Michael J. Gaynor is a New York lawyer who frequently contributes commentary for online news sites. The five star customer reviews at amazon.com of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy" are illuminating.
Example 1: this review is by history buff J. Adams:
"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."
Example 2. This review is by Patrick J. Hayden:
"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 that year, and how virtually nothing has changed since then to prevent an even longer, drawn out legal battle from occurring.
"Fund opens his book by describing the two types of people who are concerned about threat to the integrity of elections. One group, mostly Democrats, are primarily concerned with the most people voting as possible, the 'Unconstrained' view of Democracy that de-emphasizes 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 particular 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 County. He deconstructs the myth that 1000's of lower-income and minority votes were suppressed 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 essentially 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 three hours after they were supposed to, Fund demonstrates 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 election standards, 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."
John Fund is a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal and its website.