Seth Keshel (Captain K) Author of The American War on Election Corruption

Shannon does a deep dive interview with Captain K himself, Seth Keshel.  Seth is the fighting man with numbers and a story to tell.  His book, The American War On Election Corruption is an investigative exposé revealing the battle to uncover and dismantle systemic fraud threatening the integrity of US elections.

A Substack (captaink.us) bestselling author, Keshel’s no-holds-barred exposés on systemic threats to the integrity of elections have inspired grassroots reformers and policymakers alike, earning him the moniker “Captain K” among allies fighting to reclaim the sanctity of the American ballot. In The American War on Election Corruption, Keshel draws on his unparalleled expertise to reveal the hidden battles and bold solutions restoring order to our sacred elections. Keshel’s impressive knowledge of history, combined with his unique methodologies and understanding of modern election law, makes the most compelling case to date that our elections are in dire need of reform.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Welcome back to gentlemen and book lovers everywhere. Whether it's the morning, afternoon, or evening, hope you're enjoying this latest episode of The Bookworm Mom. Very excited today. We're gonna have a fantastic author on who's written a great book called The American War on Election Corruption. Thoroughly enjoyed every single chapter, every page. Uh it's filled with numbers, and what's ironic is the numbers don't add up to what they should, because the 2020 election, by my account, was anything but on the up and up, but of course we were told it was the most fair election ever. Went into this with some open eyes and wanted to really see uh perspective from a guy who is a former global war on terror captain in the United States Army and Intel officer. So his analytical skills were honed in that career field. Prior to that, he used a lot of his mathematical skills to help out with some of the analysis you do in sports, particularly with baseball. This book is a fantastic book, I tell you. When I first picked up Seth Castle's book, I expected charts and data and maybe some technical breakdown of election systems. But what I found was a story about trust and how fragile it becomes when the people behind the numbers stop believing in the process itself. Castle writes from the perspective of a soldier who turned an analyst, and someone who's seen both the battlefield and the ballot box. The duel lens to discipline and doubt, makes his voice compelling and even a little unsettling at times. In this particular episode, I want to explore that tension and talk with Seth about what happens when our civic faith collides with our fear of corruption. How do we separate fat from feeling, and yet still keep the conversation human? We're gonna share some of the things that stood out with me in Ketchel's arguments and what questions they raise and how they connect to the broader story of trust. That same trust that Scott Mann talks about when he says we got to fight against the churn and keep uh listening rather than giving in to that churn. So, Steph Ketchel, welcome to the Bookworm podcast. Love having you today.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Well, it is an honor to be on, and it's definitely outside of my normal round of interviews, so it's it's even more exciting for me.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, I know I've seen you on a couple things. Uh, saw you most recently on uh David Rutsch Rutledge. Um great, great interview you did there. And um I know that you've put so much work into this. This is not um a book that was written with just happenstance. You really put some dedication into it. What made you decide to take all of that analytical skills that you used to talk about what you projected to happen in 2020 and decide to let's put this into a book?

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Well, something that I was tapped on the shoulder to do. I've always been asked about if I had plans to write a book because I have a prolific Substack newsletter. It's one of the most widely sold newsletter subscriptions in in U.S. politics, really anywhere in the world on the Substack platform. It's called Captain K's Corner, CaptainK.us. And it lands in the inbox of a lot of very important decision makers out there, including many in the White House. So people read my articles. I'm I'm usually abreast of everything current today, whether that's elections or geopolitics. I usually limit my willingness to comment to those topics. I stay out of everyone else's lane if it's not my thing. And I have a reputation for accuracy, but people have always asked about a book. And the thing for me is I always said that a book, in order to write a good book, the chapters had not aligned themselves in such a conclusive fashion to allow me to write one. And that changed in August of last year when Larry Schweichert, who I'm sure you've probably heard of, oh yeah, well known, well-known historian, uh, author of the Patriots History of the United States, which is a must-own for any homeschool moms and dads. Larry was speaking with the publisher Post Hill Press about our forecasting models, which I'm sure you're familiar with now, voter registration by party, not polling.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

And the the publisher asked Larry, does Seth have a book in him? So there came within within hours, really, an offer to submit a manuscript no later than 1 December. So that was about a 90-day uh tolerance for me to get the manuscript.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

No pressure.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

No, no pressure at all. And the the challenge for me, like you mentioned, you know, you expected a book full of charts and graphics and scientific analysis. My my analysis is along the lines of deductive reasoning. Yes. I like it to speak to the layperson. I think that we've got a lot of people that compile so many charts and graphics that only they understand. And if you can't convince, you know, Charlie Kirk's life is a good example of this. Charlie Kirk tried to convince a malleable group of people and move their positions ever so slightly in his direction. But I uh I had to weave together my personal story because what really animates me is seeing normal people getting involved in taking back our country because you can't do it with just a select army of influencers. Right. All influencers do is sit online and fight. If you don't have the you don't have the people that you never know the names of knocking doors, collecting signatures, arranging donors to support good candidates, recruiting candidates, running for lower offices that people don't talk about in the news, then you're never gonna make the progress you need to make. So I had to weave my own story in here because when I started going on a lot of mainstream shows in 2024, I thought everyone in the world knew me about election integrity, but it turns out in the big ocean of politics, in the comments, people are like, well, who's this guy? So it was an opportunity to present to present the what behind why I decided to get involved in the election integrity problem in the first place, and then convinced people through deductive reasoning and analysis that our elections are definitely in disrepair and in need of being fixed. And if we don't fix them, not fix them in the Chicago way. Right. If we don't, if we don't repair them, then the the concept of a constitutional republic is doomed.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah, and that kind of answers one of the questions I had is why this book matters now, because we're heading into obviously uh a midterm election cycle. And right here in South Carolina, there's a battle unfolding this morning uh with our state senators trying to decide whether or not we're going to end the racial gerrymandered district that has been in the hands of Mr. Jim Clyburn for over 30 years, or if we're going to continue with that. Um my hope obviously is that we get rid of that. The Supreme Court says that is not constitutional. So that's uh that's certainly something that's transpiring across the country. Um I like to think that the spark was lit by those folks down there in Virginia in some ways making that determination to take away all of the Republican seats, and that has backfired FAFO. Um But your book was was not it was not only about about the election. I I found the personal touches that you added about your own experience growing up, your father in particular. Um I share with him off offline that you know my father has just passed away two years ago, and so I could totally you know empathize and relate to that story that you shared and and how heartbreaking that was to be deployed knowing that that would be the last time you'd see your dad. That gave so much weight to the book that went beyond just um the research you did on the election. But I guess, Seth, you know, in in putting this book together, have you had some pushback? Because I've seen some things online, you know, the election denier, um, that kind of thing. Have you had a lot of pushback, or are you seeing that people are becoming more open to, well, maybe there wasn't something, you know, maybe everything wasn't on the up and up in 2020?

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Well, you know, we've reached uh, I think an apogee point as far as um, you know, people on the political right that we're going to move in the direction of our elections or compromise. Now, but you know, Newt Gingrich, who wrote the forward of my book, made a very good point. And he doesn't believe elections are stolen, he believes that they're rigged. And my research through the through the duration of my time in election integrity, but also which I put into the book, suggests very strongly that it is the laws on the books in the various states that govern the output of ballots and therefore the predictability or lack thereof of presidential election results. So in states like Pennsylvania, the changing of the law to no excuse mail and balloting with seven weeks of early voting has allowed for Democrats to surge forward in their vote totals despite their loss of membership represented by party registration, and despite the fact that Kamala Harris had fewer votes in Ohio than John Kerry had in 2004. So, you know, the people on the right, I mean, I would imagine more than 80% of Republicans don't trust our election results. And the ones that do are really the same group of Republicans that have been never Trumpers the entire time and see anything that harms Trump as a good thing. So Democrats are more, especially the white liberal faction of Democrats, of course, would never take issue with elections as long as they benefit their side. So I think that you have a a small portion of people in the independent realm, maybe soft democrats, maybe the the ones that are coming awake, minority democrats, who are starting to see because of issues like the 72 to 72 to 27 mail-in ballots split in Virginia the other day, or late-arriving mail-in ballots in California, flipping races in December, that yes, the rest of the world does not tolerate elections run this way. You know, the mail-in ballots are banned in 34 out of 47 European countries.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Mexico, Israel, Russia, Japan, they all ban mail-in voting. So why is it that blue states and purple states in the United States are expanding a widely known corrupted practice? So the uh, you know, I think that I think that as far as moving the needle, we're looking at a sliver of the electorate, which is which is good. You know, this is this is something that has moved from 40% of the people in the 2020 election at the time of the election, yeah, believe the election was compromised to over 60% today. And now we have the SAVE Act out there. 75-25 support at minimum. And people now see the ineffectiveness of the U.S. Senate in performing the will of the people. And of course I could tie the Senate problem back to three federal election cycles, in which I believe there should be at least nine more Republican senators than there are today.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Right. Yeah, well, I know you talk about in the book um things like the um uh what is it, the the jungle primaries, if you will, uh ranked choice voting, and then what I am struggling with is this motor voter rolls. I'm currently in South Carolina, but we are PCSing to Hawaii, back to Hawaii. So of course, there um they have that system. So um it'll be interesting. Here in South Carolina, one of the things that I don't like about our system is that we have open primaries. I think that is extraordinarily problematic. It's why we have so many rhinos in our state house and our state senate, because they're Democrats. They know they can't run as a Democrat, so they run as a Republican, but then they vote as a Democrat. Um so there are problems, a plethora of them across the nation that we need to address and fix, and not, as you note, not fix in the Chicago way, but repair, so that we can have a true vote, one man, one woman, one vote, not you know, uh Xerox copies of 20,000 ballots that all vote for one candidate at the top and nobody on the down ballot. That clearly happened. Um, so as we head into this next midterm cycle, just kind of using your analytical skill sets, what do you see happening? Because there's a lot of predictions out there about whether or not the Republicans keep the House, lose the House, lose the Senate. What are your thoughts on that based on what's happening now in our electoral process?

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Yeah, I think the the best way to analyze any any big election. So whether you're you're looking to secure a legislative majority, this could be done at the state level or at the federal level, or if you're looking to amass a majority of electoral college votes. My methodology is the same thing it was when I was an army officer in Afghanistan, making the map smaller. Because if you've got this massive map, our area in Afghanistan, RC West, was the size of Georgia. So if you have this huge map with 538 electoral votes or 435 house seats, the first task is to eliminate numbers so you can figure out where you need to focus. So that starts with in presidential elections, me going through and identifying the safe electoral votes, where almost under every circumstance I play out, I find the Democrat nominee with 221 electoral votes and the Republican with 235. This would be presidential for 2024.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:09

Or in the case of the U.S. House this year, there are seats that the Democrats are going to win, no matter if Bugs Bunny was their nominee.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

And no matter, and no matter if this was the biggest Republican year shaping up since we've had since 2014. And then you have the opposite where you have seats that are so Republican that a brown paper bag with an R on it would win even in the biggest blue wave year there is. So I identify those first. And then I have another group of seats called leaners. You can do the same thing in the Electoral College. And when I find the safe seats, only about 10% of remaining seats fall into the category of leaners or decisive seats. So I think that we have about 40 seats, which I'm continuing to sharpen this number as states three district or have decisions like they did in Virginia. But less than 10% of U.S. House seats are going to determine who holds the House majority. And out of the out of the 90% I've tagged, I'd be very surprised if more than one or two of them turned into a historical upset that I missed. So making the map making the map smaller allows me to then identify which seats are decisive. And those, if people will listen, if you concentrate resources, assets, money, personnel, and in candidate selection into those seats, then you increase your odds of being able to win them. And with a lower midterm turnout, and depending on how the independent vote flips, you can have some very unpredictable results in the house. And the house varies a lot from presidential voting patterns. And it's important to note that midterm elections are never predictive of the next presidential election.

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Right. Yeah, I know one of the things you talk about in your book is voter registration and the importance of getting people to register and vote Republican, etc. And to that end, have you had any contact with Scott Pressler? Because he's a big we had him here, uh I had him down to a meeting probably about uh two, three years ago, um, actually maybe four years ago now, and it was after the 2020 election and he came out. But uh anyway, Scott's, you know, he was a driving force up in Pennsylvania, getting folks to turn out and register and vote. So have you had any uh chance to meet with him and are you guys kind of uh on the same page with with getting everybody registered to vote as Republican to help offset the Democratic rigging?

SPEAKER_02 15:29

Well, my mission is is a bit different than Scott's. We we have a convergence on believing in the importance of voter registration. Now, I value it more as an analytical tool. So when I look at counties and have voter registration data, I have a good idea from an election integrity perspective of which way these votes should break based on decades of voting history. Now, Scott's activism is more along the lines of just getting the people registered, which is part of it. Part of the blocking and tackling of politics is voter registration and voter turnout. So it's an important thing. Um Scott and I don't see eye to eye on everything election integrity related. Um I think that he's starting to realize what a lot of the folks in the election integrity movement are talking about with the mail-in voting, but I also understand where he comes from that until things change, you have to play the game. Um I ran into him here in Tucson a couple weeks ago at an event that he did with Jenny Beth Martin from Tea Party Patriots, and we talked shop on this a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Yeah, I know that um, as I said, one of the things we've pushed for for decades now in South Carolina is closing our primaries, and obviously then we could have voter registration for by party, because right now we don't have that. You just register to vote and it's open um open season, if you will. So difficult to judge that here in South Carolina, but we're well that's been a problem in other southern states.

SPEAKER_02 16:48

You know, Mississippi doesn't have voter registration by party either. And in 2014, there was a uh you know, a firebrand Republican named Chris McDaniel, who beat Thad Cochrane in the Mississippi Senate primary in 2014. And this is when Thad Cochrane was on his way out, couldn't even find his way around the U.S. Capitol. And but but there was a third candidate in there that prevented McDaniel from hitting 50%. And then there was a runoff, and then Cochrane's camp recruited enough Democrats in the cities, especially black Democrats, to go out and make sure that Cochrane won the runoff and he won it by a nose.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah. You know, I know that uh South Carolina, I think famously, um Jim Clibern in particular, was the one who really propelled Joe Biden into the uh Democratic win, primary win. And then of course um the rigging propelled him into the presidency. I myself, even before I read your book, was following very closely about what was happening. And to be fair, in 2016 I voted um down ballot all Republican, but the top of the ticket in 16, I didn't trust Trump. So I'm just being honest, I voted third party. But by probably I'd say six months in, I started saying, okay, I I think I got this wrong. 18 months in, I was fully on board with Trump. And I thought, wow, okay, I made a mistake and um I'm human, I'll admit it. So voted for him in 2020, you know, knocked on doors, did all the things. And everywhere I went, I met more people who said, didn't vote for him last time, voting for him this time. I didn't meet anybody who said, Well, I voted for him last time, but I'm not voting for him again. So, you know, and then as you note, you know, you're watching the people turn out in mass to, you know, support him at the various rallies, and then you're seeing the little circles of 12 at the Biden events. Um, so when the election was called and they ultimately gave out all these numbers, my first thought was there's no way this man got more votes than Barack Obama. That is utter nonsense. Um so and then you know, I noticed that there were people like Ben Shapiro's one that comes to mind, one of the guys who said, Oh no, okay, this election it went to this person and we have to uh you know uh admit it. And I I don't know, I don't know if Ben's changed that perspective. I don't know, have you have you heard of because that's the that's the one big name of a guy who because he watched um 2,000 mules and uh with a group of guys, and you know, even at the end of that, he's like, No, I don't I don't it didn't convince me, and I thought, how could you not be convinced? Um I I know you were with Mike Lindell when he did some of the stuff he did with some of the computers and uh you know uh electronic balloting problems that existed. I watched Mike's program on that, and I'll be honest with you, I felt like it was so data intensive, it was went over a lot of people's heads, and I just felt like it didn't it didn't prove it. But after watching 2000 Mules, I felt like it did. And your book perfectly summarizes kind of all both of those worlds to drive home the point that we have got to fix this problem that we have, and if we don't, I don't know that we're gonna have another guy like Trump who can rally the base in a way to get um the individuals across the finish line.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

So well, you know, I I don't share the same views as all of the other analysts out there, and not all of Lindell's analysts either.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Um I I don't focus on the cyber aspect of elections. Now that's not to say that I don't think there's issues with computers and machines in elections. In fact, my second point, which I listed in the epilogue for true election integrity, is to ban all electronic elections equipment. Yes. But the only point you're going to get to sell to the public who's not absorbed with election integrity is that they don't offer any transparency. There are examples, and Dave Clemens is a good interview on this, but there are examples of of machines from the 2025 elections. Um New Mexico had one in Valencia County where the software sent 204 more votes than they had to the central tabulation for the state. That's not something that was made up or whipped up or proprietary. It was well documented. So there are issues with machines, but mostly along the lines of selling transparency to the public. You know, to me, if machines were flipping Trump votes and creating Harris votes, then why didn't they continue to flip votes in Pennsylvania until Harris won the state? It would have only required another 60,000 flips.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

So, um, but the point is I focus on the things I can definitely control and see, and I'm talking about mail invaliding, like a 634% increase in Georgia from 2016 to 2020.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

How that marries up with the introduction of automatic voter registration in this country about a decade ago. And then how the results of various states have turned on a dime, like in Pennsylvania, where all of a sudden Democrats are at record high vote totals despite having a voter registration advantage that is a million below where it was in 2016 when Trump first won the state.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yeah. It's um, you know, it there's so many moving parts to all of this, and as you probably are well, I know you're well aware, each state has their own mechanisms for how they hold their elections, and they get to choose what device. They use and whether it's this a particular computer program or this paper, whatever. So that's that's I don't even know. I'm not even confident that making it a federal system that we all have to vote a particular way would work. But I do agree with you that we need it to be a national holiday that that would get rid of a lot of people saying, Oh, I can't get off work to get there to vote. So if we federalized it, made it a holiday. I think that's a good thing. I I'm a retired government econ teacher, so absolutely support that that concept. But uh Seth, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up something that I heard about uh I guess it's back in 2020. Um something that, you know, kind of tongue in cheek, I think you were probably uh joking around it, but everybody talks about it. You know, we we have the election problem that you uh nicknamed electile dysfunction. Can you tell tell folks a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_02 22:48

Yeah, well it's uh you know it's something that the the sweet tea sipping, you know, Sunday morning crowd might not like a whole lot down there in the South. But I came from the South and I got those army officers added to me. So yeah, like electile dysfunction. And you know, Trump shocks the system too. You know, he creates headlines sometimes in the morning with the social media posts that the media chase. And then the result is Trump is in the background arranging some sort of thing with a lot of attention allotted elsewhere. But I came up with the with the the concept of what describes electile dysfunction. And it it's it's the true national pandemic, and it's it's got five prongs to it. It's when you have difficulty maintaining an election. It's when your election lasts for longer than four days. Oftentimes you see a sudden, severe, and noticeable loss of interest in voting. Government may go soft on accountability. And then the final point, like we have here in Arizona with the governor, or like the country had with Joe Biden, you get premature inauguration.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Excellent. Excellent. You know, because sometimes you you can't get through to people with with hard-nosed facts, but if you can bring a little humor into it, um that gets their attention, and then once you've gotten their attention, then maybe you can get them to look at some of that data.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Our elections are the butt of all jokes in the world. Our country cured polio, landed a man on the moon, won two world wars, but we can't figure out how to count ballots to where people know the winners of national elections by bedtime on election night like we did four years ago.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

Yeah, it's it's it's pretty embarrassing. My husband is also a uh G Watt retired uh army officer, and um, so we've had many discussions about um military ballots and so on and so forth, but um in the essence of time. Is there anything you kind of want to impart to us before you have to go off? I know you're doing a book tour right now, so you got a lot of things going on. So any final words of this is what we gotta focus on as we're heading into this last uh or not this last, this next uh election cycle?

SPEAKER_02 24:48

Look, so the the biggest thing areas of focus on election integrity from a 30,000 foot view is people need to have the correct knowledge base. The foundation of election corruption or electile dysfunction is the voter roll. The voter rolls are corrupt and and that's uh lack of maintenance where you have plenty of registrations existing in people that are deceased or multiplied registrations thanks to automatic voter registration. And in the book, in chapter four, you can read about Biden's FBI investigating election fraud. Now they didn't go after big races, top-of-the-cket marquee races that people were watching, like the 2020 presidential or Kerry Lake's race for governor in 2022. But they did go after Democrats committing Democrat primary fraud in Connecticut and New Jersey. And the common denominator is people know which registrations on a voter roll are harvestable. Or you're going to have, you know, a registration is here, but it's not going to belong to a person who's going to show up and vote based on decades' worth of data, or perhaps this person is dead, or maybe this person is on the voter roll multiple times with multiple last names, things and stuff like automatic voter registration. And it shows how the organizers identify these registrations and wind up with a mail-in ballot for that registration. And once the ballot is cast, it's not coming out of the count. So people have figured out how to abuse the concept of secret ballots which were designed to protect the voter, and now they are weaponizing them based on the corruption of voter registration to bring about fraudulent vote counts. So voter registration, especially when it's automatic, that's where the corruption lies. And then when you multiply practices that make this worse, like mail-in balloting, then you have an even bigger problem because when I look at the mail-in voting states, their results have completely deviated from where they were trending in the middle of the 2010s and have now solidified states that were fledgling blue states and made competitive purple states that look like they should be Republican strongholds by now. Trump's vote totals in Pennsylvania in 2024 suggests that he should have won a state in the high single digits, not by 1.7%.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Right. Yeah. Well, Seth, I I deeply appreciate you taking the time out of your very busy schedule. And folks, this is so important. Please, please uh pay attention to what's going on. Get out there, register to vote, do your part, do your civic duty, and go out and purchase this book. You will not be sorry. It's a great read, as I said. Uh there's a you know, the the story about his father passing. I'm I'm crying as I'm listening to it going down the road. Um the book is called The American War on Election Corruption. And as always, we'll have a link um in the show notes to show you where to go to purchase your book. You can get it anywhere that you like to buy your books. Um, this is a podcast for book lovers. So please, uh, if you have any other insights, uh books that you want me to check out, please do that. Mr. Cashwell, thank you so much for taking the time. God bless, Godspeed, and and uh good luck with the book tour.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Yeah, thank you very much, Shannon, and to your audience, thank you so much for your interest and for checking out my book.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Thank you, sir.