Why

“There is a place that you are to fill that no one else can fill, something you are to do, which no one else can do.”

• Florence Scovel Shinn in The Game of Life and How to Play It, 1925

Why am I writing this book?

Selections in Minnesota: The Election Game and How to Play It
^{this just borrows directly} even murakami did this with his running title, what i think about when…
^{describes the Game (it is a game, an illusion, a business, and a game WITHIN the book itself, for citizen auditors and election process designers, & etc., à la Pattern language)}

Every Voter Wins: How to Play the Elections Game

In part, because my sons will ask me, and one day their sons: Dad, Grandpa, what were you doing during the Great American Revolution? Indeed, these are exciting times, and probably the Revolution is only the beginning of yet more interesting times. If they should read this book, they will have the beginning of an answer.

“Well, Sons, Grandsons,” I will say, “at first, I tried to audit Minnesota elections, for five years; and then, I tried writing several books about it. Considerable effort, with many starts and stops occurred, before I could get it right.”

They will then remind me, because I will have impressed a keen attention to etymology, connotation, and word meaning and definitions generally, that the word ‘try’ means to give effort and fail. Now read the previous paragraph again. In short, I failed to audit our elections despite five years of effort and intense thought, working alongside a number of others, some of whom worked more diligently than I, and some who worked far more meticulously.

There was a personal boomerang for my efforts. The karma, or the effects of the causes that I kicked off, played out across a number of domains in my life, and it felt often that this overall failure to complete an audit (and to communicate that failure) spilled tragicly and humorously into pain and psychological suffering that I had brought upon myself.

I know, that if I had slowed down long enough to think, that I might have seen the outcome in advance. But I rushed in. Like the eager young swimmer who for the first time sees playful, crashing ocean waves but is unaware of the hidden, forceful undercurrents beneath them. It took only a moment to splash into the auditing game around Summer 2021 but five years later, here I am, finally up for air…

Between then and now, I wrote three books. In 2022, the first was [S]elections in Minnesota, about how electronics control outcomes, how elections are essentially a computer simulation. Then, in 2025, Auditing Minnesota: The 2022 SOS Campaign, about a ninety-day entry into the election for Minnesota secretary of state. Shortly after came Simon’s Sensors: The Secret of the iPads, focused on the electronic poll pads (electronic rosters) from the vendor, KNOWiNK, tracing their rollout, functionality, and certain municipalities and counties attempting to or deciding to opt out, and just use paper poll books for voter registration on election day. If you’re coming to my writing, you’re probably already reading the best book (of these four) in which to start.

Coming back to this story… Naturally, the media was not going to tell it, not this way. Nor were the influencers connected to them, all proxies for the intelligence agencies, themselves orchestrating the ‘politics’ that are the entertainment division for the military industrial complex. Nor locally the tax-payer funded Minnesota Historical Society, established more than nine years prior to Minnesota becoming a state in the union, with the Minnesota Territory legislature’s fifth act, with an interesting purpose: “…and the object of said Society shall be the collection and preservation of a Library, Mineralogical and Geological specimens, Indian curiosities and other matters and things connected with, and calculated to illustrate and perpetuate the history [emphasis added] and settlement of said Territory.”

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/1849/0/General+Laws/Chapter/44/pdf/

Included in the latter organization’s executive council today are ex officio members: the current governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, state auditor, and attorney general. One can imagine their view of the recent history. The people, meanwhile, must endeavor to record our version, to illustrate and perpetuate what we have observed for ourselves and how we have participated. Historians can later compare accounts to learn and determine what they may. Likely, this era is to be carefully studied. If we succeed in preserving the essence, then unlike so many previous eras, where tangible evidence is scarce, there will be something for the historians and anthropologists and anyone else monitoring Earth, from near range or from afar, to go on.

This book may be updated periodically on Leanpub, or a similar service, until the time when Minnesota succeeds in conducting an election where every voter wins. That is, an actual, real, election, as defined in part by the foundations this guide lays out. At present, in every election, every voter loses because we cannot check the work of our administrators nor the electronic programming nor any access to those electronics, authorized or unauthorized. The longer this continues, the more each and every man, woman, and child will see their trust wane in regard to the government and the State. Perhaps this is a necessary part of the pendulum away from dependence back toward self governance.

This book begins a discussion that asks, How can every voter win? Every voter wins when we can meaningfully audit every part of the election process, that it is reconstructable, that it can be shown substantively that the inputs equal the outputs.

Meaningful elections can only occur, though, when the people are ready to reclaim their elections. To say another way, it is a prerequisite that we, collectively, desire to do this work, to first raise awareness about how our infrastructure is not fit for purpose and then to accept the task of building an alternative.

Therefore, this book will serve, until that time and until the related conditions are met (such as lawful accountability for wrongdoing), as a resource and a reference and a starting point, for experts and election workers and ordinary citizens doing extraordinary work to create the change needed. If we succeed, we will have taken an important step toward self governance.

To fully answer the Why question above, simply refer to the quote that began this section. It is related to the encouraging refrain, If not you, who? If not now, when? Perhaps you, too, will find the place that you are to fill that no one else can, and to do that which no one else is able.