CODE RED: Computerized Elections and The War on American Democracy: Election 2020 Edition

CODE RED is about what has happened to American elections, American politics, and America since computers took over the vote counting at the turn of this century.Its subtitle reflects our grave plight and this new ELECTION 2020 EDITION brings the story up to date, including how we got to the Age of Trump, what COVID means for our hopes to heal our broken democracy, and what we need to do NOW.There are many books explaining how we got here: the Clinton campaign this, the economy that, the white suburban voters without college the other thing... As varied as they may be, what all these accounts have in common is the assumption that, one way or another, we VOTED our way here. That is, Americans collectively cast the billions of ballots that, over the past half-dozen or so elections, added up to where we are now. As if we all got behind the wheel of the national car and somehow steered it over the cliff. That is not the account offered by CODE RED. CODE RED challenges the fundamental assumption that we voted our way over the cliff. It instead explores the possibility that, since the dawn of the computerized elections era--with votes counted in the partisan, proprietary, pitch-dark of cyberspace--the national car has behaved more like a self-driving car, programmer unknown.It examines those elections and the veer in American politics, culminating in the Age of Trump, that they have produced—reaching conclusions about who or what has been driving the car that are both more chilling (it’s not us) and more encouraging (it’s not us) than anything else you are likely to read.Most important, it’s a book to read if you’re asking how we can re-take the wheel. Because, while it may be of some comfort to realize that we did not vote our way to this terrible place, the correlate is that there is serious and urgent work to be done if we are to be able to vote our way out of it.“CODE RED is unique, easy-to-understand, and vastly important.” - Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project"CODE RED is a modern-day call to action for all Americans concerned about the integrity of our voting process."Ion Sancho, Leon County (FL) Supervisor of Elections 1989 - 2016“As a professional statistician, I found CODE RED’s data, analysis, and conclusions compelling.” - Dr. Elizabeth Clarkson; Chief Statistician, National Inst. For Aviation Research"CODE RED is both a prescient history and a clarion call to fix the way we vote before government by the people is a fading memory." - Sue Halpern; Staff Writer, The New Yorker“Simon’s research is thorough and his case is more than compelling … He has provided an important public service.” - John Zogby, The Zogby PollOther democracies have moved away from computerized vote tabulation but America continues to entrust its elections to privatized and concealed vote counting despite mounting evidence that its vulnerabilities to manipulation are being exploited, with profound political consequences.CODE RED shows how America came to embrace such a system and why we have been so resistant to any serious reconsideration of its safety. We examine the role of election administrators, politicians, and the media in stifling investigation of suspect American elections and the corruptible system that has produced them.Like the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, CODE RED sets a Doomsday Clock. The good news is that it’s not quite midnight. We can turn this country around--COVID-19 notwithstanding--but only if we first restore public, observable vote counting to our elections. It is a simple thing, but until we do it we will continue putting everything we value at risk.CODE RED combines analysis and advocacy and concludes with this call to action: "We need only to break a spell that has been cast on us--a spell of convenience, passivity, helplessness. We need only remember that democracy is not something that we watch, it is something that we do."CODE RED: Read it and Act! Jonathan Simon’s CODE RED is unique, timely, easy-to-understand, and vastly important. The book uses an innovative Q&A format to enable readers to comprehend why computerized elections fraud represents an unprecedented challenge to democracy. The author has been a pioneering expert in this research, which has been widely ignored by traditional watchdog institutions and the political media. His book provides a convenient news-peg for them to start doing their jobs instead of continuing the go-along, get-along game. - Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project director and author of "Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters" Jonathan Simon has been alerting us to the dangers of our insecure, computerized election system long before anyone had even considered the likelihood of malign foreign actors exploiting its weaknesses. The 2016 presidential election was a watershed moment for public awareness, but as Simon showed in 2018, and now again in 2020, the vulnerabilities still exist, and, more than ever, imperil our democracy. CODE RED is both a prescient history and a clarion call to fix the way we vote before government by the people is a fading memory. - Sue Halpern; Staff Writer, "The New Yorker" Jonathan Simon's new edition of CODE RED is a modern-day clarion call to action for all Americans concerned about the efficacy and integrity of our voting process. Poorly built voting machines, lacking in critical security protections, operating in local election offices without public transparency, and without the most basic of protections—robust audits to verify our votes are accurately tabulated—are bad enough, but when combined with the larger picture of our hyper-partisanship, the willingness to suppress legal voters, and even break laws, we are left with no other conclusion but that our approach to our elections must immediately be changed if our democratic republic is going to survive. Kudos to the author for looking at the forest, and not just the trees, in this high-level examination of America's voting crisis. - Ion V. Sancho, Supervisor of Elections of Leon County (FL), 1989 For nearly two decades, virtually all of our elections have been conducted on privately owned and programmed computers with unexaminable proprietary code. From its very beginning, Jonathan Simon has been investigating, explaining, and trying to beat back this assault on our democracy. In the era of computerized voting, a statistically all-butimpossible serial “red” shift of victories to Republican candidates remains beneath the national consciousness even while disinformation, ruthless gerrymandering, and voter suppression in Republican-controlled states are acknowledged. These depredations feel more possible to identify, oppose, and potentially correct. As a psychiatrist I can only conclude that recognizing, much less correcting, computerized election fraud evokes a sense of helplessness and is a horror that most Americans cannot bear to contemplate. In these extraordinarily perilous times, however, we have no choice but to confront this reality and to take swift, drastic, and corrective action. CODE RED points the way to recovery of our democracy. - Susan G. Lazar, M.D.; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, George Washington University School of Medicine Dr. Simon is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law. He is admitted to the Bar of Massachusetts. Jonathan Simon served for ten years as executive director of Election Defense Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 to restore observable vote counting and electoral integrity as the basis of American democracy. Dr. Simon has gone on to author, both individually and in collaboration, numerous papers and articles related to various aspects of election integrity. He has worked in cooperation with many election integrity organizations; appeared in several election integrity-related films, including Stealing America: Vote by Vote and Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, and as an interviewee on dozens of live broadcasts.