John Fund - Our Broken Elections; How the Left Changed the Way You Vote

2021 by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky

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First American edition published in 2021 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation.

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Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992

(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Fund, John H., 1957author. | von Spakovsky, Hans, 1959author.

Title: Our Broken Elections: How the Left Changed the Way You Vote / John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky.

Description: First American edition. | New York: Encounter Books, 2021. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021022484 (print) | LCCN 2021022485 (ebook) ISBN 9781641772082 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781641772099 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: ElectionsCorrupt practicesUnited States.

Classification: LCC JK1994 F857 2021 (print) | LCC JK1994 (ebook) DDC 324.60973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022484

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021022485

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T he two of us have each been writing about and studying voting rights and election integrity for over twenty years.

Until the November 2020 election, we didnt feel compelled to update our 2012 book, Whos Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk. We were happy to address the topic in our articles, media interviews, and speeches. But since bitter tribal warfare broke out over voting issues in the aftermath of the 2020 election, we have changed our minds.

First, a word on what this book is not about. We will not be going into great detail about allegations that election reform bills introduced in state legislatures represent voter suppression or, in the words of President Joe Biden, a return to Jim Crow. If people actually read the bills in question, in almost all instances they would agree that is absolutely not the case and is simply partisan propaganda of the worst kind intended to scare voters and score political points.

We will examine the debate over Georgias election integrity bill because it became such a rallying cry for Stacey Abrams and other mythmakers. They were able to fool or intimidate several major corporations into opposing the bill even though some of them had actually helped craft it and had supported it behind the scenes before the intimidation game began.

Second, this book is not about the clumsy, counterproductive, and often exaggerated claims made by lawyers claiming to speak for Donald Trump. The former president and lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Lin Wood did real damage to those who were trying to examine the 2020 election with a critical eye and point out clear procedural shortcomings and illegal voting in key swing states. Fighting for election integrity measures must begin and end with a belief that voters deserve to have confidence in the fairness and accuracy of the system. The anger of a candidate or his supporters over election irregularities must also be accompanied by some restraint in making allegations that cant be backed up or are supported by unreliable evidence.

Last, for some of the above reasons, this book will not go into detail about allegations that electronic voting machines were manipulated and shifted or created large numbers of votes. President Trump tweeted frequently about a news report on the conservative news channel One American News Network (OAN). Elections systems across the country are found to have deleted millions of votes cast for President Trump, it said. The OAN report referred to an unaudited analysis of data obtained from an election monitoring group called Edison Research.

However, the companys president, Larry Rosin, said: Edison Research has produced no such report and we have no evidence of any voter fraud. OAN did not provide any evidence to back up its claim.

There was a significant computer problem in Antrim County, Michigan, where Dominion voting machines were used. The suggestion was made by numerous individuals that it was only the most visible of a series of serious software problems that were also appearing elsewhere around the country.

We believe Dominion and other electronic voting machines are vulnerable to unauthorized entryas proven repeatedly by hackers at computer security conferencesand that that problem should be studied carefully. Where at all possible, software programs for voting machines should be made public with greater transparency into the contracts given by state election officials along with a paper trail for every electronic machine. We will be discussing Antrims Dominion voting machine controversy but will not go into great detail about others. We will note that Fox News, Fox Business Channel, Newsmax, and OAN have had to step away from and apologize for allegations against Dominion machines that aired on their networks.

This book tries to step back from personalities and punditry and make simple points. Our system is broken. Many of the problems we cite were ignored by the media in 2020. The media used to win prizes for investigative reports on election fraud, and 60 Minutes used to highlight the issue on television. That paper won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism for its reporting on a corrupt mayoral race in Miami that was overturned by the courts and led to the indictment of fifty-seven people.

If the country remains solely wrapped up in angry arguments about who won the last election and who is trying to take advantage of whom, we will continue to erode confidence in our government and our ability to solve problems.

Now that a year has passed since the passions of the 2020 election, we hope this book makes a contribution to a quieter, more reasoned discourse. We hope the facts we put down provide the basis for an honest debate. If we ignore the systemic problems of our election system and dont fix them, we willto paraphrase the philosopher George Santayanabe condemned to repeat our mistakes.

We have to get beyond the divisiveness and anger of the 2020 election. This is a time when our country can afford that kind of division even less than before.

Election integrity is a fundamental requirement of a functioning democratic republic.

In the freest nation in the world, our system of government and our very liberty depend on free and fair elections. Whether selecting a mayor or the president of the United States, every American must be able to trust the process, or the democratic system itself breaks down.

When someone commits election fraud, the process is no longer fair, everyones vote gets diluted, and in some cases election results are changed. Problems can arise not only from intentional misconduct by individuals trying to take advantage of the vulnerabilities in our voter registration and election process, which is largely an honor system, but also from administrative errors made by election and other government officials.