The Current Events Book Club will be reading a remarkable and eye-opening book in August entitled Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and The New American Century by Jonathan Simon (2015). Simon presents very persuasive evidence that U.S. elections began to be stolen as soon as we began to use electronic voting machines. Fifty years ago, if we had an election and, when the polls closed, a stranger showed up, took all the ballots into another room, counted them with no one observing and then announced the results, citizens would be outraged.
But that, Simon argues, is exactly what is happening today with private corporations operating the voting machines and the computers that count the votes, and with neither citizens nor election officials having any way of knowing if the results they report are true. (The real mystery here, to my mind, is why citizens are not outraged by this.)
Simon describes how, for decades, exit polls tracked election results so accurately that they were not allowed to be announced until after the polls had closed. But when electronic voting machines came into use, we saw what Simon describes as a “red shift” — with the official vote counts consistently to the right of the exit polls. Since no one dared to say or even imagine that the official vote count was fraudulent, the only conclusion was that the exit polls must be wrong. This became so embarrassing to the polling organizations that after awhile, they began “adjusting” the exit polls so they would match the official vote counts.
Simon suggests that the flood of money that followed the Citizens United decision, and the voter ID and other laws that suppress the vote, have their effect, but that that their main role is to give the pundits a way of explaining why the Republicans win so consistently, when the real reason is fraudulent vote counts.
Simon is very politically astute, and his detailed account of how elections are stolen makes this book an engrossing read, while his clarity makes it a fairly fast read.
For me, this book was like taking the red pill in The Matrix — after reading it, you can never see things the same way again.
One possible response might be citizen-organized exit polls as our only way of knowing if the official vote counts are true or not.
Code Red is available at Malaprop’s and will be discussed there on Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 7 p.m. All are welcome. I welcome comments from readers at 242-6073.
— Rusty Sivils
Leicester
Yes, no kidding Rusty. Problem is: you only see a small part of the picture. Election fraud and manipulation occurs across many fronts…and it’s hardly new. How very naïve to think that only one party utilizes it. Ridiculous.
My theories:
— Bush may not have won re-election in 2004 (we all know that 2000 was bizarre). Most weren’t happy about the Iraq war and the false pretenses for which it was started. But, Deep State needed that to continue — many $$ to be made. And the reasons provided for why he was ‘re-elected’ were purely stupid. So, I smell a rat.
— 2008 was managed pretty well by virtue of securing McCain as opposition to Obama. Just didn’t line up well — old guard vs new era — so it was an easy sell. But, I maintain Obama is the most obvious Manchurian candidate of my lifetime.
— 2012 re-election appears to have been stolen. If fact, it you were watching on election night, you could discern when it occurred. It wasn’t even subtle. Deep State needed Obama back in to secure the rollout of the ACA. More $$ to be acquired from taxpayer pockets. See how this works?
— 2016 a distinct possibility (that you will hear no mainstream media outlet speculate about) is that Trump might be a plant — intended to throw the election to HRC. He sure is behaving that way lately. There are many things you can rightfully say about the guy but, make no mistake, he is VERY shrewd and I could see his conscience allowing himself to do it — for the right payback, of course. And she is unelectable next to almost any of the other Repubs that were still in the race in 2016. Her baggage is massive and we’ll probably never hear the full extent of corruption occurring in the family “charitable foundation”.
Random Facts:
— Citizens United – like both camps haven’t utilized it? Hillary has loved it — all those investment banks donating mega bucks to PACS for her. Hello!
— Va Gov – longtime Clinton bootlicker, overturning a very old law so that he could enable over 200,000 felons to vote. See this stuff isn’t even subtle!
– Several states, incl GA, vote only by electronic means with no paper trail. Can’t even factually audit. There is much documentation about voting software being easy to hack and about undetectable viruses installed that flip votes. Do an internet search, you’ll find plenty.
— So much commotion about things like voter ID (obvious and easy to achieve) because it distracts the plebians from where the real theft is occurring (Trump as a plant?). LOL
Good for you, Rusty, for getting started but you need to EXPAND your thinking and info gathering.
Really? the 2000 election was only ‘bizarre’?
We call that ‘history’ now, and the verdict is in- voter fraud, rigged voting machines, a stolen election, and mayhem that was Iraq 2.0 which of course led to the current situation in the Middle East.
50 years ago would place us at the very start of the ‘Southern Strategy’, or how Dems and Repubs flipped sides after Civil Rights and when Nixon (now there was an honest guy) was gearing up to become prez and continue escalating an unjust and unprovoked war in Viet Nam. The far right was frothing at the mouth in order to give America some payback for electing Kennedy.
Yea, I’ll buy the story of 50 years ago being the catalyst. When people wear those Trump hats that say Make ‘Murica Great Again, are they referring to 1966 when you could still call a black man older than you ‘boy’?
How convenient lack of short term memory must be.
Now tell us all how misled we’ve been and how we need to ‘expand our thinking and info gathering’ (I assume you mean exclusively righty leaning websites?).
As usual I don’t see many verifiable sources but a lot of
“Don’t you see? It’s happening all around us!”
If Trump loses this election, the far right is going to go bat s#$%t crazy claiming voter fraud.
Be prepared for rural, under-educated, white home grown domestic terrorist violence perpetrated on rational Americans, ‘Merica.
Canada, have you finished that wall to keep peace, sanity and freedom loving American hordes of asylum seekers out yet?
I certainly hope so.
You’re off on one those “boatrocker benders”. It’s too wacky to engage with.
But, here’s this: as long as you’re still so heavily invested in the 2 party paradigm; good cop vs bad cop; us vs them BS — you’re scratching amongst the trees while missing the forest.
Who says I only believe in 2 parties? Your assumptions undo you.
Hell, in 1912 we had 4 choices to pull lever for including a real socialist- now those were real choices, as in 100% more possible candidates to choose from.. I just wasn’t born yet
Now would you care to address the 2000 election as fraud (the whole point of the LTE) or merely ‘bizarre’?
Otherwise, have fun in the tin foil hat echo chamber that is this thread.
Related to the elections and a prior misunderstanding of yours about why many Americans are uncomfortable with throwing the doors wide open — without adequate vetting of Middle Eastern immigrants. ( It’s about culture, violence and the terror risk — not skin color) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8663/germany-migrants-rape
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And there’s this: ‘Following the introduction of civil partnerships, Muslim representatives in Italy are now demanding the legalisation of polygamy.
Responding to a new law allowing same sex couples to enter civil unions, Hamza Piccardo argued that if gay relationships, which Muslims disagree with, are a civil right then Italians must accept polygamy as a civil right too.
The founder of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organisations (UCOII) in Italy took to Facebook to claim polygamy is a “civil right” and that Italy would benefit from the large number of Muslim births it would promote.’ ………………etc.
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You should ask WHY these stories are not being covered by the mainstream media in the USA. (Hint: they’re being instructed not to cover them. Even Europe is withholding many of these issues from the public.)
Thanks for setting the record straight. Asheville should have a newspaper devoted to debunking everything we find printed in the Mountain Xpress.
the only voter suppression that Voter ID allows is keeping dead people, illegals and non eligibles from voting.
People on the left don’t understand. When many “feel” their votes are being counted out by those that don’t contribute, illegals, and multiple voters, elections will be meaningless. You best figure out a way to ensure that those who pay the taxes are not being SWINDLED by those that don’t. If you’re on the government handout machine in any capacity, MINUS those that have served in the military, you have no business being able to vote in elections where you cab simply vote in those that will give you more. Period. If you choose to work in government or eat off of it, where is the fairness when those that don’t are being outvoted by those that do? Fix the system before it’s too late. Otherwise there’s come bad coming down the pike.
“Fix the system before it’s too late.” — sorry, it’s already past the point of fixing. Most likely whomever is “elected” will add TRILLIONS more to our current 19 T in debt, as the last two have. Interest on that debt is punishing — over 400 Billion in 2015. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.htm (But we have yokels like Bernie who gain traction because he enthusiastically feeds the very thing you’re saying — gimme, gimme; you owe me; and my kid deserves a college ed paid for by my neighbors, etc. etc)
Nope, the political will is not there to fix it and too many have been trained to believe that they are owed by the govt debt machine. As the lyric declares, “nothing ever changes unless there’s some pain”. We’re going to feel a world of hurt before sanity and realistic checks & balances are restored.
I’ll give you one thing- I’ve never know of anybody to quote a Tears For Fears song in a non joking way.
So… If you’re a cop, firefighter, social worker, teacher, work at the VA, work on a road crew, work at the library or what you, you shouldn’t be able to vote?
Interesting.
Amen.
Cue the unmoderated sock puppetry.
Yeah, it’s so unfair when someone votes different from you, isn’t it? And getting rid of the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments won’t cover it. I think you have only one choice: military coup.
Good luck.
But what if Trump wins and invokes Article XII?
North Carolina Finds 2,214 Registered Voters over the Age of 110 http://tarheelteaparty.org/?p=21911
After Voter ID Defeats, Lessons From Indiana’s Law That ‘Has Stood Test of Time’ http://tarheelteaparty.org/?p=21982
The three closest, most hotly contested Presidential elections in US history each came approximately ten years after the end of the seminal events of that generation.
1876, 10 years after the end of the Civil War, Tilden v. Hayes.
“An informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes. In return for the Democrats’ acquiescence to Hayes’s election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South to end the Reconstruction Era of the United States. The Compromise effectively ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who went on to pursue their agenda of returning the South to a political economy resembling that of its pre-war condition, including the disenfranchisement of black voters.”
bit.ly/1oJnIRC
1960, 10 years after the end of World War II, Kennedy v. Nixon.
“Many people believed that Kennedy benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, where Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine… Nixon’s campaign staff urged him to pursue recounts and challenge the validity of Kennedy’s victory in several states, especially in Illinois, Missouri and New Jersey, where large majorities in Catholic precincts handed Kennedy the election.”
bit.ly/2ays0cf
2000, 10 years after the end of the Cold War, Bush v. Gore.
“The decision allowed Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s previous certification of George W. Bush as the winner of Florida’s 25 electoral votes to stand. Florida’s votes gave Bush, the Republican candidate, 271 electoral votes, one more than the required 270 electoral votes to win the Electoral College and defeat Democratic candidate Al Gore, who received 266 electoral votes.”
I’m just saying, if some historian wants to write about this, I want credit for noticing it first…
So, what’s your theory about the 10 year thing? (Btw, second entry doesn’t fit the parameter. WWII ended Sept 1945) Perhaps it’s coincidental?
Great Mark Twain quote from the 1890’s — “if voting actually mattered, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
But, I’m doubting that state and local elections are largely rigged. It’s too much risk for the candidates, b/c it is a felony. At the top of the food chain the candidates themselves aren’t directly involved in such dirty work (or it’s heavily shielded).
If I do a have a theory about it, Isaac Asimov’s fictional ‘psychohistory’ model comes closest. In his Foundation trilogy, he posited that historical events occur in predictable ways, even going so far as saying that with a big enough data set, you could predict the future. He describes history as having a ‘flow’, like a river.
If you drop a big enough boulder in a river, you can predict pretty well how the river will behave downstream from it. If American history is a river, a major defining struggle (Civil War, WWII, Cold War) is like that boulder. These crazy razor-thin contested elections were the eddies that occurred downstream.
I haven’t thought it through any more than that…
Have never read Asimov but, “historical events occur in predictable ways, even going so far as saying that with a big enough data set, you could predict the future.” — yea, I buy that. Simply because humans are quite predictable.
We fancy ourselves evolved and sophisticated, relative to our predecessors, but we’re only slightly so. The same base motivations are there: power, fear, survival, greed, love, violence, peace, lust, affirmation, etc. So, human life revolves around those more than anything and patterns become obvious. And given that, it makes us very easy to manage psychologically (by people like Soros, Alinsky-inspired Hillary and others). Anyone casting an objective, critical eye at the media can easily discern the manipulation.
Yay! I knew we’d find a way to turn this polite conversation into lefty-bashing in the end. You’re welcome.
I thought you were Unaffiliated, so what are you so worked up about? Look, I sat there pondering how to insert Trump into it but couldn’t figure out what his inspirations were (except himself, of course).
Geez, people get so sensitive when the reality makes them uncomfortable. But, since you brought it up, it has been my longtime personal experience that lefties are much easier sway in whatever way the manipulator wants. It’s truly scary how easy…..and I wish it weren’t so.
Except the least contested election happened ten years after the Revolutionary War. Do I get a footnote?
Like I’ve got footnotes lying around. Ask whoever writes the book about it – won’t be me…
So, what’s your theory about the 10 year thing? (Btw, second entry doesn’t fit the parameter. WWII ended Sept 1945)
I guess I’m seeing the Korean War as continuation of WWII. It actually did happen largely as fallout from the 1945 division of Korea into north and south at the end of the war. So it’s not a hard 10-yr interval in that case.
I don’t really have a theory at this point. I’m just noticing that it’s probably too big a pattern to simply be coincidence.
Federal appeals court reinstates voter ID law in Wisconsin. Is NC next?
“A federal appeals court in Chicago reinstated Wisconsin’s voter identification law Wednesday, setting aside a lower court order that would have allowed citizens to vote without producing ID required by the law. The development contrasted with other rulings in recent weeks on voter ID laws, where federal courts have found that several state laws, including those of North Carolina, Texas and North Dakota, harm minority voters by disallowing the use of some forms of identification, such as student IDs.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/appeals-court-reinstates-wisconsin-voter-id-law-1470863211