(Blogged on the road by Brad from the Bioneers Conf. in Marin, CA)

It was one thing when Daytona Beach News Journal endorsed computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis over his Democratic primary opponent (whom Curtis thumped in that race).

It's quite another thing --- a coup, in fact --- that now the News Journal has endorsed Curtis over the powerful sitting U.S. Congressman and former Florida Speaker of the House, the corrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), in their race for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th district.

Feeney, of course, is Jeb Bush's former gubernatorial running mate, the man who promised to deliver Florida's electoral vote to George W. during the 2000 fiasco no matter what the Supremes had to say, the only so-far unindicted Congressman to have gone with Jack Abramoff on a paid golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, and the man whom Curtis accused --- via affidavit, video-taped Congressional testimony, and lie-detector test --- of commissioning a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

Shamefully, Feeney has done little more than mount a disgraceful smear campaign against Curtis, attempting to paint him as "crazy" and not fit for office. The campaign seems only to have highlighted Feeney's own lack of seriousness as a legislator; one fit more for prison than the U.S. House of Representatives.

The News Journal's complete endorsement of Clint Curtis seems to bear that out, to Feeney's eternal disgrace. Here's a few snippets...

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Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

With the US election looming, Kenneth Anderson revisits the recent Mexican presidential election for the November/December issue of The Humanist (go directly to PDF).

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Lou Dobbs and Kitty Pilgrim report on the frenzy to hire computer science graduate students by state officials fearing an e-voting machine disaster on election day. Dobbs also has a brief report on the Supreme Court decision upholding (for now) the new Arizona law requiring photo IDs of voters.

- QuickTime Player version...

The text-transcript of Friday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon (with additional snark provided by Brad Friedman)

The Washington Post is reporting in Friday editions that the FBI is investigating the "possible theft" of Diebold electronic touch-screen voting system source code in Maryland.

While the Maryland State Board of Elections admits that the disks contained "the software...used in Maryland in the 2004 elections," Diebold denies everything. Of course. They gave their catch-all apologia --- the software is for "versions...that are no longer in use in Maryland" --- although they were forced to acknowledge "the version of one program apparently stored on the disks is still in use in 'a limited number of jurisdictions.'"

The disks feature logos from Ciber Inc. and Wyle Labratories, Inc., two labs that test voting machines and software (sort of) for Diebold. Both firms deny the disks are theirs.

According to the article...

WaPo goes on to report...

So will Diebold just continue to deny that anything has happened or can happen? Will MD State Election Director Linda Lamone just pass on Diebold disinformation as she always does (despite knowing better...since she's seen the unredacted scientific reports on these systems from security organizations like SAIC and RABA?) Or will someone finally understand that this is a massive problem that needs immediate attention?

Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of Diebold's original "showcase states," implementing Diebold's hackable paperless touch-screen voting across virtually the entire state since 2002. With failure after failure, we might add.

If it's all not bad enough, in what is reported by WaPo as "an unrelated development" in the same article, a new report from Maryland state auditors revealed that the state's new voter registration database does not have proper security controls in place for access to the data...

On the same day as NYTimes front paged a story on the coming electoral meltdown. Chicago Trib follows suit in a front pager today that focuses on massive problems in Chicago and Cook County.

Like the Times, who modified their original headline yesterday shortly after publishing to refer to "Voting Woes" instead of "Voting Chaos" as it was originally described, the Trib turns backflips to downplay the concerns, blame as much as possible the poll workers and "human error," along with "glitches" and "hiccups," instead of placing blame where it squarely deserves to be placed: on the Voting Machine Companies and the Elections Officials who approved this garbage for use in our elections.

The headline is "Voting Glitches Feared on Nov. 7," but as a close reading of the article reveals, these are not "voting glitches." They are not even "glitches." They are FAILURES of the voting machine companies and elections officials. Period. End of story. Got that?

The story rightly refers to "a virtual meltdown" in last spring's primary in Chicago and Cook County, and goes on to add that vote totals can be completely fried...

So vote totals can be entirely "fried" and yet we're actually using this system on November 7th?! Moreover, note the language above that says it's "possible for workers" to fry the vote totals. Instead of the more appropriate, "it's possible that the poorly designed systems could have their entire vote totals fried."

As I've gotta hit the road to head up North for speaking engagements and meetings over the next several days, and as things are now melting down all around us, as predicted --- with some 20 days left until Nov. 7th --- my patience is just about worn thin with the apologists, liars, and those journalists, "advocates," and public officials who have no excuse to claim ignorance anymore.

So I hope you'll pardon the more graphic language I feel compelled to use below...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Through the eyes of Dr. Jamal Taha-Enad, an Iraqi trauma surgeon that Nightline has been following around Iraq for two years, this video provides a remarkable glimpse into life in Baghdad. Powerful and heart-wrenching, the video is also notable for evidencing the graphic violence of war --- something almost unheard of in today's mainstream press.

After the segment is a partial interview of President Bush by George Stephanopoulos that also aired on last night's program.

-- Streaming Flash version...

UPDATE: Video pulled from Blip.tv and my account was shut down. I could not find video on Nightline site either. Please post a link if anyone comes by the video elsewhere. Thanks. (Alan Breslauer)

We spoke about the Democratic, and actually qualified candidate for California Sec. of State Debra Bowen yesterday.

So, equal time. Let's talk about the completely unqualified, partisan mouthpiece, the current Schwarzenneger-appointed California Secretary of State and accomplished liar, Bruce McPherson.

Oh, and as the end of yesterday's debate revealed, he's also a loathsome human being.

The two debated before the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board. It was broadcast live --- now available to watch on the web --- and very informative. Here are some thoughts of ours on several of McP's obfuscations lies comments during the debate.

NOTE: Quotes of his below aren't always exact, but damned near. With one of McP's quotes, however, we had to go back and check three times, just to make sure we heard him right. We did. And we're appalled.

He actually said, "Under Secretary of State Bowen, if that ever happens, I will tell you, the blind and disabled will not be eligible to vote privately and independently."

Bowen replied gracefully by saying his comment was "shameful" and "not [McPherson's] finest moment."

Our personal replies to that appalling comment, and McP's host of other lies, follow below, and are far less charitable. As you may know, the election for California SoS may prove to be the most important race for the future of the nation's electoral system. Our snarky, point-by-point rebuttal to the truth-challenged McP --- who is working for the voting machine companies, not the voters of California --- follows in full...

Nice of New York Times to start paying attention...now that it's too late to do much of a damn thing about it.

FLASHING now at DRUDGE REPORT...

UPDATE 7:35pm PT: Complete NYTimes story now up. "New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Chaos". It's well worth a read!

FURTHER UPDATE BY JOHN GIDEON 9:00pm PT: The story reveals that many of the voting machines now being used in Yolo Co, California for voters with disabilities only work in Vietnamese. These machines are only being used in the county because SoS McPherson and his staff unfairly denied certification to Vote-PAD which was supposed to be used in that county.

FURTHER UPDATE BY BRAD 9:20pm PT: Looks like the NY Times, who hasn't done much of any reporting on this topic up until now has had second thoughts already. The original headline discussed "...Voting Chaos" but has now been softened to "...Voting Woes". I've got my money on "chaos", not "woes" this November. It's a shame they've backed off. They were so close to telling the truth. Sigh...

FURTHER UPDATE BY JOHN 8:10am PT: While my 'UPDATE' from last night says many machines only worked in Vietnamese the article actually says 'some machines' and I have now found that, in fact, 3 machines were affected. My apologies for the incorrect wording.

Is this sort of thing actually necessary? Apparently it is.

While the following 10 items seem painfully obvious, apparently these no-brainer items need to be issued as a "Voter Bill of Rights" by CA Secretary of State candidate Debra Bowen, given the mess we currently face (made possible, in no small part, by the hapless, duplicitous current CA SoS Bruce McPherson)...

Have we mentioned that Bowen's victory in defeating McPherson is perhaps one the most important elections in the country if we hope to ever see Electoral Integrity in this country again? Sign on to support here...

UPDATE 10:28pm PT: Bowen and McPherson debated today. Video here. Haven't gotten to watch it yet, but McP would never out and out lie would he? Not before an important editorial board, right?

UPDATE 10:33pm PT: Whoops! Just watched the first five minutes and he already did! Go figure...I suspect there are many more to come.

UPDATE 10/18/06 4:37pm PT: Holy cow! Lies o' plenty! And more! Full coverage of the debate now here...

Haven't had time to check into this (I welcome folks in Missouri to please do so themselves!) as too much rolling fast and furious now. Galloglas at DU reports that the Missouri Secretary of State's office may be encouraging use of paper ballots on Election Day. He reports that they may be available for "optional" use and will NOT be counted as Provisional Ballots.

That's good news. But, as with California's SoS announcement we reported last week, it sounds like the SoS office in the "Show Me" state (...pausing to ponder the irony...) could use a bit of a nudge to do the right thing and develop specific plans and procedures for use of optional and/or Emergency Paper Ballots in every precint. See Galloglas' report. Sounds like they are well aware of our efforts here at The BRAD BLOG, so be polite and give them our best wishes!

Contact info for Missouri SoS/Election Division here.

We recently sent a letter, along with more than 50 other Election Integrity organizations and notable individuals, calling on SoSs, Governors, and State Election Officials to develop immediate plans and procedures for the use of Emergency Paper Ballots this November 7th.

You can contact your own state officials via email here. We also encourage you to call them on the phone. They'd love to hear from you!

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

In August Vote-PAD learned that the California Secretary of State had decided to deny them certification that would allow Vote-PAD's voting assistive devices to be used in the state of California. They did this even though some counties had already contracted for Vote-PAD or were in the purchase process and even though Vote-PAD showed clear and convincing evidence that the testing process was biased. This denial by Bruce McPherson and his underlings led to the now famous "Off With Their Heads" blog here at The BRAD BLOG.

On Monday Vote-PAD issued a press release to inform the public that they had filed a formal complaint with the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board. According to the press release, Vote-PAD "asserts that the Secretary of State violated a number of State and Federal protections during the Vote-PAD certification process: 'a violation of the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitutions of both the United States and the State of California, a breach of contract, a violation of the California Administrative Procedures Act, a violation of the Election Code provisions governing voting system certification and an abuse of discretion in the Secretary's authority to certify voting systems.'"

The full press release follows...

The Coalition For Voting Integrity (CVI) in Pennsylvania has announced that beginning tonight and weekly they will be doing a one-hour radio program that centers on voting issues and democracy.

The program can be heard locally in the SE Pennsylvania and S New Jersey area via WNJC Radio 1360AM or it can be heard live via the internet by going here. They are encouraging audience participation so if you have questions/comments for tonights guest, Lowell Finley of VoterAction you can call 856 227 1360.

We are happy to see another group sharing their voices with Brad and the others who are on the radio spreading the good, bad and ugly news about our elections. The whole CVI Press Release has upcoming guests and more information....

An enormous number of superb documentary films that cover the topic of our American electoral meltdown are being released. Last week, I quickly ran a preview item on HBO's Hacking Democracy --- premiering Nov. 2nd on HBO --- which gives a first-hand account of the detective story as it has unravelled over the last three years concerning the many lies of the Diebold corporation. I've now seen the final cut and will have more details on that extraordinary film soon.

In the meantime, I was thrilled recently to get a look at David Earnhardt's breathtaking Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System documentary, which tells the story of America's crumbling democracy and a few of the citizen patriots across the country who are attempting to save it.

Along with a focus on some of those folks, the film's emphasis is on the impossibilities which seem to have occurred in the tainted 2004 Presidential Election and the likes of which we may look forward to in the weeks and years ahead.

Earnhardt's film draws a great deal from a series of speeches and interviews filmed in April of 2005 during a National Election Reform Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

I participated as a speaker at several events during that conference, as did computer programmer, whistleblower, and former lifelong Republican Clint Curtis who had, at the time, yet to even dream of running against a very close friend of the Bush clan, the corrupt U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) --- the very man Curtis has alleged asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype when they both worked for the same Oviedo, Florida, software firm in 2000.

Curtis left the Republican party after being soured on them vis-a-vis his direct experiences with Feeney.

Earnhardt was kind enough to share with The BRAD BLOG the section of the film which introduces the basics of Curtis' vote-rigging claims about Feeney. It's a beautifully done segment --- and not just because it includes interviews with me as well, but it doesn't hurt! --- which should go a long way towards allowing folks to decide whether Curtis is "crazy" as Feeney's reprehensible smear campaign and website against him is hoping to trick voters into believing now that they've become Congressional opponents.

Here's the clip (about 8 mins) from Earnhardt's film which I found to be finally as uplifting and hopeful as it was maddening and heartbreaking. The entire film can be purchased on DVD at the website www.EternalVigilance.us where additional clips from the film are also available.

NOTE: There is yet another documentary, still in the works, wholly devoted to the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises, Inc., vote-rigging scandal and The BRAD BLOG's so-far two-year long investigation and reporting of it. That films goes into considerably more detail on the entire breadth of the allegations (including the Chinese spying, the mysterious death of the Florida Inspector General who was investigating Curtis' claims, etc.). We hope to have details and, perhaps a short preview from that film soon as well.

Please pass the permalink to this article far and wide to help counter the hundreds of thousands of corporate PAC and RNC dollars that Feeney is using in his shameless attempt to discredit Curtis.

While you're at it, if you'd like to help unseat Feeney, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, please donate to Curtis' citizen-funded campaign. We've spoken to him recently, and he continues to be upbeat about his chances, but while the national Dems have still failed to help his campaign (as with so many others across the country), it's up to the people to help someone who will fight for electoral integrity get into the U.S. Congress!

(Hat-tip Hotpotatomash for help with the video!)

The publicity email sent to us this morning from filmmaker David Earnhardt follows in full...

The BRAD BLOG has obtained an EXCLUSIVE partial transcript from a recent, unaired interview by a major broadcast network with former U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Rev. DeForest Soaries.

Soaries was appointed by George W. Bush as the first chair of the commission created by the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in the wake of the 2000 Presidential Election Debacle. In the interview, available here for the first time, Soaries excoriates both Congress and the White House, referring to their dedication to reforming American election issues as "a charade" and "a travesty," and says the system now in place is "ripe for stealing elections and for fraud."

Having resigned from the commission in April of 2005, Soaries goes on to explain that he believes he was "deceived" by both the White House and Congress, and that neither were ever "really serious about election reform."

The explosive comments are the latest evidence highlighting serious deficiencies in the federal body, created by HAVA for oversight of elections systems, including new electronic voting devices, and standards for the use and security of those systems.

In the unaired interview, conducted last August, Soaries says there are "no standards" for voting systems and that Congress and the White House "made things worse through the passage of the Help America Vote Act."

Due to underfunding and lack of attention to the EAC and the Election Reform it was supposed to oversee, Soaries says we now have an "inability to trust the technology that we use" to count votes in our American democracy, even as "we’re spending a billion dollars a week in Iraq."

"We know more today about how to build a machine to take pictures of rocks on Mars than we know about how to build a machine to safeguard the American right to vote," complained Soaries in the interview.

On Electronic Voting System standards --- which HAVA mandated would be created by the EAC --- Soaries blasts both the White House and Congress for failing to supply them with the needed resources to complete the mandate, both for the federal government and the states that were relying on them to do so.

"[T]he states were forced to comply and they were asking us for guidance. We were ill-equipped to provide guidance. We didn’t begin our work until January 2004 and we spent the first three months of our work looking for office space. Here we were, the first federal commission, responsible for implementing federal law in the area of election administration and for the first three months we didn’t even have an address. And we physically had to walk around Washington DC looking for office space. This was a travesty. I was basically deceived by the leaders of the House, the Senate and the White House."

"Someone has got to be able to say, no one in America should use machine 'A' ever again," he says, in reference to the EAC's failure to decertify electronic voting systems even after they have been proven to be easily vulnerable to hackers and tampering.

"And if it’s not EAC," he continued, "it’s got to be someone. Someone in America has got to hold America accountable for protecting the most fundamental right in a democracy and that is the right to vote."

The straightforward comments from the EAC's first chair are in stark contrast to the actions of his Bush-appointed replacement, the current EAC head, Paul DeGregorio. The outgoing chair, DeGregorio, whose term has now ended, made news several days ago when it was discovered he had allowed the commission to withhold the release of a May 2006 report revealing claims of epidemic "Voter Fraud" --- as made by GOP operatives in order to push an agenda calling for restrictive, unconstitutional Photo ID laws at polling polaces --- are wholly unfounded.

Where Soaries was disappointed at the lack of interest by officials for true reform by the EAC during his tenure, his successor appears to have been using the post as an arm of the White House to continue its manipulation and perversion of the American electoral system.

UPDATE 7:27pm PT: The folks from KTLK in Los Angeles called to say they will have Soaries on the "Harrison on the Edge" show tonight to discuss this interview at 8:30pm PT. You can listen online here...

The transcript of Soaries comments, as taken from the unaired August 2006 interview are posted below…

Good news for voters and democracy in Missouri!

Bad news for Mark F. "Thor" Hearne II, the democracy-hating, snake-oil selling, high-level GOP/Team Bush operative and the insidiously evil man behind the entire phony disenfranchising Photo ID legislation movement across the entire country through his phony "non-partisan" front group, "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), whom we exposed long ago.

The most satisfying part of this, perhaps, is that "Thor" is from our hometown of St. Louis, Missouri, where's he's been pushing his powerful, behind-the-scenes buttons fighting in favor of this crap for years.

On calls and deadlines right now, so can't give much more info for the moment. Will try to update as needed later...Just out from AP...