Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy

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Summary: partisan
Review: a good book.however he puts his republican spin on election 2000,clearly hes on karl roves payroll,and he cant admit the gop stole florida thru jeb bush and katherine harris.they were the authority on what votes were counted.They threw out votes for gore and that witch harris used expired ballots for the edge.wake up bush fascism was thrust upon us.

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Summary: Voter fraud clearly a threat to the future of our republic
Review: As I finish up and ponder "Stealing Elections" on the eve of the 2004 Presidential election, I cannot help but be alarmed at what has become of the election process in this country. John Fund has hit it right on the head in his matter-of-fact book about how various kinds of election fraud has undermined the way we choose our leaders.
The problems appear to have started in 1994 with the enactment of the Motor Voter Law. This innane Act allows individuals to register to vote in church, at the laundromat or at just about any government agency. And what is even more ludicrous is that absolutely no identification is required to register. When I read about this at the time I recall thinking just how ridiculous this law was. People can also register by mail, again with no identification required. And the consequences of this law should not be at all surprising. We now have many more fraudulant votes being cast by illegal aliens, convicted felons, by folks who moved away years earlier and yes even by dead people!!! And as a result the ballots cast by legitimate, law-abiding citizens are being negated. It is an outrage!
Another way elections are being stolen in this country is by the use of absentee ballots and extended election periods. It used to be that a citizen needed to present officials with a legitimate reason for being sent an absentee ballot. Today, standards have been relaxed and a greater and greater percentage of voters are opting for absentee ballots. The opportunities for voter fraud increase exponentially in such a scenario. Likewise, many states now allow voting over several days or even weeks. And in Oregon, virtually all balloting is now done by mail. Melody Rose, a professor at Oregon State University observes in "Stealing Elections" ""Vote by mail brings a perpetual risk of systemic fraud." In such a system ballots can easily be stolen from mailboxes and once again the opportunity for all kinds of hanky panky dramatically increases.
In Chapter 8 entitled "High Tech Voting", John Fund also discusses the myriad problems with just about all of the new voting machine technologies now available to states and municipalities. He points out significant problems that have occured with just about all of the new technologies including touch screens and scanners. Once again, the potential for fraud is tremendous. And even if some of these machines are working properly on Election Day recent history has taught us that poll workers are frequently poorly trained and often do not know how to operate these machines themselves. Add to all of this the new requirement for so-called "provisional" ballots and you just might agree that all of this adds up to a recipe for disaster.
As an important first step to remedy some of these issues and to return some level of sanity to the process, John Fund proposes that photo identification be required before voting. This seems like a reasonable idea. A recent poll indicates that 89$ of potential Bush voters and even 75% of John Kerry voters approve of this proposal. Yet Civil Rights groups fight such an idea tooth and nail. It is also clear to me that much of the new voting equipment in use might not be quite ready for prime time use. It is imperative that before a state commits to such new technologies that adequate testing be done beforehand. After all, what is the big rush? Are we falling all over ourselves just so the networks can get faster results on election night? Let them wait!
In "Stealing Elections" John Fund has painted a chilling picture of what our elections are turning into. I take this book very seriously and worry what the ramifications might be if people come to believe that elections can be easily manipulated or even stolen in our country. These are issues that all of us should become acquainted with and "Stealing Elections" is a good choice assist you in doing that. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money!
Review: Author put book on the market just to capatalize on the election. 95% of the claims made lack any true evidence.
Anyone with a 3rd grade or higher education could see through the authors paper thin arguments.

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Summary: WOW what an eye opener
Review: Did you know that the U.S. has the sloppiest election systems of any industrialized nation, so sloppy that at least eight of the 19 hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations for 9/11?

In reading that in the books description of 'Stealing Elections' by John Fund I knew I needed the book. I read that John Fund takes the reader on a national tour of voter fraud scandals ranging from rural states like Texas and Mississippi to big cities such as Philadelphia and Milwaukee. He explores dark episodes such as the way "vote brokers" stole a mayoral election in Miami in 1998 by tampering with 4700 absentee ballots. He shows how, in the aftermath of the Motor Voter Law of 1993, Californians used mail-in forms to get absentee ballots for fictitious people and pets, while in St. Louis it was discovered that voter rolls included 13,000 more names than the U.S. Census listed as the total number of adults in the city. Election officials are trying to reassure voters by turning to computerized voting machines. But Fund shows that with the new technology come even greater concerns. Early in 2004, for instance, the state of Maryland, which has 16,000 new Diebold machines, commissioned a security expert to try to rig a practice election. He and his team broke into the computer at the State Board of Elections, completely changed the outcome of the election, left, and erased their electronic trail-all in under five minutes. "Stealing Elections" gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability--in the 2004 presidential election and on into the future. Writing with urgency and authority, John Fund shows how a lethal combination of bureaucratic bungling and ballot rigging have put our democracy at risk. ' that I knew I needed to read the book and then recommend it to others.

I was thinking about this after listening to NPR and then Coast to Coast on radio one night where it was noted that there HAS to be a repeat of the fraud in Florida this year for two simple reasons. First because there have been major hurricanes which have left people homeless with no polling place, and those using touch tone screens will NOT have any proof they voted like one does with a paper ballot either from a polling place or via absentee ballot.

And now the United Nations and other countries are being asked by American citizens to please come and monitor American elections just like they do in Iraq, Afghanistan and other third world countries where corruption is rampant. Its a MUST read book.











Rating:
Summary: How have we done as well as we have?
Review: Florida drew the attention of the country and the world to the United States election system. But this was not the first and certainly won't be the last time that (shall we call them) irregularities occur in an election. Here are the stories of a few irregularities from where the country took the ballot boxes home (just for safe keeping of course) before the votes were counted to the big time vote arranging of the political bosses. Great reading, and plenty of blame on both parties. This way readers can say that he is prejudiced against their party.

This presidential year I'm living in one of the battleground states. An organization set up tables at a series of super markets around the state to get people to register. They passed out the proper forms and collected the filled out forms to be filed with the country clerk. But only one party's forms were turned in.

All and all, it's a wonder that our Government hasn't been any worse than it has. This book talks a lot about fraud. Maybe he'll write another one about incompetence.

Our county was told that we had to have dual language voting.

OK, our machines will do that.

The second language has to be Piute indian. - Guess what indian language doesn't have a written language.

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Summary: If banks ran like our elections, we'd all be robbed blind!
Review: I just completed reading this book in one sitting. What an amazing compendium of election fraud. Yes, the overwhelming amount cited is by Democrats (and John Fund notes that early on and why). Yes, Republicans do it to. But more amazingly, he cites instance after instance of how America, the shining beacon for hope & freedom in the world, has the most broken, fragmented and fraud-prone voting system that can be found. Between the fraud-prone legislation of "motor-voter", rantings of (unproven and unfounded) "voter intimidation" if someone is actually asked to PROVE who they are, and outright theft of elections, it is clear our system is broken. No checks & balances, no accountablility.

I became interested in this book as a result of the current WA State Governor's contested election (see www.soundpolitics.com for more timeline) and all it's double-votes, dead voters, illegal voters, felon voters, and numbers of polling ballots that outnumbered those who actually showed up at the polls. I had thought all that died with Mayor Daley (the senior) in Chicago years ago. But it is alive and well folks. And not just in WA State now, but all over the country.

Despite the fact that a majority of voters from BOTH major parties want accoutability of WHO is voting, time and time again basic ideas of picture ID's or thumbprints are routinely killed off under the guise it will lead to "disenfranchisement" of minorities. Yet, south of the border in a country known for it's corruption of public officials, both are required to vote. Yes folks, even MEXICO has a more secure voting system than we do!

Read it and weep. We are slowly losing our greatest right, that of fair elections, to powerful unelected interests. What a shame.

Rating:
Summary: Vote early, vote often
Review: I wish I could say I was surprised at this book, and some of the details were fairly shocking, but as a poll watcher in several states over the decades, I am only sorry that this book is not getting the attention it deserves. The voting system in the country is very broken, and getting worse every day as the rhetoric escalates and the cheaters game the system. While there have been stolen elections many times in the USA, the only recent one at the national level was JFK's election in 1960 by dead people in Chicago and ghosts in Texas. Of course you could say the Democrats are up to the same old tricks with a different twist since they did a good job of disenfranchising black voters in the South with Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, and KKK intimidation back when Senator Byrd was still wearing his white dress and hood in the 'hood. The claims by Democrats of election fraud in Florida in 2000 were proven to be false by every reputable organization that looked into it, including some very liberal newspapers who spent a lot of time doing recounts. But John Fund's little book shows numerous examples of voter fraud on a grand scale, in mostly Democratic areas, and this election will make 1960 look like petty theft. With more registered voters in some areas than there are living adults, where 40,000 New York voters from heavily Democrat districts are also registered to vote in Florida and thousands of them apparently did vote for Gore twice in 2000, and where the system is rigged to reward fraud, our election system is headed towards anarchy, if it isn't already there. With the race card played by Democrats at any attempt by Republicans to make this an honest process, we could well wind up with a president who was elected by fraud instead of by the will of the people. This is the only nation where cashing a check requires more identification than casting a vote. It is a sad day when the American soldiers who liberated Afghanistan and Iraq may well have their vote stolen while overseeing a more honest election process in those countries so new to freedom.

Rating:
Summary: Democracy In Peril
Review: In his brilliant, well-written, and downright frightening new book "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy", Wall Street Journal political reporter John Fund looks at how easily votes are stolen or voters disenfranchised in this country, how Florida in 2000 was just the tip of the iceberg THAN YEAR, and how virtually nothing has changed since then to prevent an even longer, drawn out leagal battle from occuring.

Fund opens his book by describing the two types of people who are concerned about threat to the integrity of elections. One group, mostly Demcorats, are primarily concerened with the most people voting as possible, the "Unconstrained" view of Democracy that deempahsizes rules governing registration and voter ID in favor of getting as many people as possible to the polls. The other, "constrained" view, held by Republicans, is that the rule of law in elections must be upheld. This came to a head in two states in particluar in 2000, Florida and Missouri. Florida's problems are well-known, and Fund effectively and convincingly demonstrates that while the largest stories about fraud focused on so-called "disenfranchised" voters, the real problem was outright fraud committed in battlegrounds like Palm Beach Co. He decontructs the myth that 1000's of lower-income and minority votes were surpressed by relying on facts and statistics, not charges that were made only in the media, not the Courts. He also demonstrates that the Media probably crushed turnout in the Florida panhandle, which operates on Central Time, by declaring the polls closed statewide while there was still and hour of voting left in the Panhandle, and then calling Florida for Gore with 12 minutes left before the polls closed in that part of the state.

In Missouri, classic, machine fraud was a problem, with the established state laws governing elections essentialled overruled on a case by case basis by judges sympathetic to Democrats. While George Bush won the state when Senator Kit Bond finally insisted the polls close 3 hours after they were supposed to, Fund demonsrates eerie coincidences that seem to indicated a pattern to defraud the vote by the national Democratic Party.

The other chapters detail the fact that by eletion stanards, America's electoral integrity is teetering dangerously close to third world banana republicanism, that Mexico has a more secure voting system than we do, and he outlines ways to ensure that the process, which he argues must be uniform, transparent, and legally enforced, can be made safe and stable again. While some on the left may not like the harsh truths detailed in the book, if you want to understand exactly what is happening to the democratic process and how to fix it before it's too late, this book is a scary but essential read.

Rating:
Summary: partisan, gentlemanly, no longer topical
Review: The election is over and most of us have moved on. This book may still be of interest to some. There seems to be a trade-off between making it easy and convenient to vote and insuring the integrity of elections, Republicans come down on one side of the issue and Democrats on the other. Fund is clearly concerned about the integrity issue although he lays out the Democrat position as well.

Fund builds a case that steps taken over the last 10 years to make it easy to vote have set the stage for a significant increase in electoral fraud. We're lucky the last election wasn't close. If you're still interested in this issue, this book is a place to start.

Rating:
Summary: A chilling examination of the weaknesses in the system
Review: Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund presents Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, a chilling examination of the weaknesses in the system that forms the fundamental core of American democracy. From "vote brokers" who seized a mayoral election in Miami by tampering with absentee ballots, to abuses of the Motor Votor law that allowed fictitious people and pets to vote, to the natorious hanging chads and butterfly ballots of the 2000 election and much more, Stealing Elections exposes various types of fraud to the unyielding light of day. A must-read for anyone with a keen interest in politics and indeed, the future of America as a democratic nation.