Votescam: The Stealing of America by James M. Collier and Kenneth F. Collier, first published in 1993, is the result of the authors’ investigation into election fraud in the US for “almost three decades”. James (“Jim”) is two years older than Kenneth (“Ken”).
The means of election fraud is by using electronic voting machines with source code that is considered a “trade secret” as well as the involvement of government officials (including state attorneys and judges), mainstream media, and the private entity known as News Election Service (NES). And, of course, money to particular parties.
The text is organized into two books and an epilogue spanning 21 chapters in total.
Book One covers the period 1970–1989, spanning 14 chapters.
Book Two covers the period 1990–1992, spanning 3 chapters.
The Epilogue has 4 chapters which include the two chapters added by Jim’s daughter Victoria in the reprints.
The text begins with the authors’ own experience of running for public office in Miami in 1970. The two brothers were journalists who had covered the music scene up to then but wanted to do something different. They aimed to write a book titled Running Through the System: Ballots Not Bullets by running for Congress and doing everything “within the system”. So, Ken ran for office as an independent against Democrat Claude Pepper.
As expected, the brothers got practically no media attention. Ken even got booted out of the political breakfast, seemingly ordered by Pepper, that was meant to give all candidates the opportunity to speak. Official complaints and the involvement of law enforcement achieved practically nothing. The media occasionally printed an article but generally did not cover the issue and certainly no follow-up articles.
On election evening we were at Ken’s house to watch the returns on television. The numbers were flashed on the screen about every 20 minutes and our percentage of the vote remained consistent at 16 percent. Channels 4 and 7 were giving the election full coverage but Channel 10, for the first time in its history, ran a movie instead of voting results. Sometime after 9 p.m. our vote percentage jumped to 31 percent. “Hey, we just doubled our vote!” Ken was excited. “If it holds we’ll have enough strength to run again in ’72,” Jim said. Suddenly the news director came on the air and announced that the election “computer has broken down.” Instead of giving official returns from the courthouse, the station would instead broadcast returns based on its “projections.” When the next “projection” was flashed 20 minutes later, Ken’s vote had fallen back to 16 percent. No other vote had fluctuated, only ours. We didn’t know it at the time, but across the country in the 1970s and 1980s, that sequence of events was a phenomenon that became rather common. 1) A candidate is ahead, the good guy, the one who wanted the city audit, the one who’ll make a difference. 2) Television announcement: “The computer has broken down at the courthouse and official votes will no longer be forthcoming.” 3) When the computer comes back, your guy is behind again, and there he or she remains. By the 11 p.m. news it was over. We hadn’t expected to win; after all, we spent so little money, we bought no television time and we were new at political campaigns. But what was that 31 percent we got at about 9:30?
Indeed, the pattern is familiar. Despite the inconsistencies, a conspiracy that involved rigging all 1,648 voting machines and/or a few thousand election officials forging most of the documentation was also improbable.
The Colliers then tried to investigate and this book details their experience and findings. They brought their evidence to the FBI where agents in effect stonewalled whilst many people they talked to either resisted or were pressured to resist. For example, they were denied access to public documents relating to elections which were open to the public without exception according to Florida statute.
Although a few individuals were supportive, the media and the justice system were generally uncooperative. Over the years, they had to give up their homes and businesses and were threatened. One of their associates got shot at and was injured.
Below are some key points not intended to be a summary.
● TV stations reported projections minutes after voting closed even though the information could not have been available and it was highly unlikely that there were enough reporters to cover every precinct.
● Said projections, which ended up being nearly correct, were based on one machine. No actual votes were received by TV stations until 11:15 pm—that is, 4 hours and 15 minutes after the start of the coverage. In other words, what was reported on TV did not necessarily reflect the actual count.
● TV stations relied on a sample provided by members of the League of Women Voters.
● According to Dade data processing chief Leonard White, “The county computer at the courthouse was never down and it was never slow.”
● Press handouts had “Machine Totals Before Correction”. It was uncertain what “Before Correction” meant.
● Canvass sheets are supposed to have certification printed on the back but some sheets were missing certification. The printer replied that they were instructed to print some non-certified sheets.
● When the Colliers tried to bring these sheets to the attention of law enforcement, even asking to be arrested for stealing the sheets from the courthouse, they were ignored.
● Canvass sheets had seemingly unrealistic consistent signatures, indicating possible forgeries. Although one expert declared that this was not the case, a crime lab technician found otherwise: “There are no fibers broken. That means that none of the people who wrote those signatures pressed hard enough to indent the paper or break the fiber. There’s not a number big enough to tell you the odds against no breaks with hundreds of signatures involved. Plus the pencil lines all have a uniform flow without breaks in the flow. That’s impossible if the signatures are genuine.”
● The Colliers tried to find and interview individuals who may have been involved in writing the program that helped TV stations accurately predict the results. No one talked.
● In September 1974, the new voting machines had a different mechanism which was supposed to print the initial zero count. The brothers exposed the attempted fraud in front of election workers and many, realizing that they were being fooled, quit in anger.
● Lawyer Ellis Rubin was supportive but backed off. The Colliers suspect he was threatened by Assistant State Attorney Janet Reno who initially used the statute of limitations as the reason to not investigate the matter. This reason was false.
● In 1979, Jim filed a FOIA request “for anything under his name at any government agency” and received a file “three inches thick” although 37 pages were sequestered “in another agency”. An FBI informed him that the agency was the CIA. This was later confirmed; in addition, it was coded under “national security”.
● In 1982, in response to a “reward program” issued by the Republican National Committee (RNC), the Colliers filmed part of the vote-counting process. They saw, amongst other things, League of Women Voters punching holes through votes with pencils, boxes of votes delivered with broken seals and unbroken seals at the ready to replace any broken seals, and counted votes put back into the uncounted pile.
● The RNC did not honor the agreement. This later led to four lawsuits in 1984 against the RNC, Craig C. Donsanto, ABC and the League of Women Voters.
● Frank Fahrenkopf was the then-new chairman of the RNC. Even though he was not responsible for the original reward program, he was the defendant for RNC. He did meet with the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The goal in this case: “Developing ways and means to overhaul the U.S. voting system to better conform with the realities of a mass media environment.” In other words, to manipulate the media for propaganda purposes.
● As expected, the lawsuits failed; tactics employed included illegal or at least irregular hearings and decisions. According to the authors, there were even secret meetings.
● An invoice was found showing Bevard County hired a firm to operate some sort of system related to vote-counting even though it possessed a $20-million mainframe computer for such a purpose. In short, private firms/companies were used to count votes for state and federal elections without public knowledge.
● In 1964, Louis Harris created “exit polling” for CBS. In 1989, the networks “finally admitted” that ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN had formed Voter Research and Surveys (VRS). According to the authors, “the networks have total control of the vote-counting process in this country” via the VRS and NES.
● The sample size claimed by exit polling is unrealistic. For example, VRS claimed to poll 3,800 voters using 38 precincts in the 1992 New Hampshire primary. That is an average of 100 responses per precinct to about 30 questions using clipboards. The amount of time and resources required to do all that and make an accurate prediction soon after polls close is practically impossible.
● In 1992, a letter was sent to Attorney General William Barr regarding the Colliers’ findings over the years. A dismissive reply was sent under Assistant Attorney General Robert S. Mueller signed by John C. Keeney who the authors claim is one of the key figures “protecting” the identities of those who are part of the conspiracy. [In any case, the names are not surprisingly familiar.]
● As State Attorney, Janet Reno had conveniently failed to investigate any of the allegations regarding voter fraud. In 1993, the Senate confirmed her appointment (98–0). At the hearing, then-Senator Joe Biden apparently did not think much of the allegations regarding voter fraud against Reno:
Joe Biden was being his unctuous, self-satisfied self, drooling over Reno and asking her Pablum-loaded questions. He told the television viewing audience that a radio show in New York was saying the Committee had failed to investigate charges against Reno and was keeping secrets under wraps. However, Biden assured everyone that was absolutely false. He said they had looked into every allegation against Reno, although, he admitted, some charges had been so outrageous that it had been downright embarrassing to investigate them. “There has been no credible evidence related to the truly bizarre allegations that have come forward.” he said.
The text is sensibly structured and easily accessible. The Colliers obviously knew how to write and were aiming to reach as wide an audience as possible. One can always ask for more specific details but there are arguably enough for a text of this length.
Although the focus of this book is vote fraud, the authors do briefly discuss and indeed theorize that the JFK assassination and its cover-up, Nixon and Watergate, and vote fraud are all connected.
The theory is that when JFK was shot, the nation came under the control of the CIA and the Establishment media bosses. Richard Nixon was ambushed at the Watergate by the interests of media boss Katharine Graham, who was protecting her television license in Miami from charges of participating in an election rig. Not until the JFK case is solved and the ties that bind the CIA to the media are exposed, will “all the poisons in the mud hatch out.”
Whilst this may be already obvious to some (or is at least increasingly apparent in recent years), more details could be included if it is to be mentioned all. Either way, as the authors point out, the takedown of the so-called deep state and those who run it are necessary to solve the problems.
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