-time low).

It doesn't help when the media interpret a search for a candidate as a yes vote.