"Rigged" is a must read for anyone who is looking to cast a vote in this upcoming presidential election.

David Shimer walks the reader through the history of covert election interference perpetuated by the United States and Russia over the past 50 years, including America's intervention in Chile, Italy and Yugoslavia. The book then progresses to a detailed recounting of Vladimir Putin's interference in the United States' 2016 presidential election. What began as an animus against Hillary Clinton evolved into aiding Donald Trump's election efforts through the perpetuation of misinformation through social media channels.

Putin and Russia apparently had the expertise to alter cast votes, but there has been no evidence his people followed through with that. However, Shimer suggests we cannot discount the possibility that Putin will again meddle in our elections to Trump's benefit -- and, absent any sanctions from the United States or like-minded counties, could feel emboldened to do whatever is necessary to see a friendly remain in the White House.

Shimer talked to several key members of Barack Obama's administration, who rehash the then=president's reticence to punish Putin when he learned of Russian efforts to penetrate elections systems and machines prior to the 2016 general election..

If you, like me, are concerned about the integrity of elections, you need to read this book. You need to understand that misinformation -- changing the hearts and minds of voters through lies and distortion -- can be just as effective as probing voting machines for vulnerabilities. Russia revels in sowing discord among our people as it undermines our democracy, and they'll keep doing it if Trump and his administration abdicate their responsibility. Absent our present getting tough on Russia, we need to counter that misinformation ourselves. "Rigged" provides some common sense actions we can take to be better informed (and silence the Russian bots).

Subtitled: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Unless you've been under a rock for the last 4 years or so, you've probably heard a lot about interference in the 2016 presidential election by Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. Despite protests from Donald Trump and his supporters, the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have both agreed that said interference was undeniable. Rigged provides an in depth history of election interference by both the U.S. and Russia, as well as examining the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and responses to those efforts by the Obama administration.

While there were some attempts to influence foreign elections in the 1920s and 30s, the 'Golden Age' of election interference started in 1948 when the CIA and U.S. State Department cooperated to influence Italian voters to reject Communist Party candidates. It had mostly tapered off by the mid- to late-1970s as Congress began to examine CIA activities more closely.

Putin's motivation to take the risk of involving Russia in the 2016 U.S. election was a desire to prevent Hillary Clinton from gaining the presidency while at the same time causing as much chaos and divisiveness as possible. Russian efforts to hack individual state voter databases was uncovered fairly early on in the process, and the administration was most afraid of the Russians taking action to delete voter registration info to prevent individuals in selected areas from voting. But that wasn't the only avenue the Russians used. Stealing and then releasing DNC/Clinton campaign emails was very effective, but probably even more damaging were their social media campaigns using fake news stories to incite division along political/religious lines in an attempt to decrease voter turnout levels among African- and Jewish-Americans. While it's impossible to estimate the effect of these efforts in terms of raw votes, the election was close enough in a handful of battleground states that it's very possible Trump's victory was made possible by the Russians.

I gave Rigged four stars. A lot of the material was extremely dry, and I had expected more of a discussion of Russian efforts/abilities to alter actual vote tallies.

Book and Film Globe Review (as part of a roundup)
By Michael Giltz

Four more books about Donald Trump? Try, of course four more books about Trump. Or at least four more books out of the dozens of books about Donald Trump published this week alone. Rigged is the one with the best historical perspective, Surviving Autocracy is the most intellectually thoughtful, The Room Where It Happened is the most headline-grabbing, and Trumpocalypse has the best title. On the other hand, Rigged won’t surprise anyone who’s read up on the CIA; Surviving Autocracy takes too much comfort in the belief that rigorously defining something will help end it; The Room Where It Happened is a glorified and boring if damning collection of meeting notes; and Trumpocalypse is the most annoying. Still…Trumpocalypse. TRUMPOCALYPSE !!

Rigged is by David Shimer, who’s still in school, for Pete’s sake. To be fair, he’s pursuing a doctorate in international relations at the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar. (I guess if he said he was “reading” international relations, it would be too precious?) And he’s already written for The New York Times, New Yorker and Foreign Affairs. So there’s that.

His first book breaks down into two sections. Most of it looks at how the U.S. and the USSR, previously and currently known as Russia, futzed with elections around the world for the past 100 years. Few will be shocked to hear the U.S. deposes rulers, funnels money to candidates it favors and spreads propaganda against those it opposes. Shenanigans and disastrous actions in Chile, Iran, Italy and others are well documented.

Shimer proves more illuminating when he compares and contrasts the tools of the U.S. versus the tools of the Soviet Union and now Vladimir Putin’s kleptocracy, or whatever we’re calling the oppressive rulers of Russia these days. Amusingly, Shimer points out that the U.S. is good at helping their favored candidates work on messaging, getting out the vote, campaigning and so on. You know, the basics of a free and democratic election. The commies? Not so much. Being in a country where free and fair elections are scarce, its spy agency has zero experience in how elections work. So their skill set amounts to the three Bs: blackmailing, bribing and ballot-stuffing. See: East Germany.

Towards the end of this section, Shimer convincingly suggests the U.S. is done with secretly rigging elections and helping candidates. The hypocrisy of meddling in even a nascent democracy isn’t worth the cost. Nowadays we simply work in the open to support a free and fair process. Who could object? Well, Russia and other dictatorial rulers, actually. They see it as their right to hold rigged, fake elections. When the U.S. encourages international observers to step in and hold them accountable, they see that as just as dastardly as we would ballot stuffing.

The last third of Rigged is devoted to Russia’s remarkable interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections. Social media platforms have weaponized Russia’s disinformation campaigns, making their desire to sow chaos cheaper and more effective than ever. Shimer speaks to everyone from top U.S. officials to retired Russian agents and gives a good blow-by-blow account. It makes you a little more sympathetic to the terrible choices facing President Obama, but I doubt this part will hold long-term interest. So the first two-thirds are unsurprising and the last third is too narrow in scope. But Shimer definitely does some good reporting.

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