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Anyone concerned about the honesty of elections will profit from reading it. This book lights a much needed candle. It thrives in darkness, deceit, and ignorance.
It is perhaps more useful because it was written before the controversial recounts after the elections and special elections of 2008-2009 as well as the Acorn revelations. (Of course, no one personally knows of any fraud and would be shocked, yes shocked if they ran across it).There is also a feeling that if one side "plays fair" this will give an advantage to the other side. This is an excellent and needed book.
Think of unilateral disarmament.Voter fraud will not go away on its own. Hopefully, you may even be motivated to get involved. One measure of the usefulness of a book is the power to predict, and by that measure this book is very powerful indeed.I am an active member of a political party, and continue to be amazed at how little concern there is over voter fraud.
The general attitude seems to be that everyone does a little, but it all cancels out, and anyway the goal is to get enough votes for your side so that fraud won't matter anyway.
It is not. John Fund is a right-leaning pundit who has made a living writing conservative pieces for many years. Fund's works, this book is for conservative readers who want their point-of-view reinforced. Like most of Mr. Unsurprisingly, this book fits comfortably within that body of work. It is inaccurate to characterize this book as "objective" or "non-partisan".
Fund is proposing. To replace an aging corps of elderly poll-worker volunteers, he'd encourage college students and graduating high school seniors to become involved (good idea). It lengthens the actual time of an election, making it harder to oversee and police. In a related effort, Hillary Clinton supported the "Count Every Vote Act" (2005) to boost voter participation despite this going against the Constitution's requirement that states (not the federal government) control elections. From 1994 to 1998, there was a 20% increase in "voters" but one study found few of these drivers who registered actually voted. Commentators from both left (Norman Ornstein) and right (George Will) have voiced opposition to absentee balloting.The author thinks George W. In my view, this adds needless complexity and more mess to a difficult system.Generally Mr.
Fund. Other questionable tactics by Democrats include shuttling homeless people to the polls on election day. Liberals persist in thinking the election was stolen despite fairly definitive proof that Bush won the state.An activist group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) has promoted voting in low income areas, with a left-leaning agenda. Since many likely Democratic voters tend to be poor, they're more susceptible to bribes.Republican have their bag of dirty tricks too. Sulcerauthor of "Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism" (Amazon) I think the only recourse to save our Republic is a Second Constitutional Convention, and I am summoning this body to meet in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, beginning July 4, 2009, to craft a new Constitution, based on the old one, which restores our democracy along lines I've proposed in my book and in other reviews.Thomas W.
They include: ID requirements at the polls; discourage absentee balloting; rein in voter-chasing lawyers; centralized state-wide voter registration lists (to avoid duplication). It helped submit names in Seattle for voting, but 97% of 1805 names were later ruled invalid. In somewhat of a stretch, he tried to apply Thomas Sowell's "unconstrained" and "constrained" categories to voting (I wonder what Mr. In a ballsy move, Mr. He thinks same-day registration is a recipe for mischief. But it has often been associated with voter fraud. He doesn't dance around this issue, and I applaud him for his bluntness.Democratic underhandedness often involves a push for greater numbers of voters, regardless of legality. One operative hired a firm to repeatedly call Democratic "get out the vote" phone banks on election day.
Fund declares Democrats are more likely to indulge in vote fraud than Republicans (and I think he's right) yet he does this without seriously undermining his neutral stance as a non-partisan. Bill Clinton's 1993 "Motor Voter Law" required persons visiting their local DMV's to be offered a chance to register to vote. The US ranks near the bottom among world nations in terms of voter participation (139th of 163 democracies). Still, the seriousness of the subject suggests a need for a well-funded study run by academics who could apply more analytical rigor.
Senator Clinton estimated that of the roughly five million disenfranchised felons, most would lean Democratic; but do we really want felons voting. So it's difficult to know whether an election result is valid since much of the choosing is concealed from public view.Mr. Surprisingly, he didn't have much commentary about whether electronic vote-counting machines were better than paper ballots; changes in voting equipment almost always pose problems, he writes. A close election risks a legal battle fought by armies of lawyers, so it's necessary to win "beyond the margin of litigation" he writes.Voting is problematic because it's a private act done in public for a political purpose.
Fund's recommendations are sensible and smart but I see the problem as much, much deeper than electoral fraud. John Fund's excellent non-partisan "Stealing Elections" is a tough look at one aspect of America's broken democracy -- election fraud -- and does a competent job of covering this growing problem. Bush won Florida, despite the media outcry, based on a media consortium examining 170,000 disputed ballots. From 1868 to 1871, votes totaled were more than 8% of the actual population.Mr. Fund offers a list of intelligent steps to combat vote fraud.
The author sees a dangerous trend towards use of absentee ballots since it is very convenient for an apathetic public to vote with very little effort. He notes presidential candidate Barack Obama was linked with ACORN as their attorney in 1995 and as a trainer of ACORN staff. Understandably Republicans prefer requirements such as identification cards with photographs.Absentee ballots increase the risk of vote fraud, in his view. Republicans sometimes hire police officers to hang around polls to intimidate some voters.
Fund's general direction, but it's still a stretch. He takes both Democrats and Republicans to task for underhanded behavior. I think American democracy is decaying, and the problems are structural, systemic, and severe, and won't be solved with stop-gap solutions like Mr. He discusses vote fraud from history.
It's haphazard and fraud prone. Motor-Voter fueled an expansion of phantom voters. He does a particularly good job at researching recent developments from a reporter's neutral viewpoint. Florida is still the "gold standard for botched elections" he writes. Fund criticizes both sides for underhanded tactics. Sowell might think about this). In elections in Washington, California and Arizona, about half of all votes cast were absentee ballots.
Thirty states now allow absentee ballots without an excuse. Still, Fund's book is the best we've got.America's election system is perhaps the "modern world's sloppiest election system" writes Mr. He whips out a surprise recommendation about "provisional ballots" (which allow a person who tries to vote but is denied to specify a choice anyway). It's easier for party operatives to target the elderly, infirm, low-income, and non-English speaking persons, and deliver their "vote". Tammany Hall used devices such as pre-marked ballots and preyed on vulnerable immigrants. Fund points out electoral fraud in places like Mississippi, Milwaukee, Seattle, and gives examples from Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign as well. Other recommendations: require absentee ballots to be signed in the presence of a witness whose address & phone number are provided; only voters should be allowed to request an absentee ballot; campaign workers should be barred from delivering absentee ballots; states should run computer checks to compare voter lists against death notices and convicted felons; give state election officials power to examine vote fraud and disenfranchisement issues; put citizen appointees on election boards with equal representation from both parties which are overseen by a non-partisan. Television exit polls are totally bypassed by mailed-in ballots, so there is no media check on election accuracy when absentee balloting becomes extensive.
Reform is easy to talk about, hard to do. This tied up their lines. This permits a later decision to overturn the rejected registration and actually cast a vote. Local election offices are cash-strapped and voter rolls are flawed; voter ignorance, lackadaisical law enforcement and shortages of trained volunteers further compound the problem. He sees Barack Obama as a "faux reformer".Mr. The operatives were caught and spent 7 months in jail after a lawsuit, although this is one of the few instances where vote fraud was actually punished with jail time. The connection is somewhat loose -- Democrats prefer fair outcomes (votes cast) while Republicans prefer fair process (playing by the rules) and I agree with Mr. Supposedly some jailbirds in Maine and Vermont actually voted from their cells.
I want to talk about what this book leaves out.What I can't understand is how a 200+ page book about 'stealing elections' does not once mention the problem of voting machines. etc., then you will be happy with this book.
Instead, google 'hacking democracy' and watch the video. If you were looking for an understanding of voting machines and the potential for vote fraud that arises from their use, don't buy this book.
The other reviews of this book are largely correct, in that it uncovers a lot of problems with the election process, and offers some solutions. If you want to learn more about problems with 'butterfly' ballots, absentee ballots, provisional ballots, voter suppression, double-voting, etc.
That will get you started. So I won't go into what this book is about.
This is a huge problem because of the potential for abuse they provide, but it is not even mentioned in this book once, even in passing.
Rove & Co. For his "lack of cooperation" he was asked to resign in 2006 as part of the Gonzales Justice department firing scandal, which is part of an ongoing investigation.So, take Fund's assertions in context -- ACORN was a bogeyman of the last election based on trumped up charges of fraud -- purging democrats from the voter roles "won" Bush Florida (and the presidency) in 2000. Iglesias investigated the claims for more than a year, finding nothing, before realizing the whole thing was politically motivated.
They do this because contrary to media assertions, most of the poor (Appalachia as well as inner city), vote democratic. as another prong of this attack. This book is one skirmish in an ongoing Republican propaganda war whose aim is to limit voting by the poor.
Iglesias shows that he and other US Attorneys were pressured as early as 2003 to purge Democrats from voter rolls wherever possible, based on flawed assertions of voter fraud. continued the practices throughout the Bush administration and Fund is merely a water-carrier for this criminal effort to take away poorer Americans' sacred right to vote. Convincing everyone that get out the vote organizations (for example Acorn) that work in poor areas are committing fraud is one of the central line of attack in this effort.
"In Justice: Inside the Scandal That Rocked the Bush Administration", by former US Attorney David Iglesias, discusses the politicization of the Justice Dept.
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