You say potahta I say potato, you say redistricting, I say gerrymandering.

One is a .38 caliber and one is a .50 caliber.

It is like it is ok for Saudi Arabia to kill 3,000 Americans because they have oil.

Oh boy! Your headline got my HAIR ON FIRE!!!
I feel helpless and hopeless.

There is NO EVIDENCE when ethereal ballots are the "evidence"!
I am distraught that we STILL have electronic voting and electronic "counting".

I say we have to get the Occupy Movement to Occupy the Ballots and hold on-site paper-based parallel voting at each precinct.
Would that be doable?

OT BUT BIG BREAKING STORY

Shameless Pigs: Darlene Wink Must Have Squealed!

Madison's VOICES newspaper has closely watched and reported on the progress as a Milwaukee John Doe probe inches closer and closer to Wisconsin's Governor, Scott Walker. Click HERE for more.

I know you, your reader, and contributer Canning have done a good job reporting on this story, so hope this is OK.

And thanks for your help breaking big stories like Walker's crimes and the election fraud across America.

The system IS RIGGED!!!

Well, let's see if Dennis has voters, shall we? Why not ask the good people of Lucas County who they voted for. If you can find over 870 people who would be willing to swear they voted for Kucinich, then we have a problem...yes?

Were there any exit polls? Do they do that for local races? Primaries? Were there any pre-election polls? 94 -4?
That's waaaay better than Putin's #s in Russia...

OT, Madison Voices @3, but much appreciated.

Darlene Wink's plea deal and arrangement to cooperate with prosecutors was covered by our previous article. It is not entirely clear how much information Wink would have that could implicate Walker.

The most likely defendants who could hold the key to Walker's future jail cell are his former Deputy Chiefs of Staff, Tim Russell and Kelly Rindfleisch.

So far no deals have been announced for those two.

Rindfleisch waived a preliminary hearing. Her attorney, Frank Gimbal, filed motions to dismiss and for a change of venue to Columbia County where Rindfleisch lives. I doubt that she will prevail on either motion.

The most significant development is Walker's announcement that he has set up a legal defense fund. According to Michael Maistelman, the WI election attorney who represents Russell, under WI law, Walker could not set up that fund unless he is "being investigated, being charged or [has] been convicted."

Thus, in setting up a defense fund, Walker has tacitly admitted that he is a target of the John Doe investigation.

The $64,000 question is whether Walker will be formally charged before a recall election?

I would strongly recommend listening to Peter and Robert Scheer’s interview of Dennis Kucinich on KPFK, which underscores how much may have been stolen from us by the 100% unverifiable Diebold touch screen voting machines.

Dennis Kucinich: Well, nothing changes…My conscience doesn’t have an expiration date.

Sure it does.

One ride aboard Air Force One and his conscience evaporates completely, along with his promises.

ZapKitty said @ 9:

One ride aboard Air Force One and his conscience evaporates completely, along with his promises.

Well, meeow! They don't call ya ZapKitty for nothing!

PatG - (#2) writes: "I say we have to get the Occupy Movement to Occupy the Ballots and hold on-site paper-based parallel voting at each precinct.
Would that be doable? .."

Not sure, but I'm working on just that AROUND THE CLOCK: https://www.facebook.com/groups/123218561114298/

Zap - I love our little precious, progressive TREE ELF Dennis K, but he voted YEA for HR 347 as his last act of "conscience"...

I didn't want to see him go, and I think his 4% is AWFULLY fishy - I'm pretty mad at 'im right now.

Of course, Rachel Maddow will conveniently not report on the huge discrepancy in votes received by Kaptur vs. Kucinich because it's just not important.

Maddow continues to avoid focusing on issues relating to fraudulent, easy to tamper with e-voting systems and the private companies who sell and maintain them have executives/officers with demonstrated conservative farright wing backgrounds.

She just won't go there and she won't touch the subject of stolen elections or election fraud in the 2000 or 2004 presidential elections.

Thanks for all your hard work Brad.

great coverage. Where would we be without Bradblog?

... Jeannie Dean said...

"I didn't want to see him go, and I think his 4% is AWFULLY fishy - I'm pretty mad at 'im right now."

As far as the (fatally flawed) election process itself is concerned Kucinich's politics should be irrelevant but the hagiographical overtones got to be a bit much for me.

Yes, the focus should be on what exactly happened during the the voting.

The dems have been ignoring the blatant rigged elections which tells me they are in on it. I am sick to death of the sanctimonious few who vow that they'll stick to their guns no matter what & then roll over & play dead when ordered to. Our system is defunct. OUR MONEY IS BEING STOLEN FROM US, a pittance goes into the pockets of our selected representatives, and BILLIONS nay TRILLIONS get thrown around like the Monopoly $$ it truly is. No more rules, no more enforcement, it's all just a gigantic casino & we are the worthless chips they throw around like mad money. Like I keep sayin', folks-sit back & enjoy the ride...

#4 - Great idea!

Canning - there were reports (but I can't find link) that Wink met with prosecutors this week.

There is every reason to believe Wink has critical info and is squealin' like a pig which is why her charges were reduced from the felonies they actually were (and which others are charged with - the exact same types of acts) and they have agreed NOT to recommend jail time.

The timing of Wink's plea, meeting with DA, and then sentencing does suggest her information is damning and will play an important role in the process.

The documentation in another case working its way through court is showing this may actually be about state-wide electioneering and then it will snag the majority leaders too.

It could reach up to the national level as well, stay tuned...

Seeing scott fitzgerals of Fitzwalkerstan fame go down would be sweet!

Lora @5 and Shannon Williford @6 are right. When the margin in a race is in the 90% range in an unverifiable election, the law should require a telephone poll of all voters.

It should ask the following question:

Your vote is secret, and you are under no obligation to tell us how you voted. We are trying to determine if voting machine results in your county are correct. Do you understand?

If no: "Thank you. Good bye."
Otherwise: "Good. Please tell us if you voted for Dennis Kucinich, Marcy Kaptur, Graham Vesey, or if you'd rather not say.

Thank you.

If the poll turns up substantially more Kucinich voters than the machine total, you've got a big problem. Your next step would be to mail a legal affidavit to everyone who answered Kucinich.

(Of course, that poll can be conducted without a legal requirement, and can be conducted by absolutely any person or group that wanted to do so. The voting rolls are not secret.)

Lora @5, Shannon Williford @6 & Mitch @18, Former computer programmer Clint Curtis previously sought to apply the method you proposed back in 2006 in a race that pitted him against the ethically-challenged, incumbent Tom Feeney (R-FL), the same Tom Feeney who allegedly asked Curtis in 2000 if he could design a software system that could undetectably flip the vote.

Zogby International produced a late October 2006 poll indicating that the Feeney/Curtis race was a virtual dead heat; 45% for Feeney, 43% for Curtis, 2% other and 10% undecided. Zogby reported that both candidates did well inside their own parties but that Curtis led amongst independents by a margin of 11 percentage points.

But after the votes were cast, primarily on Diebold touch screen DREs and the ES&S “iVotronic” DRE systems, but also with some optical scanners manufactured by the same companies, Curtis found himself on the wrong end of a 16% electoral thrashing. Feeney was officially declared to have received 123,795 votes (57.9%) as compared to 89,863 (42.1%) for Curtis.

Between December 2006 and May 2007 Curtis and his team of volunteers collected what they contended were a sufficient number of voter affidavits that were indicative of a shift in the outcome, ranging from 12% to 24% in favor of Curtis. However, as Brad Friedman reported on May 8, 2007, the U.S. House Administration Committee voted unanimously to dismiss Curtis' challenge. In an email, one Congressional staffer explained: “Basically, everyone felt that affidavits aren't enough in a secret ballot election and they didn't have any other evidence.”

Sophia@15 So Spot On!!
Thanks, Brad For Your Tireless Efforts Reporting!

My point, Madison Voices, is that reports that Wink is cooperating with prosecutors is not new news.

Back on Feb. 13, I reported:

You and I can only speculate at this point precisely how much information Wink possesses that would aid in nailing down a case against Walker or whether prosecutors will negotiate a plea deal with either Rindfleisch or Russell so as to build an air-tight case before filing a formal criminal complaint against the governor.

What I found of interest is that Russell's attorney, Michael Maistelman, would suggest to the media that Walker's creation of a defense fund reflects that Walker is already a target of the investigation.

Russell, who hired Rindfleisch, appears to have been the one who was in charge of the secret email system. When the Wink story broke, Walker emailed Russell even though Russell was no longer his Deputy Chief of Staff. An email from Rindfleisch to Russell reveals that, within ten minutes of the Walker/Russell email, Rindfleisch shut down the secret email system.

Maistelman's willingness to publicly suggest that Walker is a target of the investigation may suggest that he is maneuvering to cut a deal with prosecutors that would reduce the very significant charges his client faces in exchange for information that would nail Walker.

Brad, are there any exit polls? I would think that is the first place to look.

Wow Brad, this looks pretty funky. Hard to believe that Kucinich's support was that low in Lucas County. Another strange Ohio election result.

What I am about to say probably won't be popular on this blog, but I think this needs to be said:

Dennis Kucinich was one of only two Democrats to vote AGAINST voter-marked paper ballots on the floor of the US House, in the form of Rush Holt's 2008 opt-in bill, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act HR 5036.

HR 5036 would have provided a voter-marked paper ballot based voting system in time for the 2008 election to any jurisdiction that was using paperless DREs and wanted to switch to paper. It would have also paid for at least basic audits INCLUDING 100% HAND-COUNTING of the 2008 election in any jurisdiction that chose to opt-in.

Unfortunately, as a suspension bill HR 5036 needed 278 votes to pass and it got only 239. Again, only two Democrats voted against it, Kucinich and a fellow from West Virginia (which interestingly is now more or less the national capital of Internet Voting.)

Was HR 5036 perfect? Hell, no. It left a lot of DREs in place, the audits weren't perfect, and yes it could have been stronger. But a win would have been at least a first step toward getting voter-marked paper ballots and audits taken seriously in Congress and in some of our most recalcitrant states.

Reportedly Kucinich voted Nay on the bill because he was for 100% hand counted paper ballots or nothing rather than incremental change to correct this problem.

Unfortunately we all ended up with nothing... the issue of getting paper ballots of ANY kind is pretty much dead in Congress for the foreseeable future. Cash-strapped states and counties are ignoring the DRE problem as well. Kucinich is now a very lame duck who will be out of Congress in less than a year. And at least 33% of US voters (including 85% of us in my home state of Pennsylvania) STILL have no voter-marked paper ballot and yet AGAIN we'll be forced to throw our votes down the empty well of an unverifiable DRE in November 2012.

Ernest,

Personally, I don't find a shift in the range of 10% from a late October poll particularly suspicious. There's a difference between saying something on the phone and actually voting.

94 to 4? That sounds suspicious; I rather doubt God herself could win an election 94-4. (The ludicrousness of the result is a good argument that no intentional fraud was involved.) Another interesting thing to check, if available, would be individual machine totals. At the very least, they should be released to the public.

Mitch @25, referring to the Curtis/Feeney 2006 electoral debacle wrote:

Personally, I don't find a shift in the range of 10% from a late October poll particularly suspicious.

It wasn't just the shift in polling vs. final numbers, Mitch. Perhaps, I should have included other details from Curtis' Congressional complaint.

In Volusia County “Curtis won among optical scan voters by 19,731 (50.84%) to 19,075 (49.16%). Among TSX [touch screen] voters, Feeney won by 3031 (58.66%) to 2136 (41.34%),” giving Feeney a narrow victory in the county. The undervote (meaning no vote for either candidate) was 1046 --- double the number of undervotes for a corresponding U.S. Senate race within the same county.

In Orange County, which was exclusively ES&S, the infamous iVotronic system produced an inexplicably “large percentage of undervotes…for the Congressional race in predominantly democratic precincts of a magnitude of an average twice as many as in other races…that conveniently mirrors the pattern in Volusia.”

Feeney secured the narrow Volusia County “victory” even though “the all voters disc revealed that more Democrats than Republicans voted in the county,” but there “were oddly more votes on election day than the voters listed on the disk.” The Feeney Volusia County “victory” required a 55% - 45% break in his favor amongst independents. (Recall that the Zogby pre-election poll had independents breaking 11% in favor of Curtis).

Curtis also alleged “there [was] a widely reported bug or programming ‘error’ in the Diebold internal time keeping such that it dropped time…[which] caused the machines to not capture votes” by erroneously registering that votes appeared to be cast after the polls closed.

All this occurred during the same election in which the iVotronic touch screens in the FL 13 Congressional race mysteriously dropped 18,000 votes in heavily Democratic districts, handing Christine Jenning's Republican opponent, Verne Buchanan, a 373 vote "victory."

The Jennings race would later be described as "the canary in the electronic coal mine."

Curtis, who was fully versed in how the vote could be electronically flipped, was denied access to the source codes under FL law, which could have permitted examination, reverse engineering and testing "to evaluate for potential malicious programming, flipping and other anomalies."

I suspect if Kucinich sought access to the source codes in Ohio, he too would be denied access as the e-voting vendors claim their source codes are proprietary and confidential --- even though their opaque systems are used to determine our supposedly public elections.

Oh, and Mitch, if you think the numbers in the Kucinich/Kaptur race are absurd, check out what happened to Vic Rawl, as covered by me in Still Clueless About Touch-Screens in S. Carolina.

Kucinich/Kaptur provides yet another, it's the machines transparency, stupid! moment.

Marybeth Kuznik @ 24

I'm not particularly interested in re-litigating all the various pros and cons of that particularly dangerous version of the Rush Holt bill, but suffice to say that Kucinich's principled stand (presuming he was against it, I don't recall, but will take your word for it), was likely due to the many intolerable shortcomings of that bill as it was written at the time. If he stood up against all the Dems, as he did when it came to war, the PATRIOT Act, etc., then all the more reason to be impressed with him.

While the Holt bill might have had a limited and short term upside in a very few places in the country (such as Pennsylvania, where Marybeth is a great Election Integrity advocate), any benefits would have been quickly buried by the downsides. For example, that version of the bill would have forever cemented and legally approved, at the federal level, the idea that election machinery was the proprietary property of private corporations. In short, it would have given federal approval to privatized elections over public ones. Yes, I realize our elections have largely already been privatized at the local level, but this would have assured that to be the case with a federal stamp of legal approval forever more, cutting we, the people out of the process of our own elections by assuring proprietary hardware and software could not be overseen by the citizenry.

Also, note Marybeth's use of the word "voter-marked" ballot. That was Holt's sneaky way of saying "electronically marked ballots", as opposed to hand-marked ballots, which is what it sounded like if you weren't paying very close attention --- as I suspect most Democrats were not.

That language allowed Holt to move forward on his preference of 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting technology across the entire country. That's not speculation, that is what he confirmed directly to me on the phone. He wanted every ballot in the country to be printed by a touch-screen voting computer which he deceptively described as "voter-marked paper ballots".

Finally, had that version of Holt's bill been approved, Lucas County would have been able to continue to use the very same 100% touch-screen voting machines that just reported a 94% to 4% win of Kaptur over Kucinich. It wouldn't have changed a thing.

If Kucinich was indeed against that particular version of the bill, he is to be commended as much as every D, R or anything else who favored that bill is to be condemned for having doing so.

Brad, In response to Josh on the closed DU thread, there is no protection against the following scenario. If the voting is programmed to print on the paper a screen shot it still provides no proof of how the actual vote was recorded on the machine. Counting the paper receipts would provide more assurance,but I have never heard of that being done. Also, we all know how the 2004 recount turned Out.

Voter turnout in Lucas County in 2010 was 147,029 (46.4%).

(317,046 registered voters. Source: http://www.development.o...earch/files/s0/Lucas.pdf)

Voter turnout in this election was 23,636 (7.4%).

Isn't a 7.4% turnout rather low, even for a U.S. House primary race?

It was not new when you posted it either - but my point is that IT IS NEW NEWS that she is reported to have seen the DA this week, no longer states that walker knew nothing (and neither does his attorney), and now walker is setting up legal mechanism to move monies from his whirlwind national fundraising tour to pay for his lawyers.

Walkergate appears to be about the entire state republican party, not just raisin' money for him. It may reach beyond the boarders too - but we will have to wait and see...

There is information in the pending complaints that indicate that it was not just walker that benefited from illegal campaigning by Milwaukee County employees working directly under Walker.

Dennis Kucinich's campaign or any other interested Democrat for less than $10,000 could check this out like someone noted above. Get the list of registered Democratic voters in Toledo, send them a postcard asking them to return the postcard if they voted for Dennis, and if over 870 respond, maybe in the thousands, then we'll know that the Diebold machines were rigged.

George @ 29:

Thanks for coming over here to leave your thoughts. It's quite maddening that DU has closed that thread after that guy has been able to defame me with absurd and defamatory comments. Made most maddening because I can't reply to him now that the thread is locked! He is either clueless, or worse, when it comes to the 100% unverifiability of these systems. As I courteously tried to explain to him how he was wrong, and he's still clinging to his false beliefs, I'll have to assume that it's not cluelessness, it's "worse".

Really pathetic. I'll hope whoever the mod is who locked the thread ("HopeHoops") comes to his senses and reopens the thread. How can it be "off topic" in the General Discussion forum??

Brad, It's amazing how many people on the left who still don't understand the problems with these voting machines. Keep up the good work, you're one of the few hopes we have in the media. Thanks for all you do.

Ernie,

With this race in Lucas County we're not talking percentages. If we could get actual affidavits of Kucinich voters from that county that numbered greater than 870, that would be solid evidence, would it not??? That doesn't sound like such a huge number to get. Perhaps Kucinich could make an email appeal to his voters there to come forward, stand up and be counted.

Was kinda bummed to hear of kucinich's defeat, even though he has sold out as of late, he is still the best that the reprehensible democratic party has to offer (yes i am a conservative, not a neocon, a REAL conservative) but I also think Kaptur is one of your finest also.

I live in a very conservative rural county in Kansas. I damn near won a county commissioner's Democratic primary against an incumbent opponent although I am flamingly and notoriously progressive. However, I regularly and publicly touch upon issues that are close to locals.

A year later, in 2004, Kerry lost in the ward next to mine, 49-1, I think. Nine Democrats voted on the new machines, after we'd dumped paper ballots, so I assumed eight voted for Bush.

I should have followed up with an investigation, though Kerry was a lost cause here in the Jesus state. Obama fared even worse, here on the border of the old Confederacy.

Y'know, if there is an honest politician out there anywhere...yeah, well. If there is such an organism, that politician would demand and work for a fair and accurate vote and vote count, win or lose. There can't be anything else more essential to a democracy. Right, Marcy?

WHO IS WATCHING KARL ROVE??

Mike Connell testified in Oct 2008 in front of an Ohio Grand Jury about HOW he and Karl Rove RIGGED the 2004 Ohio election results by diverting precinct votes through Mike Connell's 3rd party server in Tennessee (ALSO used by the Republican National Committe - read "1Million White House emails lost - and later recovered - violation of the Presidential Records Act). In pre-testimony negotiations, Mike Connell refused to testify about any CURRENT threats against him by Karl Rove. After his testimony, he reportedly asked for POLICE PROTECTION for himself and his family - but was REFUSED. NOW: Not only is Karl Rove NOT IN JAIL, but Mike Connell was killed that December in a plane crash on approach to the Nashville airport - an expert pilot, a high quality plane.

SO WHO IS WATCHING KARL ROVE?

https://docs.google.com/...FqbkhRcURFWTZpUnM2MVE6MQ Lucas County, Ohio Kucinich Tally
We believe Dennis Kucinich got more than 800 some votes. Can you help by answering the questions below please?

For those that don't know everybody loves Marcy Kaptur in Lucas County everybody. It is no surprise that Marcy took 94% of the 24,000 votes cast. Rep. Kaptur is the longest serving woman in congress & Lucas County was always in her district. Alot of voters that voted for Marcy love Kucinich to. Go see for yourself go to Lucas County & ask.

Every voter at every polling location in Lucas County was given the option of voting a paper ballot if they chose to not vote on the machines. No reason was needed to be given by the voter for the paper ballot request.

Lucas County is a very lopsided D county. The last election for Governor saw Kascish win in only one precinct in the city of Toledo, with only 53 suburban precincts in the county voting R. With nearly 400 precincts in Lucas County it is easy to see the heavy D lean.

Please also remember that Lucas County has consistently voted Kaptur for 30 years.