Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform [Paperback]

Mark Crispin Miller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2007

In Fooled Again, renowned media critic Mark Crispin Miller argues that it wasn’t “moral values” that swung the 2004 presidential race-it was theft. A huge array of anomalies, improper practices, and blatant violations of the law in state after state all happened to swing in the Bush ticket’s favor. Fooled Again not only gives abundant evidence of theft, but also describes the mind-set among both the major parties and the media that could easily allow it to happen again in 2006 and 2008.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this belated exposé—and clarion call for electoral reform—Miller (The Bush Dyslexicon) accuses George W. Bush and his "theocratic militants" of orchestrating electoral fraud to "hijack" the 2004 presidential race. Miller relies on original reporting, secondary sources and unadulterated outrage to make his case, marshaling evidence (much of it circumstantial) of Democratic voter disenfranchisement, mysterious computer snafus and discrepancies between exit poll results and official vote counts. He is especially critical of the press for what he describes as silence in the face of Bush's and Cheney's denials of fraud. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is another target of Miller's ire, for ignoring warnings of coordinated Republican plans to cheat and for doing nothing to contest the vote counts, especially in swing states Ohio and Florida. "Election-stealing" in Florida in particular presages a dark future for the entire nation: "a system built specifically to disenfranchise an aroused and even militant majority, and to do so without leaving any traces." Though Miller's sometimes unclear sourcing puts the burden on readers to separate fact from hearsay, he gathers enough well-documented evidence that anyone who cares about fair play should find this book revelatory. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University and a well-known public intellectual. His writings on film, television, propaganda, advertising, and the culture industries have appeared in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Nation and the New York Times. He is the author of The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (2001) and Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney’s New World Order (2004). Miller has appeared on “Frontline,” “The PBS Newshour,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Washington Journal,” and Bill Moyers’s “The Public Mind,” and has been a guest on countless radio programs. He is a regular commentator on Air America. He lives in New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; annotated edition edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582344493
• ISBN-13: 978-0465045808
• ASIN: 0465045804
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.4 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #857,971 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Crispin Miller is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, including 'Boxed In: The Culture of TV;' 'The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder;' 'Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order' and 'Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform.' He is also the editor of 'Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.' His essays and articles have appeared in many journals, magazines and newspapers throughout the nation and the world, and he has given countless interviews worldwide.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

274 of 297 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtcrime November 13, 2005

By A reader

Format:Hardcover

I came to this book with, I think, the usual preconceptions: it will present a paranoid conspiracy theory, it 's just a Democrat's sour grapes, it will be the left-wing equivalent of an Ann Coulter or Joe Scarborough rant--in other words, nothing new to say, shrieked at top volume. Instead I found that Miller has the rare courage to take on a forbidden topic, one of the few remaining in America. He asks us to consider the possibility that our cherished democracy, the very heart of American exceptionalism and the thing that sets us apart from (and, in the eyes of many Americans, above) all other nations, is not merely flawed or compromised but actually in danger of disappearing. Perhaps it has already disappeared. We are now a nation in which one political party has no intention of ever releasing its hold on power and the other is too cowed to defend itself against constant attacks, let alone defend its constituents or the integrity of the process by which power is allocated.

The "mature" and "reasonable" thing to do, of course, is to practice moderation, to avoid strong, polarizing accusations, to work with the opposition to provide strong governance, and always to understand that your political opponent is not your enemy. But this presupposes an opponent who is willing to practice moderation and reason in turn, rather than simply demand it. As President Bush and his allies keep reminding us about terrorism (with rather too intimate knowledge whereof they speak), fanatics cannot be reasoned with. Mark Crispin Milller has pointed out, in exquisitely documented detail, that this country has its own fanatical extremists to deal with, and they are not a fringe element. They are a significant force in the Republican Party, perhaps the dominant force. Miller shows in great detail what this means: the mindset that allows these people to justify their actions to themselves and the specific ways in which they have subverted American democracy. Under these circumstances, compromise and moderation can only fail. When we are faced with fanatics, true reason demands that we do what Miller has done: call them what they are.

In short, this is a powerful and terrifying book. It is well documented and makes its case, if anything, too abundantly. The 2004 election was stolen. My nightmare is that generations from now, historians will look to Fooled Again as a valuable contemporary account of how America became a theological dictatorship.

212 of 236 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, the silence is broken November 17, 2005

By Brendan Hogan

Format:Hardcover

Since election night, I've had a feeling that all was not right with the voting. From studying this in the days afterwards, it soon became clear that something had gone very wrong. This book finally puts together all of the suspicious and downright criminal activity surrounding 2004's rigged election.

The most glaring suspicion that the result was fraudulent arose around the massive discrepancies between the exit polls and the result in several states. Exit polls have been accurate at every election in living memory in the US - except in 2000, which we have since discovered would have been won by Al Gore if the Supreme Court had not stopped the count and handed `Dubya' the presidency. The exit polls in 2004 were dramatically at odds with the result, and every single discrepancy favoured Bush. In March 2005, a study came out from US Count Votes, computing that the odds against such an enormous error in the exit polls were 959,000 - 1. In other words, the chances that the 2004 election was not rigged are nearly a million to one.

All of this may be news to you, because it has not been reported in the mainstream print media. CNN were even obliging enough to `adjust' their exit polls after the results were known to make them match up with the outcome, swiftly followed by the rest of what Miller ironically refers to as the "liberal media".

Instead of reporting the facts, Miller asserts, the media referred to the matter flippantly, dismissing it as internet rumour and paranoid conspiracy theory, and continued to ignore the overwhelming evidence which began to emerge, particularly in Ohio, where the state senate investigated the matter.

Mark Crispin Miller documents dozens of staggering assaults on democracy, from the coordinated disenfranchisement of overseas US voters (who favoured Kerry by a large margin), to the criminal suppression of the black vote.

Miller points out that the CEOs of electronic voting companies are Republican fund-raisers and supporters and that vote manipulation would be remarkably easy, with many of the tallying computers online.

Miller's concern is that the theological right will go to any lengths to win and retain power, since they see their political opponents - literally - as agents of Satan. He warns that this could happen again next time, and does not trust that the Democrats will stand against it, noting that although John Kerry's wife has publicly stated that she believes the vote was rigged, he has never defended his voters, then or since.

The case Miller makes is compelling, and it is particularly disturbing to consider how well conditioned the public is: if it isn't reported in respectable media organs, it isn't news. America is slipping quietly into fascism, and this book is a welcome and essential wake-up call.

64 of 71 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Devastating Indictment of the American Electoral System December 25, 2005

By Steve Koss VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Andrew Gumbel opens his book, STEAL THIS VOTE, with a stunning indictment of the American electoral process from ex-President Jimmy Carter. Asked if the Carter Center's "widely respected international election monitoring team" would ever considering monitoring an American election, Carter bluntly declined. "Not only would the voting system be regarded as a failure, he said, but the shortcomings were so egregious [they] would never agree to monitor an [American] election in the first place....'The American political system wouldn't measure up to any sort of international standards...'"

In FOOLED AGAIN, Mark Crispin Miller analyzes the 2004 Presidential election and finds that President Carter was indeed correct in his assessment. Through his overview of the election results and his detailed analysis of the outcome in Florida and Ohio, he not only demonstrates how badly broken our national electoral system is, he provides more than enough evidence to suggest that our current President, George W. Bush, has in fact stolen two elections in the last five years. Why were reported election results so substantially at odds with the same day's exit polling (a first in American history)? Why were reported election results so substantially at odds with early voter returns in so many States, also a result without precedent? Why did Kerry's performance in key Democratic districts actually decline from Gore's, despite thousands of Democratic voter registrations and the relative absence of Ralph Nader from 2004's race? And what are we to make of Republican Congressman Peter King's assertion in the summer of 2003 that the 2004 election was already over? How did he know Bush would win? "It's all over but the counting," he answered. "And we'll take care of the counting." And so they did.

The examples are detailed, numerous, and specific: widespread and systematic pre-election disenfranchisement by local Republican election officials, failure to register Democratic voters, distributing absentee ballots late or incorrectly, spreading false and misleading information, refusing to register Democrats to vote, manipulating the availability of working voting machines to favor Republican precincts, intimidating voters on college campuses and at the polls, undersupplying provisional ballots in Democratic districts, throwing away Democratic votes, manipulating paperless electronic voting machines manufactured by Republican supporters, and virtually prohibiting millions of overseas absentee ballots from being counted. Miller points out that the Republican Party not only engaged in all of these vote suppression tactics and more, they simultaneously asserted repeatedly that the Democratic Party was in fact the one that was engaging in the same underhanded behaviors they were perpetrating!

Miller takes time out from his explication of events before and during the election to psychoanalyze the Republican Party's behavior. He contends that the more fanatical elements of the Party rationalize their own behaviors by projecting them onto the Democrats. By demonizing the dark forces of "the Other," they justify the absolute correctness of their own misdeeds. They see the election not as politics, but as an apocalyptic battle of dark and light, good and evil. Under such a "world view," any actions, no more how immoral, unethical, or outright illegal, are justifiable in the name of preserving Republican rule.

Mr. Miller also reserves much of his condemnation for the mainstream media. The major media organizations have underreported and underinvestigated, ignoring both small stories as well as the broader pattern. They have been too quick to cave to the blathering roar from the Right, cowed into acquiescence rather than serving the commonweal in their watchdog capacity. Why, for example, are Americans almost utterly ignorant of the January, 2005 Conyers Report ("Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio?") At the same time, the Republican Noise Machine agitates immediately against anyone who has the temerity to suggest the election was tainted in the slightest manner, labeling them as cranks, loonies, conspiracy nuts, sore losers, and the like. As Miller suggests, the citizens of Europe are better informed about the truth of our national elections than we are.

FOOLED AGAIN is a stunning indictment of the current, win-at-all-costs Republican Party, the American electoral process, and the blatant, couch potato indifference of American citizens that has made us the laughingstock of the Western world. What happened in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections is a national disgrace, an embarrassment of colossal magnitude that we are too blind to see. Miller's "true life incidents" from tiny Jacksonville, Oregon in his book's Appendix are eye-openers that everyone should read if they want to understand what's really taking place in this country today. It's enough to make you cry. Hopefully it will infuriate you to stand up and do something, because it will indeed happen again in 2006 and 2008, and on and on until we put a stop to it and take our country back from the right-wing fanatics who've hijacked it.

Read FOOLED AGAIN - it's your civic duty.