BOOK REVIEW: “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk” By John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky
In Who’s Counting?, authors John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky draw upon hard evidence to make the case that there has been an ongoing crisis of voter fraud in the United States. Put simply, our electoral system is broken in a way that makes it relatively easy to steal elections.
Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote At Risk presents a fresh and compelling take on this fundamental and ongoing crisis in American politics.
Who’s Counting? calls attention to the various problems undermining our election system — from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting — not from a partisan or ideological perspective but from an analytical perspective. The authors offer a hard-headed assessment of the ongoing crisis in election fraud in the United States– “whether it’s phony voter registrations, illegal absentee ballots, vote-buying, shady recounts, or old fashioned ballot-box stuffing” — that is threatening the integrity of our electoral process.
Messrs. Fund and von Spakovsky draw upon real-world examples — including the 2008 Minnesota senatorial recount, a 2005 state senate election in Tennessee that was overturned because of voter fraud, and a case of ballot-box stuffing by a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia that changed the outcome of an election — to show that voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections.
Beyond offering a detailed critique of the fraudsters and bureaucrats who have gamed the electoral system, Fund and von Spakovsky argue that the crisis in voting confidence in the United States is about more than isolated stolen elections, the legitimacy of our entire electoral system will be at risk in the 2012 election and going forward if we do not change
It would be difficult to find two authors better versed in our electoral process and in the irregularities that threaten it than John Fund and Hans Von Spakovsky. Mr. Fund, a veteran political journalist, has written extensively on electoral irregularities for the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, and other publications. Mr. von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former member of the Federal Election Commission served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the voting-rights division of the George W. Bush administration.
The authors present an overarching, clear, and decisive long-term blueprint of recommendations — outlining the major structural reforms necessary to fix our broken electoral system:
1) Mandate voter ID laws
2) Make sure all voters are Americans
3) Prevent absentee ballot fraud
