Popular book on voting in America.
Stealing Elections : How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy
by John H. Fund
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
John Fund is a member of the "Wall Street Journal"'s editorial board and writes the paper's daily 'Political Diary.' He has written on voter fraud and election irregularities for the last decade in the "Wall Street Journal," " New Republic ," "American Spectator" and other publications. In the past year, Fund has made over 90 appearances on Fox News, MSNBC, C-Span, and CNBC.
Product Description:
The Florida Fiasco of 2000, with hanging chads, butterfly ballots and Supreme Court intervention, forced Americans to confront an ugly reality. 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 "Stealing Elections," 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.
Votescam: The Stealing of America
by James M. Collier , Kenneth F. Collier
Fraud of the Century: Rutherford B. Hayes, Samuel Tilden, and the Stolen Election of 1876
by Roy Morris Jr.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Stop me if you've heard this one: election night comes and goes and the race between two American presidential candidates is too close to call. The popular vote supports the reticent Democrat, but the well-connected Republican is named president after a lengthy and controversial fight over recounts and electoral votes. Of course, we're speaking of the 1876 contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden as chronicled in Fraud of the Century by historian Roy Morris Jr. Morris spends much of the book setting the stage by illuminating the characters of both the folksy Hayes from Ohio and the urbane New Yorker Tilden. Though quite different, both men are presented as principled and, ironically enough, committed to wiping out corruption and chicanery. This helps the reader understand the players when the post-election mayhem ensues. The Electoral College is unable to declare a winner after Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida submit multiple "official" ballots with different victorious candidates. Numerous shady deals are worked out to Hayes's favor while forces loyal to Tilden threaten to march on Washington and install their man by force, if necessary. The most damaging result of the mess, according to Morris, is the pervasive mood of distrust and acrimony on the part of Congress, a mood that would contribute to the South's notorious Jim Crow laws. History buffs will appreciate Morris's extensive research but everyone enjoys a good political thriller. --John Moe
From Publishers Weekly
For those who think the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000 represented the nadir of American electoral politics, Morris (The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War) provides some muchneeded historical perspective. In 1876, New York Democrat Samuel Tilden almost certainly won the popular vote over Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. But contested returns in Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina, as well as a legal issue in Oregon, eventually led to a 15-member congressional...
Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century
by Bev Harris , Beverly Harris
Editorial Reviews
Vanity Fair magazine, April 2004
"Riveting...scoops that would have made her [Bev Harris's] career at the New York Times or Washington Post."
Product Description:
Author Bev Harris is the 52-year old grandma who found 40,000 secret voting machine files on the Web, which have now been studied by computer scientists all over the world. "Black Box Voting" is the book that resulted from her investigations into the voting industry.
What she learned was that modern-day voting systems are run by private for-profit corporations, rely on a few cronies for oversight, using a certification system so fundamentally flawed that it allows machines to miscount and lose votes, with hidden back doors that enable "end runs" around the voting system. Find out why your vote might not count -- and what to do about it!
Stealing Our Votes : How Politicians Conspire to Control Elections and How to Stop Them
by Clark , George L. Clark
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
George L. Clark, Ph.D.., is a retired research scientist in the field of lasers and optics. He has used computers to solve difficult imaging problems, such as imaging through turbulent atmosphere, imaging of space objects with large un-phased collector arrays, and imaging from space using optically imperfect mirrors. He was able to retrieve excellent images from aberration-corrupted data by the use of computer power.
Since retiring, Dr. Clark has turned his talents to solving the redistricting problem. He has developed software that draws district maps free of political bias and that guarantees a fair vote to all citizens.
Product Description:
The Founders of our country gave us a republic, and the voting power to keep it. They entrusted the redistricting power to the safest repository they could think of: the people's representatives. In Stealing Our Votes: How Politicians Conspire to Control Elections and How to Stop Them , Dr. Clark demonstrates that this choice has turned out to be a disastrous loophole, threatening our ability to govern ourselves. The parties in power in state legislatures now use computers and redistricting software to increase their party's political power, stealing from the voters their constitutional right to choose their representative. That is the evil of gerrymandering.
