DDC Comment: Andrew Gumbel is a U.S. correspondent for the London newspaper, The Independent. Without actually saying it, Gumbel helps make our case for establishing secure voting networks connected to voters' homes.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
"The Florida presidential meltdown of 2000 was not a fluke. Things have only gotten worse since. In their efforts to avoid "another Florida," officials have spent tens of millions of dollars on computer touch-screen systems that experts have found to be badly designed, poorly programmed, unequal to the demands placed on them, and vulnerable to hacking and other forms of mischief." Steal This Vote lays the blame for this fiasco on a corrupted political environment created by both major parties, and on a large number of state and county election officials more interested in appearances than in the integrity of the democratic process. The book tells the fraught but colorful history of electoral manipulation in the United States from the framers of the constitution, through Boss Tweed's New York, the Daley machine in Chicago, to Election 2000 and beyond - a tale of votes bought, stolen, suppressed, lost, duplicated, assigned to dead people and pets, miscounted, thrown into rivers, and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court. After reading this book, you'll never look at American democracy the same way.