CODE RED – Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century
I’ll always remember Jonathan Simon as the man who, on Election Night 2004, captured screen shots of the national Presidential exit polls (performed by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research, under contract to six major news media organizations) for every U.S. state before they mysteriously disappeared forever. Simon’s screenshots introduced the American people to the concept of electronic election theft and “red shift,” occurring when an official vote count (which in this case handed George W. Bush a second term as President) is shifted substantially to the Republican candidate, compared to the exit poll results. In this election the votes were shifted by 5.4% nationally, turning what those polls showed to be a 2.6% Kerry victory into a 2.8% Bush victory in the national popular vote. The vast majority of states also showed a red shift ), including Ohio (many of whose votes were “processed” on remote servers set up by Karl Rove’s “IT guru” Mike Connell in Chattanooga, Tennessee), which was enough to give the Presidency to Bush. This chart, taken from Steven Freeman’s book, “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen”, shows that red shifts occurred in 10 of the 11 swing states:
State……………Exit poll result……………..Official vote count……..Red shift
NH………………..Kerry by 10.8%...........Kerry by 1.3%............9.5%
OH………………..Kerry by 4.2%.............Bush by 2.5%............6.7%
PA………………..Kerry by 8.7%.............Kerry by 2.2%............6.5%
MN………………..Kerry by 9.0%.............Kerry by 3.5%...........5.5%
FL…………………Bush by 0.1%..............Bush by 5.0%............4.9%
NV………………..Kerry by 1.3%.............Bush by 2.6%............3.9%
NM………………..Kerry by 2.6%.............Bush by 1.1%...........3.7%
CO………………..Bush by 1.8%..............Bush by 5.2%...........3.4%
IA………………….Kerry by 1.3%.............Bush by 0.9%...........2.2%
MI…………………Kerry by 5.0%..............Kerry by 3.4%..........1.6%
WI…………………Kerry by 0.4%.............Kerry by 0.4%...........0.0%
I suspect that few American citizens remember this, or were ever aware of it, because it was hardly covered by our national news media at all (Keith Olbermann being the only significant exception).
But the purpose of CODE RED is not to stir up bad memories of a forgotten past. Rather, it is a plea to the American people to take seriously a continuing and growing threat to our democracy, in the hope that we will demand better.
Why should we believe that electronic election fraud is destroying our democracy?
Much of CODE RED is devoted to explaining why we should take this threat seriously. There are two major reasons:
One is the massive statistical evidence. Simon provides detailed accounts of numerous research studies that show substantial disparities between baselines, such as exit polls and hand counts, and official election results (i.e., red shifts), from 2004 to 2014, which have brought us, little by little, to our current status, which includes a radical Republican House of Representatives, a Republican Senate, a margin of Republican control of Governorships and statehouses not seen since the presidency of Herbert Hoover, and gerrymandered House and state legislative districts throughout the country such that large Democratic margins in the popular vote are now required just to maintain the status quo. These studies include: The 2004 Presidential election that re-elected George W. Bush as President; the 2006 House elections which, though won by the Democratic Party, was so red shifted that what the exit polls predicted to be a Democratic landslide resulted in only modest Democratic gains; red shifting of the 2008 Presidential and Congressional elections, despite the Democratic wins; red shifting of the 2010 Congressional elections (with special emphasis on the strange Republican win of a special Senate election in liberal Massachusetts that prevented a Democratic filibuster-proof Senate), severe enough to bring a radical right Republican House to power that has persisted to this day; red shifting in Wisconsin in 2011 and 2012 that destroyed the attempt to recall a radical right wing governor and state senators, and; massive red-shifting in the 2014 national House, Senate and Governor races, that brought us to our current state of affairs. The statistical evidence is somewhat complicated, but well explained in the book, and buttressed by an extensive question and answer format addressed to those who view claims of electronic election fraud with a skeptical mind.
But even if you find the statistical arguments mind-numbing, too hard to believe, or unconvincing for any reason, there is another, perhaps better reason for taking this issue very seriously: The acknowledged vulnerability of electronic voting to vote manipulation. Worse yet, electronic voting in the United States is conducted by a handful of corporations, with little or no effective oversight, and attempts to inspect the machines and software that count our votes have been almost completely thwarted by legal barriers on the grounds that they are owned by the corporations that conduct the vote counting. And if that isn’t bad enough, those corporations have strong ties to the Republican Party. It seems to me that a nation that allows private corporations to count votes outside of public scrutiny can hardly be called a democracy. But apparently most Americans have been led to believe that the possibility of election theft through the manipulation of electronically cast votes is so remote that it is not worth thinking about.
Consider that in recent years right wing forces have contrived a great variety of ways to gain unfair advantage in our elections. They have passed myriad voter ID laws and other measures to prevent Democrats from voting. Judicial decisions have allowed almost unlimited amounts of money to pour into our elections, absent requirements that the donors identify themselves. [link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/the-great-gerrymander-of-2012.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0|Congressional districts throughout the country have been gerrymandered] Myriad states have been so gerrymandered that huge Democratic majorities in the popular vote are needed just to gain equal representation in our House of Representatives. And a great variety of dirty tricks have been used, such as sending letters to constituents that tell voters to vote on the wrong day. All of these ploys have received some national media attention. Why has the threat of electronic election manipulation, which has more potential to steal elections than any of those other means, not even been discussed by our national news media, let alone been presented to us as a major and continuing threat to our democracy?
Who should NOT read Code Red
There are some people who should not read Code Red. That includes anyone whose mind is made up that:
- Wealthy and powerful people never ruthlessly pursue their goals at the expense of their fellow citizens
- It’s OK for our votes to be counted in secret because we can always trust those who count our votes
- In the United States, election theft is rare because of the exceptional security we have in place to prevent it
- In the United States, election theft is rare because of the American character or our Constitution
- Anybody who doesn’t agree with all of the above is either un-American or a whacky “conspiracy theorist”
If you are convinced of any of the above statements you will not benefit from reading Dr. Simon’s book because you won’t believe or even take seriously anything that he tells us. But if you have some doubt about the above statements, reading this book will give you an understanding of the vulnerabilities of today’s U.S. election system, and how those vulnerabilities are corrupting our democracy, that you didn’t previously have and that few Americans do have. If you’ve wondered why the U.S. government has become so unresponsive to the needs of ordinary American citizens, you will likely gain a much better understanding of this.
How can a democracy elect and re-elect a national legislature of whom only 10-20% of citizens approve?
Lastly, consider this. Wouldn’t you think that a nation governed by democratic principles would be able to elect a national legislature that receives the approval of at least half of its population? Yet, since the coming to power of an increasingly radical right wing Congress in 2010, Congressional approval has hovered consistently below 20%, a situation unprecedented since regular polling of Presidential approval began in 1974. That begs an explanation, which you will find well provided in CODE RED, where you will also find a sober and compelling discussion of a way forward, how to dig ourselves and our country out of this unholy mess.
= new reply since forum marked as read
We will have to stand with many right-wing Republicans to change our system. Many of them think Obama stole the election 
so we can get them onboard.
United we can change the system.
They will NEVER stand with us after big Republican wins. EVER.
We have to be better than them and demand change after Democrats win. Of course, we know better which direction election anomalies always seem to favor.
Big movement needed. Huge.
Hamilton County aka Cincinnati using a third party candidate vote total as a
place holder to keep stolen votes @
Lucas County aka Toledo again using a third party candidate's vote total as
a place to switch Kerry votes to so they can be "worked on" later
Nobody but us paranoids has the slightest grip on reality. 
The ability to manipulate voting machines is so corrupting that I often wonder if there is any way out. I look forward to obtaining a copy of Code Red, and hope that it will provide both direction and methods for getting us out of this "unholy mess."
Please don't be a stranger...your tireless efforts to document election theft and encourage discussion here have resulted in some of the most insightful and helpful threads on DU. I fear that it is way too easy for this to become yesterday's news, yet it is still among us with devastating results.
I sure do hope that this issue picks up popularity, and the American people demand better and are willing to exert efforts in that direction.
I also wrote a book about this a couple of years ago. It's called "Democracy Undone". It's different than Simon's book in that it emphasizes electronic vote manipulation as only one of several election issues that are destroying our election system and our democracy, whereas Code Red puts the primary focus almost entirely on electronic vote manipulation, and mentions the other issues as ancillary to it.
But our opinions really do not differ much on the big picture. We both agree that all of these issues are important, and I agree with Dr. Simon that electronic vote manipulation is probably the most important of the bunch.
Good to see you
It would be nice to see the source being cited; I can't tell from the addresses of the links if any is it.
I guess someone thought he was about to go public. Dead men tell no tales. 
Chattanoga also has the fastest internet in the USA, which is kinda useful for this whole electronic vote rigging thing, dontcha think?
Even in this very thread.
Sometimes I don't know what's scarier. Election theft. Or the extraordinary level of both ignorance and outright denial of the issue.
Thanks for drawing attention to this book.
Good to see you!
Many people are ignorant of this issue. Many others are not but are frightened by it.
means to roll back the silent coup.
VERY good to hear from you.
Must be rough to be so trusting of the vote counters.
Wire cutters .
I really miss Stephanie.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x38915
The DU right wing will do its best to convince you that vote manipulation through electronic voting is virtually impossible.
There is a reason why they do this:
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I remember it well. We went bananas here and on Daily Kos. Lots of bloggers had seen the exit polls, and the sudden shift in the Ohio results after midnight.
I also remember Barbara Boxer objecting to the results of the election as presented to the House of Representatives, and holding up the certification of those results all day on the day after the voting.
Tom Delay was mocking "comparing the results to exit polls!" He called it the "X-Files Wing of the Democrat__ Party."
With no media support, the facts were buried even more quickly than the 30,000 voters scrubbed from the rolls illegally in Florida.
It's the same with all our institutions, though. I will read the book, but I am inclined now to think that it's up to the people to reconstruct our social fabric based upon trust and morality instead of power, prestige and affluence.
If we can't trust our voting system, we do not have a democracy.
