Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

You have probably noticed that as we get closer to the general election the amount of voting related news is growing. I expect that very soon the amount of news will force me to make a modification to the way 'Daily Voting News' is sent out. I could cut the news in half and send some in the late morning and the rest in the evening. Rather than send it out twice a day I will send out a condensed version to the email subscribers. That version will have what I consider to be the top 15 or so stories. The complete 'DVN' will be posted at the normal locations; VoteTrustUSA, The BradBlog, OpEdNews, and ScoopNZ. VotersUnite will also be posting the complete list of articles and we have removed the dust bunnies from our "Voting News" database and many of the articles and the complete DVN can be found there. You will be notified when the change needs to be made. Thank you for reading and taking part in democracy....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In the September Maryland primary the Diebold E-Poll Book failed miserably throughout the state. It seems that when more than 40 names were entered into the machines they tended to crash and require rebooting. When they did crash some voters who had not voted were listed as having voted. In order to fix this problem it is reported that Diebold wrote two software patches and one of their sub-contractors wrote another. These were all installed on Maryland's equipment and tested. There was also a problem with the touch screen part of the E-Poll Book. Touching the screen caused some machines to crash. Diebold reportedly solved this problem by providing the state with over 5,000 'mouses' to replace the touch screen. These machines are part of an Independent Test Authority (ITA) tested and NASED qualified voting system. Until I talked to Sandy Steinbach yesterday, NASED knew nothing about any changes made by Diebold. But, NASED no longer qualifies new modifications or any voting system submitted for testing after July 10. The EAC now does that work. They too knew nothing about those modifications and, in fact, tried to point to NASED as the authority. The questions: Who is minding the store? What happens for other states that are required to have federally certified voting systems and are going to use the E-Poll Book? Will Diebold fix every E-Poll Book that will be used in November or will they try to keep this fix a secret because it has never gotten any federal testing and certification?...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"A broad coalition of more than 50 election integrity groups and individuals sent letters today to all 50 governors, secretaries of state and directors of elections calling upon them to provide emergency paper ballots for the November midterm elections: "All voters must have the option to vote on an Emergency Paper Ballot if necessary, and all such ballots must be counted as regular, not provisional, ballots."" / "A report to the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) on voter fraud and voter intimidation was released yesterday by USA Today over four months after it had been presented to the commission. The report confirmed that there is little verifiable evidence to support anecdotal accounts of polling place fraud involving voters voting more than once, non-citizens or otherwise ineligible voters voting, or voters voting in the name of deceased voters."...

Yesterday the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP) issued a press release that is, as I explained to Brad Friedman, "un-freaking-believable". The DuPage County chapter of IBIP has been hard at work tracking cronyism and favoritism on the part of DuPage County, IL Election Commission Chairman J.P. "Rick" Carney in his dealings with Diebold Election Systems representatives from Fidlar Elections and Liberty LLC.

Kudos to IBIP for some great reporting!

The complete "un-freaking-believable" press release follows below...

Following up on our Wednesday coverage of the four- month-old report on "Voter Fraud," which the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) refused to release when they discovered the report points to just how little such fraud actually occurs. The facts don't lie, despite the loathesome high-level GOP/Team Bush operatives who call themselves the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights' (ACVR), and their ongoing disingenuous and well-funded efforts to establish that voter fraud is rampant, perpetrated almost exclusively by Democrats, and must be cured by disenfranchising and unconstitutional Photo ID requirement laws at the polls (although not for absentee or military balloting, of course).

We've now had a chance to review the unreleased report [PDF] in full. It's just twelve pages. But it slams the notion that there is any massive problem in America with "Voter Fraud", despite ACVR's continuing campaign to suggest the problem is an epidemic --- versus all of the many other forms of disenfranchisement that really do occur and really do threaten our democracy.

"There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud," the report explains, "or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, noncitizens voting and felon voters."

The report singles out ACVR as the only named proponent of the discredited notion that voter fraud is plaguing the country --- ACVR is ignominously named as dissenting three times in the report! --- so it is little wonder they didn't want this report to see the light of day.

ACVR's main perpetrator and Democracy-Hater-in-Chief, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne II, was actually a part of the "working group" assembled for this report. Notably, Hearne failed yet again to mention that he was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. in his bio at the end of the report.

Similarly, Hearne withheld that information in his testimony on behalf of ACVR during now-disgraced Rep. Bob Ney's U.S. House Adminstration Committee hearing in March of 2005. ACVR was the only "Voting Rights" group invited to discuss the travesties of Election 2004. He testified only that he was a "longtime advocate of voter rights" and must have just forgotten to mention his Bush/Cheney connections...or that the ACVR had been formed just three business days prior to the hearing!

The EAC's buried report points to problems not with voter fraud, but instead with minority voter intimidation, improper purging of registration rolls, dirty tricks, and all sorts of things that the loathesome ACVR con-men have spent enormous amounts of money trying to smoke-screen, via propaganda reports hoping to fool America into believing that double-voting, dead people voting, and non-citizens voting is the real threat to democracy.

It's not. But anti-American monsters like Thor Hearne definitely are.

The biggest problem, the EAC's unpublished report finds, is absentee ballot fraud; a problem that is decidedly not addressed in any way by the despicable Photo ID laws that Hearne and friends have been promoting in statehouses around the country. He and his evil compatriots were even able to convene a phony "blue-ribbon" panel last year on Election Reform, chaired by Bush Family crony James A. Baker, in order to endorse the call for a national Photo ID requirement at the polls. (Who better to lead an Election Reform panel than the man who went to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to keep voters from having their votes counted in Florida in 2000?!)

Apparently snake-oil salesman Hearne was unable to fool the rest of the folks working on the EAC report into believing he wasn't utterly full of shit (as previously reported in exacting detail by The BRAD BLOG.)

Consider this embarrassing ACVR moment from the EAC's buried report...

Kudos, btw, to Candorville cartoonist Darrin Bell, who has had his sharp eye on this issue for a while. His strip is widely syndicated (it's in our copy of LA Times for one), so his coverage of "Liebold" should be receiving quite a few eyeballs today.

He contacted us this morning to alert us to today's toon, along with the promise that "there will be more to this storyline as the election approaches."

He asks that we also point folks to the main Candorville website. We're happy to oblige!

Late last year we wrote about the email exchanges between GOP uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and associates describing their strategies for using Christian "wackos" at the polls. They were playing them for chumps.

Now, a former Bush Administration official from the White House's "Faith-Based Initiatives" office reveals further how Bush and the Republicans in power did little more than play their Christian Evangelical supporters as suckers who they could trick into turning out to the polls.

In the book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, author and former Bush official David Kuo, a real Christian and conservative, explains how Karl Rove referred to their so-called Christian "Values Voters" as "the nuts," "out of control," and "just plain goofy."

Tucker Carlson spoke about the "pure contempt" that the Republicans actually have for the Christian base recently on The Chris Matthews Show (short video here). MSNBC ran a longer segment detailing the explosive revelations found during their exclusive look at the new book (video at RAW STORY).

We realize this item came out a day or two ago, but we think it's worth pointing more attention towards.

So will you dyed-in-the-wool far right Christian voters fall for the same trick again this November by supporting candidates who loathe you and are using you for everything you're worth (money and a vote)? We'll see...

UPDATE 6:08pm PT: The video from Part II of MSNBC's report is now here, courtesy of Crooks & Liars...

Poor, poor, corrupt, ethically-challenged, morally bankrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff). Can't even run a smear campaign without getting into trouble, screwing it up and seeing it backfire.

As we reported several weeks ago, the feckless Florida Republican launched a "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear website and blogsite, to attack his whistleblower-turned-congressional opponent with doctored photos and doctored facts.

The Tom Feeney for Congress Campaign's shameful tactics continue to fizzle, apparently, as they have been forced to remove their smear blogsite, which had been set up on blogger.com to attack Curtis. The removal of the site, and the link to it from the main smear-site, comes not a moment too soon: we had planned to run an item on Feeney's latest demonstrable lie, which we had noticed was recently posted on the smear blog. The blog, which had been at CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com is now redirected to an innocuous search page, with no trace left behind.

In a blog item Feeney posted on the site --- before he "disappeared" it --- he charged that an article published in Hustler about the mysterious 2003 death of Raymond Lemme "was based on the delusions of Clint Curtis's murder conspiracy theory," or some such nonsense.

As it was "we," Brad Friedman, who actually wrote the article in question [PDF], we can tell you that it was based on nothing of the sort. It was based on the mysterious and still unexplained circumstances surrounding Lemme's death, which the Valdosta, GA police had initially ruled a suicide, but then later reopened the investigation after The BRAD BLOG reported on an affidavit filed by Curtis. Curtis alleged that his former employer YEI had harbored Chinese illegal aliens spying for China (later confirmed), overbilled on state contracts (later confirmed), and that Feeney, who also worked for the firm as lobbyist and attorney --- while simultaneously serving as Speaker of the Florida House --- had requested Curtis to create a software vote-rigging prototype (not yet confirmed, but similarly not disproven.)

Lemme was an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looking into the charges Curtis originally filed with the state of Florida in early 2001. In his sworn affidavit, Curtis says that Lemme told him in June of 2003 that his final report was almost complete, and that he'd found the corruption "went all the way to the top." Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in Valdosta, Georgia.

Our story on Lemme's death detailed the many contradictions between the official police report and the unearthed photographs of the death scene --- photographs which the police report originally stated were taken at the scene but unavailable, due to a "failure in the camera's flash memory cards."

And now, Feeney has scrubbed the smear blogsite altogether, in what appears to be the latest misstep in the Congressman's bizarre and shameful campaign.

Previous follies in Feeney's smear campaign include (but are not limited to):

All of this from a man who issued a news release in the early morning hours after Curtis's landslide victory in the Florida primary. Quoth Feeney: "Serious times demand serious leaders and Curtis is not even in the same solar system as the rest of us."

Really? Which solar system are you in, Mr. Feeney? We're still waiting for your "serious" leadership, or at least a serious campaign on both the issues and allegations.

For his part, Curtis recently issued a press release calling on Feeney to explain what he knew of Florida colleague Mark Foley's sexual predator issues and when he knew about them. As a GOP Deputy Whip in the U.S. House, Feeney is a part of the Leadership who had been reportedly made aware of Foley's predilections long before the information was publicly revealed.

So far, Feeney has refused to comment on the record, to our knowledge, concerning the Foley matter.

He has also refused to take a polygraph test concerning Curtis's allegations and has denied, but not answered to, them. Curtis, who gave an account of the remarkable story in video-taped sworn testimony to a Congressional panel in late 2004, successfully passed such a polygraph on his own in early 2005.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ottawa Co. Michigan got $40,000 worth of new ballots from the printer, after copies had been proof-read by county staff. Unfortunately the ballots have 'public' in six places on the ballots and one of those 'public's is missing the 'l'. Ballots will be reprinted. / Shelby Co Tennessee will be using new Diebold machines for the first time next month, joining a too-long list of counties that will be using new voting machines for the first time in Nov. / ES&S has failed, up to now, to get programming to Dona Ana Co. New Mexico, for their Automark machines. No early voting for voters with disabilities even though the rest of the voters can vote early voting. / Sequoia has misprinted absentee ballots sent to 44,000 voters in Denver. And in a second error they printed postage on the return envelope that is 24 cents less than the actual postage. Sequoia will have to pay all expenses for their errors. / A West Virginia Election Commissioner has promised to have all ballots counted by two hours after poll closing; provided there are not technical problems. ...

An urgent letter has been sent today to the Governors, Secretaries of State and State Election Directors of all 50 states urging them to immediately create and implement plans and procedures for allowing the use of Emergency Paper Ballots at every local jurisdiction during this November's general election.

The missive, signed by a broad coalition of more than 50 Election Integrity Advocate groups, congressional members, elections officials, computer scientists, attorneys and journalists comes on the heels of Federal legislation recently introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate. Those bills, which were not brought up for a vote before Congress adjourned for the Election Recess, called for funding to states who implement plans to provide Emergency Paper Ballots. The legislation was introduced in the wake of recent primary elections around the country where voters were unable to cast a vote due to failure, malfunction, or other inability of electronic voting systems.

The two-page letter [PDF] (also posted in full at the end of this article) was signed by individuals such as: Sen. Barbara Boxer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sen. John Kerry, Rep. Rush Holt, Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, OH elections attorney Cliff Arnebeck and University of Iowa computer scientist Doug Jones. Organizations signed on include: Common Cause, VerifiedVoting.org, VotersUnite.org, BlackBoxVoting.org, VoterAction.org, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, MoveOn.org, TrueMajorityAction.org and many other national, state and local Election Integrity advocate groups.

"No legally registered voter should ever be told to 'come back later,' or be forced to use a provisional ballot simply because a voting system is unavailable to them at the time they are able to vote," the letter reads. "It is imperative that an ample supply of Emergency Paper Ballots be made available to account for any unforeseen circumstance."

The letter continues, "All voters must have the option to vote on an Emergency Paper Ballot if necessary and all such ballots must be counted as regular --- not provisional --- ballots."

As well, it's pointed out that some states already have certain procedures required by law to ensure that registered voters are allowed to vote, in the event that primary balloting procedures break down. Officials are urged to check those requirements and otherwise "draft, establish and publicize your own state's common-sense plans for Emergency Paper Ballots at every polling place this Nov. 7th, so that every election official, poll worker, and voter may be crystal clear on the procedures for utilizing such measures."

The movement calling on states to create Emergency Paper Ballot plans began just three weeks ago when The BRAD BLOG first called on the U.S. Congress to introduce and pass legislation in order to ensure that legally registered voters would not be turned away from the polls without being allowed to vote, as has been the case for thousands of voters in a number of states this year due to voting machines that failed to start up, were misprogrammed, failed during voting or, in some cases, hadn't been brought to polling places at all until several hours after polls were to have opened.

Many voters were either told to "come back later" or given Provisional Ballots, which are not counted as normal ballots on Election Night and frequently not counted at all.

Legislation for Emergency Ballots was introduced the following week in the U.S. Senate by Senators Boxer, Christopher Dodd, Russ Feingold and Kerry. A matching House version was filed the next day by Rep. Rush Holt and co-sponsored by 28 other House members. As well, Feingold and Kerry introduced a "Sense of the Senate" resolution calling for same, but that effort was also never brought up for a vote on the floor before the recess.

The letter, drafted by this journalist along with a number of other signatories, was sent to all recipients via return-receipt requested certified mailing this morning by VelvetRevolution.us. [DISCLOSURE: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR.]

With the failure of Congress to pass such crucial legislation prior to this November's important general election, the effort now moves to the State and Local level. Organizations and individuals are called on to contact their State and Local Elections officals to assure that plans are in place to accommodate any and all unforeseen circumstances.

Alluding to Americans who have fought for and defended the right to vote in the past, and indeed to this day around the globe, the letter concludes: "Our vote is our precious franchise. We believe it is worth defending, and worth the effort to guarantee that that right remains assured and inviolate."

Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), one of the initial signatories, has created an online petition for citizens to urge their Secretaries of State and Governors to ensure such plans and procedures are created and implemented immediately. Take action by clicking here...

The open letter, sent to all State Governors, Secretaries of State and State Election Directors calling for Emergency Paper Ballot plans and procedures and signed by 55 organizations and individuals, can be downloaded here [PDF]. It also follows below in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

States and counties are being forced to purchase used, refurbished voting machines. In this segment Kitty talks to an election official and a voter about this practice. As Kitty points out, "the chain of custody for these machines is the real issue. Experts say the machines can be tampered with, and malicious codes inserted, as these machines pass from one jurisdiction to another."

-- Streaming Flash version...

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

A rightwing extremist "news" outlet, Newsmax.com, was apparently also unable to help labelling disgraced Republican sexual predator Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat in a report released on their website this morning.

Our buddy Bob Kincaid of Head-On Radio alerted us to this report today from NewsMax's "chief Washington correspondent," Ronald Kessler...

Kincaid asks us via email: "At what point do we stop saying that this is accidental?"

The original appearance of such an "accident" occurred, as we reported it last week, when Fox "News" labelled the Republican Foley as a Democrat in a chyron over a video cutaway. Three of them, in fact. Across two different O'Reilly Factor segments. After our report brought attention to the issue, Fox blanked out that part of the screen during their two subsequent of the program later that night.

The next day, Associated Press did the same thing, but at least had the decency to both correct the problem by changing the "D" to "R" and noting the original "error" at the bottom of the report in a journalistically appropriate way when they did so.

Like phony news organization Fox, who told Editor & Publisher a few days later that they felt no "correction per se" was necessary, phony news organization Newsmax apparently doesn't believe they need to tell anybody of the "error." They changed the "D" in their story to "R" later in the day --- after who knows how many had read the article --- but didn't bother to note the change in the updated article.

So much for Republican journalistic ethics. So much for Republicans taking personal responsibility. For anything.

UPDATE 3:33pm PT: Editor & Publisher picks up this story...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Ever in control of the situation, Diebold is late in delivering absentee ballots to counties in Maryland. Many of the voters who have recently requested absentee ballots, heeding the advice of the governor and some elections officials, may not have a ballot to vote on next month. This will teach the voters not to mess with Diebold. / The Pennsylvania Dept. of State has determined that absentee ballots must be counted by hand and not by the counties voting machines. / The head of the county government in Montgomery Co. Maryland is asking voters to vote absentee. / The DoJ has now announced that they will be filing a lawsuit in Mississippi for violations of the VRA. In this case, the suit is being brought against blacks suppressing the right to vote of whites. / The EAC seems not to have liked the results of a study on voter fraud that they commissioned. Amid some apparent dissent within the agency they chose to not issue the report rather than have a report that said that there is NO evidence of wide-spread voter fraud as many would have us believe. / But on the other hand; officials in Missouri have found that ACORN may have turned in over 1500 fraudulent voter registrations. ...

The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is now doing the bidding of the RNC, according to an article today from USA TODAY.

It seems that the EAC commissioned, received, and then buried a report concerning the issue of Voter Fraud (as opposed to Election Fraud and other legitimate disenfranchisement issues) when they didn't like the results they received. The report, which the commission received four months ago but failed to release, found "little evidence" of the "problem" now being pushed nationwide by GOP operatives as evidence that disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws should be passed in states across the country.

Such laws have been passed, and found unconstitutional from Georgia to Arizona to Missouri, yet the proponents of this scam --- who have shown themselves willing to stoop to any level to keep Democratic-leaning voters, who are far more likely to lack drivers' licenses, from voting --- have been keeping up their ongoing and expensive propaganda campaign.

Members of the commission were reportedly split on whether to release the report publicly. That internal battle four months ago may have led to at least one resignation from the commission, The BRAD BLOG has learned. Now chaired by outgoing Bush-appointee Paul DeGregorio since the original chair Rev. DeForest Soaries resigned in frustration, citing lack of support for true electoral reform from both the White House and Congress, the EAC has been much criticized for their failure to oversee implementation of and standards for new Electronic Voting Systems across the country.

The item today from USA TODAY suggests that the commission may now have become entirely politicized and polarized...

A blog item, also posted today by USA Today, includes a link to the now unearthed report [PDF] which the EAC had sought to bury.

The report goes on to quote from GOP operative Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, who is still pushing his deceitful line about the non-existent "epidemic" of voter fraud in the country. Unfortunately, it is Hearne himself who appears to be the fraud, as The BRAD BLOG revealed in a series of reports beginning in March of 2005.

The RNC and the White House, via Hearne, their main operative on the Photo ID canard, have spread phony propaganda suggesting an epidemic of voter fraud in America ever since the 2004 election, when hundreds of thousands of voters were disenfranchised at the hands of GOP operatives.

Hearne and his motley crew created the phony, self-described "non-partisan" GOP front group, calling themselves "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), as we first revealed on March 22nd, 2005, shortly after they were the only "Voting Rights" group called to testify before congressional hearings held by the now-disgraced Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) on what went wrong in Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election.

Hearne testified before Ney's House Administration Committee on behalf of ACVR just three days after the group was created. He testified only that he was "a long time voting rights advocate," and didn't bother to mention that he had been the General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 or that ACVR's co-founder was Jim Dyke, the RNC Communications Director.

Dyke now works out of Dick Cheney's office in the White House. After exposure of the sham organization by this reporter, the group eventually added "Democrat" Brian Lunde as Executive Director. Lunde is a close advisor to Karl Rove and worked hard for Bush in 2004 and to retain a Republican Majority.

The group has been pushing phony stories about "Voter Fraud" to encourage disenfranchising Photo ID laws in states around the country ever since. The ACVR was even behind the creation of the Baker/Carter Commission, which also called for restrictive Photo ID laws.

From USA TODAY again...

In the meantime, the sham continues this Friday when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a hearing to discuss some of these matters. But the speakers list, The BRAD BLOG has learned, is made up most of the usual Photo ID Suspects.

The list includes the same old crew: Hearne, Prof. Robert Pastor (Executive Director of the cooked Baker/Carter Commission, who went ballistic in a BRAD BLOG interview last year) and the Wallstreet Journal's ultra-con John Fund, who wrote a book full of this propoganda some years ago that served to launch the current insidious movement.

The only invited speaker representating anything close to an actual legitimate voting rights activist is Donna Brazile of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute. We have warned her that it would seem she is being set up by appearing with this barrel of bad apples.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

The complete press release for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hearing this Friday is posted in full below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

Last night Lou Dobbs doubled the reporting on his semi-regular "Democracy At Risk" segment. Kitty Pilgrim reported on the recent breakdown of the system in Volusia County where but for the local newspaper and stalwart activists the county would have been able to bury discrepancies in their recording of votes in their primary election. Also Bill Schneider reported on how important the November general election is and that there are teams of lawyers ready to step in and take action.

-- Streaming Flash version...

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