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Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000 - 2008

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This book encapsulates years of research to provide what used to come from investigative journalists -- before mainstream corporate media cornered the market on misinformation and tabloid news. A loser can win a rigged election in America because counting the vote is now the privy of private enterprise. Allegations of election fraud are doused by a state of denial that it can't happen in the greatest democracy in the world. But fact after fact reveals that, just like the public airwaves, there is no Fairness Doctrine when it comes to elections. Loser Take All equally blames Republican operatives, spineless Democrats, and a complacent Fourth Estate for turning our great republic into a renegade nation. There is a sliver of hope to return our government to We the People. Read this book, if you dare, and then share it with others.

Unlike the reportage leading up the invasion of Iraq, which relied heavily on anonymous sources who spoon fed mainstream reporters wild tales of Iraq's vast weapons cache, lapped up by Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and printed as fact, the reports about stolen elections and the massive purge of minorities and poor people from voter rolls in "Loser Take All" is backed up by smoking gun evidence in the form of documents and on the record accounts from public officials and behind-the-scenes executives employed by e-voting companies.


"Loser Take All" is indeed an important historical document; a damning indictment of the electoral process that also tells the real story of how Bush was "elected" to a second term.

By definition, in any democracy or republic, the minority interest is always seeking to become the (ruling) majority. Short of that, even at 49.9% in a 2 way race, the "first past the post" system of elections such as we have here in the United States, creates what can fairly be called a "Guaranteed Minority Disfranchisement System" of voting, whereby the alleged losers of the election get zero representation from the party of their choice, while the "winners take all." Thus, the apt title "Loser Take All" is a reflection of the human desire to "compete and win in the 21st Century" (to borrow a phrase from Clinton), and many a commentator has noted the culture of cheating that's developed in America from SAT exams to baseball steroids to Enron.

It should be clear from even this short discussion that since elections are purely procedural measures to measure the will of the people, they don't promise us, even when properly run, a *just* result on the *substantive* level (i.e., a "Hitler",for example, could conceivably be legitimately elected, though probably not without some deception of the public as to intentions...). Thus, those individuals or minorities who feel VERY passionate about politics -- whether for ideological reasons, moral reasons, financial reasons, reasons of power-mongering, or any other way of being convinced or sold on a course of action for any ballot measure or race, is usually MORE THAN ENOUGH for a sizable percentage of folks to cheat in an election -- they are, after all, doing the Nation a FAVOR (in their minds) and saving us all from a fate that may be (in their minds) worse than death -- like "saving Western civilization itself" from the alleged "weakness" of a Sen. Kerry. Or, perhaps they are just sealing up control of the world's richest country and sole military superpower -- which are clearly at stake with the US Presidency. These are the HIGHEST STAKES THE WORLD HAS TO OFFER, and the fairness of the counts is utterly inscrutable, secret, and there's not one shred of evidence, nor one human witness in any jurisdiction without hand counting, to testify competently that the counts reported as official are "True and Correct." Secrecy in vote counts or anything else always means UNaccountability, and nobody can possibly favor UNaccountable elections, yet that is precisely what we will get and yet not be able to say the emperor has no clothes at all!

In short, only Pollyanna remains unconcerned about the undeniable fact that computers count, in utter secrecy, and therefore with utter unaccountability, fully 95% of the nation's total votes. Winners will be "Crowned" with such speed that even the best evidence (if secrecy could somehow be overcome) would be highly technical and unlikely to motivate the kind of outrage necessary to change the apparent winner to get the true winner announced instead. And Bush v. Gore stands ready to terminate human recounts because of their alleged possible biases. In reality, humans that don't trust each other counting votes are the most accurate system ever devised (just like tellers and customers at banks) and that's why the hand recount has always been the count of last resort - and most accuracy. But now the Constitution, via Bush v Gore, says, essentially, otherwise.

Only Pollyanna remains unconcerned about media-rush jobs pressing for instant election results -- because speed forces things to happen faster than the human eye or brain can follow -- and is the foundation of all sleight-of-hand tricks, as well as a classic foundation of fraud).

Why indeed is the media interfering to FORCE the creation of news? Shouldn't they sit back and objectively report the news when its ready? Forcing speed in common observation is akin to forcing errors, or at least increased chances of errors. We've waited two years for the campaign to cease, two days at the most for a proper, OBSERVABLE first count (the one that determines the all-important apparent winner and the allege "Sore loser") is more than reasonable and tolerable.

After the first count, don't expect election officials, or any human beings, to watchdog themselves, audit themselves, recount themselves, or otherwise attract the media fishbowl of Florida 2000 to THEIR locality -- to their everlasting shame. No, the 2004 recount on the presidential race was rigged in Ohio 2004, there were criminal convictions, then an admission the case was "no contest". After the all-important first count is "certified" (based on no personal knowledge whatsoever) the officials are in a poor position indeed to be guardians of democracy and attack the very counts they just certified under penalty of perjury, so they rig the recounts, instead.

WE must get it right on election night -- or shortly thereafter, on the FIRST count. Bush v. Gore comes in to terminate human *recounts* or "audits". Problem is, right now the election night counts are rushed, computerized, utterly secret, and there's no rational basis for confidence in the results. (this is a scientific certainty, given that election results are non-reproducible, non-observable, and violate other primary requirements for science).

READ THIS BOOK and find out more about how the liberty of the American people is being thrown out the window in a fit of secrecy, with local officials purporting to contract our most sacred rights away to corporate vendors of voting machines. If you don't have GUARANTEED to you the ability to "kick the bums out" (and with computerized elections you Surely can't kick our crooked politicos against their will) then WE are not FREE. That makes this book IMPORTANT, with all capital letters.

Full Disclosure: my spouse wrote a chapter in the book on Bush v. Gore but receives no royalties or consideration of any kind. And I'm not a US citizen and can't vote, but I can see that even if my favorite wins, the procedure of the American elections is such that it's a void nullity no matter who wins. Perhaps, Americans will be happy with all incumbents staying in power, since this is the natural result when incumbents (who make all election laws, by definition) really foul up the election systems. It seems Americans should take control of their elections back, unless they think the government can watchdog itself as it determines its own power and paycheck in secrecy and unaccountability.

Though published in April this year (2008), this critical review of fraud and subversion of democracy in America may not yet have reached the readership it deserves. I just hope that it has come into the hands of those who have the power and responsibility to manage the immanent, historical election now confronting the nation. When I received my copy two weeks ago I devoured it with relish and horror. It is a horror story, exposing systematic subversion of the electoral process in the supposedly "greatest democracy in the world", leaving the nasty impression that such a grand claim is no longer valid.

The book is a collection of essays by qualified researchers and commentators uncovering and examining every aspect of electoral dysfunction in recent cycles. There can no longer be any doubt that both the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 were stolen. Even the touted 'landslide' of 2006, in which Democrats regained control of Congress, was compromised. Surprisingly, the nationwide switch to electronic voting is only part of the problem. Large numbers of votes (an estimated half million in Ohio 2004 alone) simply went missing: cast but not counted.

If you have a taste for exhaustive statistical analysis (graphs, tables, percentages, probabilities), you'll love the chapters "How to Stuff the Electoral Ballot Box" by David Griscom, "Alabama 2002" by James Gundlach, and the 2006 'alarming reality' of "Landslide Denied" by Jonathan Simon & Bruce O'Dell. Even if mathematics is not your preferred cup of tea, and even if you skip every other chapter (hard to imagine), the culminating recipe for rescue - "A 12-Step Program To Save U.S. Democracy", by editor Mark Miller, is worth the cost of the book itself. If the correct president is chosen on November 4th, these are the steps we must hope to see taken if America is to be saved from further degradation.

This is a book that every American should read. It makes a strong case that our election system has gotten worse since the Florida fiasco in 2000. With all of the coverage of hanging chads, the powers that be were making the case for electronic voting. However, the machines are easily hacked and are unreliable without a paper trail. As a result, impartial observers could question the results of a number of elections in the past eight years.

I am troubled by the fact that Democratic leaders have not made more of an issue out of election fraud. If this book has a weakness, it is that this issue is raised but not addressed in more detail. President Obama has a lot on his plate at this time but I would like to see an overhaul of the Help America Vote legislation. Fair and credible elections are at the heart of American democracy and should be protected.

Perhaps the authors will consider a revised edition of this book. I, for one, would like to see what happened to those four million phantom white voters in the 2004 election. It's hard to believe that someone could add or flip that many votes in a presidential election. The 2008 results should shed some light on that issue.