This book gives us a chilling portrait of our electoral vulnerability. Written with urgency and authority.
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Book Description
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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
70 of 86 people found the following review helpful
By Seth Cooper
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is an excellent book that I highly recommend for every citizen who cares about our democracy and the integrity of the voting system through which it is repeatedly renewed. John Fund has written an important, concise work that readers will find readily accessible and informative.
I was hooked from page one, where Fund asserts that "the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system benefiting an emerging Third World country rather than the world's leading democracy." Those are bold words, but in the chapters that follow Fund chronicles a rash of voter scandals from across the country-from Florida to Texas, from Missouri to South Dakota, and from Hawaii and elsewhere. The voting shenanigans pulled by many of the persons chronicled, the lax procedures and lack of serious law enforcement are particularly outrageous--if not downright SCARY.
Very intriguing was Funds reference to the "conflict of visions" concept proposed by Thomas Sowell and how those competing visions of human nature and reality provide the lenses through which competing political forces view the goals of electoral law. Seeing as this book is a compact one, Fund does not delve too deeply into the philosophical, but this reviewer (who is an admirer of "A Conflict of Visions") nonetheless appreciates this insight.
Most of the voter scandals discussed by Fund were perpetrated by Democrats (sometimes carried by Democrats battling other Democrats in local primary elections). However, Fund also points out incidents of voter fraud carried out by persons who are Republicans. Crime, including voter crime, is an equal opportunity offense. One need not be a member of a particular party to appreciate the contents of the book and the arguments presented. It should be noted that this book does not dwell upon courtroom litigation and legal arguments, particularly those involved in the 2000 Presidential election fiasco in Florida. Nor does the book spend an inordinate amount of time on the 2000 Florida mess, in general, although Fund does provide some key insights into what really happened in Florida once the dust settled, and much of it will be news to many. In any event, regardless of what may have taken place in recent times, it is of greater importance that citizens understand the voting process problems we have and the urgent need to address those problems.
Fund discusses some recent election reforms prompted by the Help Americans Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) and poses a number of suggestions near the end of this book. His advice strikes one as imminently sound. The discussion of electronic voting was very informative-showing both its merits and also chronicling some serious technical blunders. (This reviewer leans toward an electronic voting system that provides a printout paper trail.)
An experienced journalist, Fund's book is well-written and is an enjoyable read. It hits readers with first-rate reporting and solid analysis. With election season now upon us, this book is very timely, and comes highly recommended.
I was hooked from page one, where Fund asserts that "the United States has a haphazard, fraud-prone election system benefiting an emerging Third World country rather than the world's leading democracy." Those are bold words, but in the chapters that follow Fund chronicles a rash of voter scandals from across the country-from Florida to Texas, from Missouri to South Dakota, and from Hawaii and elsewhere. The voting shenanigans pulled by many of the persons chronicled, the lax procedures and lack of serious law enforcement are particularly outrageous--if not downright SCARY.
Very intriguing was Funds reference to the "conflict of visions" concept proposed by Thomas Sowell and how those competing visions of human nature and reality provide the lenses through which competing political forces view the goals of electoral law. Seeing as this book is a compact one, Fund does not delve too deeply into the philosophical, but this reviewer (who is an admirer of "A Conflict of Visions") nonetheless appreciates this insight.
Most of the voter scandals discussed by Fund were perpetrated by Democrats (sometimes carried by Democrats battling other Democrats in local primary elections). However, Fund also points out incidents of voter fraud carried out by persons who are Republicans. Crime, including voter crime, is an equal opportunity offense. One need not be a member of a particular party to appreciate the contents of the book and the arguments presented. It should be noted that this book does not dwell upon courtroom litigation and legal arguments, particularly those involved in the 2000 Presidential election fiasco in Florida. Nor does the book spend an inordinate amount of time on the 2000 Florida mess, in general, although Fund does provide some key insights into what really happened in Florida once the dust settled, and much of it will be news to many. In any event, regardless of what may have taken place in recent times, it is of greater importance that citizens understand the voting process problems we have and the urgent need to address those problems.
Fund discusses some recent election reforms prompted by the Help Americans Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) and poses a number of suggestions near the end of this book. His advice strikes one as imminently sound. The discussion of electronic voting was very informative-showing both its merits and also chronicling some serious technical blunders. (This reviewer leans toward an electronic voting system that provides a printout paper trail.)
An experienced journalist, Fund's book is well-written and is an enjoyable read. It hits readers with first-rate reporting and solid analysis. With election season now upon us, this book is very timely, and comes highly recommended.
38 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
35 of 46 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
More People Should Read
It's no wonder many people are worried about our country and voter fraud. Here in NC thousands of dead people voted Democrat in the last election, and I personally know someone in... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Shatzi Crabtree
2.0 out of 5 stars
Don't Wast Your Time
Although Fund's basic premise is very sound--the American election system is broken and is in need of repair--the incidents that he cites are either partially-inaccurate or are... Read more
Published on February 7, 2011 by Melanie Smith
1.0 out of 5 stars
Total Pack of Lies
Blatant attempt by this partisan republican to attack the democratic party and blame them for voter fraud, to cover up the fact that the 2000 and 2004 elections were outright... Read more
Published on October 16, 2008 by Aladdin Sane
1.0 out of 5 stars
Biased, unsupported attack on Democratic party
This book is another example of the Republican Party attack strategy. Say anything to discredit the Democrats, regardless of the truth. Read more
Published on September 4, 2008 by T. J. Cook
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lots of useful information
I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would. I found it to be even-handed, but more importantly, it presented a great deal of very specfic information, including... Read more
Published on November 9, 2006 by G. H. King
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thought-provoking call to action
John Fund insightfully explores the world of stolen elections - a problem no longer limited to corrupt governments on the other side of the world. Read more
Published on June 22, 2006 by Current Events
2.0 out of 5 stars
In a democracy, John Fund says Blame the People
This book properly recognizes that election shenanigans are virtually an American tradition, but slinks into pure propaganda with its implicit and explicit contention that... Read more
Published on October 23, 2005 by Paul R. Lehto
1.0 out of 5 stars
This book is a shameful attempt to ignore the real causes of election...
This book is nothing but a shameful and disguised attempt (notwithstanding his denials) to discredit Democratic voters and to advocate the enactment of "election reform" laws that... Read more
Published on October 23, 2005 by D. Tavris
3.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging reporting but needs better organization
Voter fraud, intimidation, ballot-stuffing and other chicanery regarding elections has long been a sin Americans laid on the doors of other countries. Read more
Published on September 2, 2005 by Newton Ooi
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quick and frightening read -- a call to action
John Fund's Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy, is a frightening compilation of just how easily compromised our honor system of voting is in the U.S. Read more
Published on July 19, 2005 by Chuck DeVore
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 7
books:
See all 7 books this book cites
1
book
cites this book:
- Riverside County by Automobile Club of Southern California on 4 pages
- Indian Country by Dorothy M. Johnson on page 79, and page 80
- Dirty Little Secrets by Larry J. Sabato in Front Matter
- The Saturday Evening Post Magazine Covers from 1945 to 1962: An Untroubled Season : Ordinary Life in Mid-Century America by Ken Kawai on page 42
- Election Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays) by Patricia J. Murphy on page 44
See all 7 books this book cites
- Fooled Again by Mark Crispin Miller on page 100, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
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