As happened on the day of the New Hampshire primary on January 8th, disinformation on the net about problems at the polling place were rampant. But wrong. The disinfo, as The BRAD BLOG was able to debunk that day, seems to have originally emanated from the DRUDGE REPORT.

It looks like Mr. Drudge is busy getting the story wrong again today, reporting that "The board of elections failed to deliver voting equipment to polling places ALL OVER LOS ANGELES"...

After running the above story for a number of hours at his site --- and sending corporate mainstream media folks and Internet blogsites alike into a tizzy, as well as helping to ring our phones off the hook --- DRUDGE has finally updated the item with the real story, and it's far less scary...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

There is a lot of voting news today so this will be the morning edition of today’s news. There have been voting machine problems reported around the country. All of the reported problems, so far, have been on DRE machines. None of the reported problems would have been solved by the inclusion of a vvpat printer or an audit. In fact, of the reports we have seen so far, the inclusion of vvpat printers on DREs has actually caused problems with paper jams.

Headlines for those stories, and the other notable voting news items so far today, all follow below...

Blogged on the fly by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

The Associated Press is reporting that the two Sequoia AVC Advantage touch-screen voting machines at the Hoboken Fire Department Engine Company No. 2 on Washington Street would not work for about 45 minutes as the polls opened this morning. This polling place just happens to be the location where New Jersey Governor John Corzine votes, or was at least scheduled to at 6:15am. He was unable to cast his vote until 7:00am according to the reports.

AP notes that several voters were turned away this morning until they were able to get one of the machines working. Fox "News" reported earlier that there were no provisional ballots at the poll site, so voters had no choice but to wait for the machines to be fixed or to choose not to vote at all.

Update by Brad Friedman flying in...

Tom Herman of Vocalo.org (a project of Chicago's National Public Radio) had some good questions about how votes are counted in Illinois, and elsewhere, over the weekend. I tried to give him some good answers. I believe it was a very good, sober discussion on these questions, and one that might come in handy tomorrow and beyond.

Appx. 14 mins, download MP3 or listen online right here...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Tomorrow will be a busy day for “Daily Voting News.” Depending on the number of reports of failures of voting machines around the country we may send out two issues of the news tomorrow. One will be around Noon Pacific and the second at our regular 4PM Pacific time. Let’s hope that this will not be necessary and that there are no reports of poll sites that didn’t open on time, long lines due to machine failures, voters turned away from the polls without voting due, “vote flipping”, or any other malfunctions or “glitches”.

Two days ago, in this space, I talked about Liberty voting machines and how they had been banned even in their home country, The Netherlands. Late this afternoon a judge in New York found that the state must allow these same machines to be sold in the state. Maybe the judge needs to take a trip and talk to officials in The Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland?

As usual, links to all of today's notable voting news stories, follow below...

Former CIA analyst and international security and counter-terrorism expert Philip Giraldi has filed some of the American media's best reports (even though we realize that's not necessarily saying much) on the Sibel Edmonds case.

If you missed it a week or two ago, Giraldi filed a detailed report on the latest of Edmonds' allegations on the sale of U.S. nuclear secrets, on the foreign black market, to friend and foe alike, as aided and abetted by very high-ranking U.S. officials. His article, published at American Conservative Magazine and titled "Found in Translation," is a must read for both folks new to the issue and those who may have missed a beat or two along the way. The case also, if you haven't noticed, ties in to the Valerie Plame Wilson/Brewster Jennings CIA Leak Case, and includes allegations that her cover company was outed to foreign agents by the #3 in the State Department, Marc Grossman, years before Robert Novak wrote his infamous column blowing the cover of the previously covert Plame Wilson.

Giraldi has now posted a slightly more general read this morning at Huffington Post, in an article titled "Sibel Edmonds Must Be Heard." The piece offers both an easily readable summary of the case so far and another scathing (and well-deserved) condemnation of the American corporate mainstream media for all but ignoring the story.

He even notes, correctly, the failure of "so-called gadflies like Olbermann and Moyers" to cover this story, as we detailed ourselves several moons ago...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

The courageous anonymous diarists at Daily Kos, the world's largest so-called "progressive" blog site, continue their pre-emptive suicide.

Today's dangerous mislead comes courtesy of anonymous poster "smintheus", who warns readers, in advance of Super Tuesday, that no matter what happens, there is nothing to worry your pretty little head about...

(Toon by Paul Jamiol. Hat-tip to TheZoo's "nwmuse" who offers, along with the above, a bunch of good details on the Sibel Edmonds case. Our own extensive Edmonds coverage can be read by you, and ignored by the MSM, right here.)

Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) continues misleading America about his two different election reforms bills. On Saturday night's CBS Evening News (video here), he says, in regard to the upcoming Super Tuesday Election: "There will be states around the country where the election results will be in question, and there will be no way to resolve the question."

What he fails to mention is that, should either of his own two federal Election Reform bills be passed into law as currently written, there will still be states around the country where the election results will be in question, and there will still be no way to resolve the question, because he still refuses to include a ban on touch-screen voting machines in either of his two bills.

Incredibly, even his newly introduced "Emergency" bill (which we wrote about back here) would give money for paper ballots only to jurisdictions that don't already use unverifiable touch-screen (DRE) voting systems with so-called "paper trails"...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro wants to change the state’s voting machines to a paper based system using optical-scan machines. Meanwhile Iowa’s Governor and ex-Secretary of State Chet Culver wants to just add a vvpat printer to the state’s DREs. Mauro has support from the state’s active election integrity community and members of the state legislature from both parties and county election officials from both parties. Culver wants the counties to sink or swim on their own while the state still has over $3M of HAVA money that they can use to partially pay for the change-over. Unfortunately, Culver is in a position to veto any plan that supports Mauro and the voters in Iowa....

guest blogged by skippy the bush kangaroo...

hi, everyone, skippy the bush kangaroo here, and jon swift and i would like to thank the bradblog for allowing us to use this guest post to tell everyone about our blogroll amnesty day celebration this weekend.

in a nutshell, we believe blogroll amnesty should be an occasion to bring our readers' attention to other blogs thru generous linkage; diverse and new blogs which our readers may not be aware of, but would find interesting.

individual blogs like simply left behind, or blue gal or man eegee. group blogs like the moderate voice or correntewire or first draft. media blogs like make them accountable, or tireless blogs that always practice generous linkage, like the side show.

we know that the bradblog is one of the few sites that concentrates on investigating and reporting hard news, specifically about election integrity. we're especially honored, therefore, to be guest blogging here today...

Before I became a real newsman, by the name of Brad Friedman, I played a fake newsman by the name of "Brad Friedman." The results were startlingly similar.

Before we get to this week's Super Duper Tsunami Bloody Tuesday, I thought it might be nice to have a smile before the storm and look back at Super Tuesday 2000. Back when things were still funny.

That year, on March 11th, I headed out to my polling place, with a video camera, as "Brad Friedman," one of the characters I played for a bunch of years on stage in a live comedy show that I co-produced here in Los Angeles called CRIME SCENE. (You can poke around and find some fun stuff to use against me in the old archives here.)

As you'll see in the following (hopefully) amusing video report, some of the candidate names were similar that year. And, as you'll see, then, as now, the line between fake reporting and real reporting was perilously thin. Enjoy...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Liberty Election Systems (NEDAP) has already been to court in New York and should have a decision early next week as to their argument to be put on the short list of voting systems that can be purchased by the state’s counties. The firm's DRE machine has already been banned in its corporate home in The Netherlands and may soon be banned in parts of Germany. Yesterday Premier Election Systems (Diebold) went to court and obtained a show-cause order directing members of the state Board of Elections to appear for a hearing in state Supreme Court, on Tuesday, to learn why the Premier version of AutoMark was not on the same short list of approved voting systems.

The following message is for the few election officials who are in counties in Colorado and California and a couple other states and who will not be able to use their DRE voting machines. You know who you are. We’ve mentioned this before but the statements are still flowing so it is worth mentioning again: Stop. Whining. Stop whining about not being able to use your DRE voting machines while being required to allow your voters to vote on paper ballots. Yes, you may have to spend a little more time counting your ballots. However, counties all over the country vote on paper ballots and have a majority of those ballots counted at some point on election night. Of course, you’ve now told the media that you won’t be done counting for a week or two so you now have to do all you can to drag out the process so you can be right and you can then thumb your nose at your Secretary of State. Suck it up and do your job and stop acting like spoiled brats....

Brandon Friedman (no relation) writes:

Here's what happened...

Despite the tease at the end of those uncomfortable three minutes, that Williams would be back for more after the break, he was not there when the show returned from commercial.

More details on the above three minutes on Fox and Friends, and the fate of "former Marine and Naval officer," Montel Williams, here...