Believe me, I ain't going anywhere if I can help it, especially with everything that's going on right now. But I could use your help. I've had to turn down several paying gigs recently, because I simply don't have the time to do them and still continue covering the meltdown we're now witnessing in our democracy.

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So thank you, this time around, for whatever it is you can do to help.

Just weeks before their May 16th Primary Election, the Pennsylvania Sec. of State, Pedro Cortez issued a Security Alert late Tuesday concerning a "potential security vulnerability" in Diebold electronic voting machines which could " allow ''unauthorized software to be loaded on to the system." The warning was revealed yesterday at a meeting in Schuylkill County.

Details about the warning are still sketchy this morning, and we're trying to learn more, but The Morning Call is reporting today that the "glitch" was "found" by Diebold and counties are now being instructed to lock down systems and seal the memory cards into them.

A "fix" is said to be on its way from Diebold, though that begs the question of whether the last-minute software patch will be certified by federal and/or state authorities before it's installed on machines that have already proven to be vulnerable to hackers and other failures.

(As regular BRAD BLOG readers know, even if the software is inspected by federal authorities before being installed in machines, there is no guarantee that those authorities will find the bugs and illegal code that Diebold is quickly becoming famous for. The federal so-called "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA) is paid for by the voting machine company's themselves and has overlooked gaping flaws in software submitted by the vendors for years).

Says the Morning Call today about the security warning...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appeared on CNN's American Morning to announce her new book, "The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God and World Affairs." The new book critiques U.S. foreign policy and imperialist notions of manifest destiny. She is particularly critical of the way that George W. Bush has invoked God in the name of advancing narrow political and foreign policy goals.

In her new book, Madam Secretary Albright writes that the invasion of Iraq may be "the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history." CNN's Miles O'Brien asked Albright to explain her statement (transcript)...

M. O'BRIEN: First of all, one of the important themes of this book is your feeling about how the Iraq situation has played out. And you say this: "The invasion of Iraq and its aftermath may eventually rank among the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history." You don't even couch the statement. It's that bad.

ALBRIGHT: I am very troubled by it, because there are so many immediate consequences and then the unintended consequences. First of all, I never believed that there was a connection between Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. But clearly now Iraq has become a major recruiting ground for everybody who hates us. Then there is the real question about what this has done to America's authority --- our moral authority as a result of what happened in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and it has damaged us in terms of what we can do in other parts of the world.

Then I think the biggest unintended consequence is that all of a sudden, Iran is the one that has gained incredible influence in the region. And finally, it has put real question about American power. How do we use it? What are the messages that we're sending with it? So I think Iraq is a mess. That's a diplomatic term of art. And I am very worried about the intended and unintended consequences.

Madeleine Albright explains the damage caused by aligning the "Global War on Terror" or any policy with the idea that God is on America's "side". If you oppose Bush, the War in Iraq, or the way that American power is being used then you are "picking a fight with God.", Albright says. The unbridled use of religion in foreign policy narrows our supporters throughout the world and leads to continued conflict.

As you know, those "glitches" in our elections are never Diebold's fault, or that of any of the Electronic Voting Machine Vendors who supply the equipment that doesn't actually work. It's always an untrained pollworker, or a voter who didn't read the instructions, or too darn much humidity.

So it wasn't Diebold's fault when Diebold's machines failed to work or to count absentee ballots by the thousands on Tuesday in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's Primary Election.

Look! Here's proof!

As of 5pm Wednesday, Cuyahoga County was still hand-counting the 17,000 absentee ballots which the Diebold machines, through absolutely no fault of Diebold's, were unable to count as Diebold had promised.

No word yet on whose fault it wasn't that Diebold's paper-trail printers kept jamming all day, or on the 70 Diebold memory cards (otherwise known as thousands and thousands of ballots) which went missing. But we know that wasn't Diebold's fault either. Though perhaps the part about them being so incredibly easy for anybody to change the data on those cards in about 30 seconds while they're "missing" could be Diebold's fault.

Nah. It's probably just the humidity.

Our Electoral System Meltdown continues as more and more reports come in on epidemic Electronic Voting Machine failures around the country. It's neck and neck right now as Diebold and ES&S battle it out for the prize of Worst Company, Worst Service, Worst Technology and Best Excuse Maker. But we've got a long way to go in this Election Year, so it's still anyone's contest. (Anyone's but the voters, that is.)

A "glitch" --- that's the magical word that was used no less than three times in WOOD-TV's coverage --- in the Diebold optical-scan system used for the first time in Barry County, Michigan's election yesterday forced Elections Officials to count all ballots by hand. Since it was an optical-scan system --- which uses paper ballots --- they were able to do so. That would have been next to impossible had a similar disaster befallen a touch-screen system with "paper trails" and completely impossible on a paperless touch-screen machine.

All seemed fine throughout the day on Barry County's new voting machines until the optical scanner printed out the final results at the close of the election. The report was found to have had all matter of inexplicable totals including 0 votes for some candidates and no YES votes for any of the bond issues on the ballot.

Sound familiar?

The Barry County mess, as it's being reported by WOOD-TV, sounds almost identical to the situation in Leon County, FL last December where "hackers" had exploited a security vulnerability in Diebold's optical scanner memory card causing it to print results that were virtually the opposite of the true results on the paper ballots. The "hackers", who were computer security experts, had hidden all traces of their "crime" in that mock election test, so it would likely never have been discovered.

The problem affected 15 out of 16 townships in Barry County on machines which cost $4000 a piece and were purchased because County Officials claim the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) forced them to do so.

WOOD-TV covers the story, "glitch" after "glitch", with both text and a video reports. Here's a few details from their text report...

Add this to our previous report on the Diebold Disaster in Cuyahoga County, Ohio during yesterday's Primary Election. The Cleveland Plain Dealer headlines their story: "First all-electronic election marred by problems".

As expected the word "Glitch" makes it's way quickly into the headlines in Columbus Dispatch's coverage ("Glitches delay voting and reporting of results") as they cover problems across a number of counties, including counties that use ES&S machines which also failed in a number of locations. Inevitably, the poll workers are blamed by officials, of course.

As to Cuyahoga, the Plain Dealer has set up a running blog on their website covering the ongoing problems. Here's the latest...

The soon-to-be-indicted lead pusher of the disastrous Help America Vote Act (HAVA), Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) had his primary race in Ohio's 18th District tonight. While most congressmen named in four different criminal indictments and convictions would usually be toast, this is, after all, Ohio.

That said, Justin Rood over at TPM Muckraker, had this to say earlier this afternoon about the outlook for Ney tonight...

100% of the results are now in from all but 1 of the 16 counties which make up Ohio's fightin' 18th. (Belmont County's results have been stuck at 25.3% for the last several hours, about which I suspect we'll hear more tomorrow. Trouble with those pricey new op-scan machines, Belmont?)

As of 2:13am ET, these are the results from the Ohio SoS website:

If Giroux is correct, it looks like Ney may be in for a tough ride this fall...If he makes it that far without ending up in the slammer.

UPDATE 5/3/06: 100% of counties now reporting in full. Ney: 68.38% Harris: 31.62%

UPDATE 5/4/06: As expected, the reasons for the delayed reporting out of Belmont was due to all manners of mess in counting votes off of their new machines. Here's a description of the mess..

The meltdown continues.

Cuyahoga County Election Director (and former Diebold proponent), Michael Vu, described Diebold's performance yesterday as "unacceptable" after problems were revealed all across the county in the state's Primary Election.

The panoply of problems included failed Diebold machines, lack of working power outlets and three-prong adapters for them, machines unable to start up, voters unable to vote, paper jams on the "paper trail" printers, and 17,000 absentee ballots that must now be counted by hand because they don't work with the Diebold optical scanners.

All of it now leading to investigations, as called for by Elections Officials. And, of course, there was the 61-year old voter who destroyed two Diebold machines out of apparent frustration.

With all of that, who even knows yet if the tallies acquired by the machines that did "work" are actually accurate?

WKYC covers with a video report here.

Below is just some of the extraordinary litany of problems revealed during elections in just that one county yesterday according to WKYC. We wish someone had warned them of the possibility of such problems in advance...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...
Audio in MP3 format...

After his major role in the theft of the 2004 Presidential Election, Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell should be in jail instead of on today's primary ticket for Ohio Governor. If Blackwell wins in the primary today it will largely be because of the illegal use of religious organizations to manipulate the opinion of voters.

The latest edition of PBS Now maps out how the Republican National Committee and Republican operatives are using "patriot pastors", mega-churches, polarizing rhetoric and tax exemptions to create an illegal and unfair advantage against their competitors.

Due to complaints from more established liberal churches, the Internal Revenue Service is now investigating the illegal activities being conducted by the Republicans who have hijacked the beliefs of many Christian's for corrupt political purposes. The IRS has promised to step up its' prosecution of these abuses.

From the Pine Bluff Commercial...

===
CORRECTION:
As you'll see below, in the flurry of today's breaking Primary Day news we had originally reported the above as having occurred in Jefferson County, Texas, as opposed to Jefferson County, Arkansas. The information following, concerning the problems in Jefferson County, TX, are still accurate, however, in regards to what happened in that Texas county, which also mirrors the problems as reported above in Jefferson County, Arkansas. Nonetheless, the original headline for the story, referring to Texas, was inaccurate. It should have said Arkansas, and we've now made that correction. The BRAD BLOG regrets the error.
===

As regular readers know, The BRAD BLOG has been extensively covering the E-Voting meltdown issues, with a particular eye towards the failure of ES&S, America's largest E-Voting vendor.

Texas, in particular, has been a mess of late. See our previous coverage of the ES&S meltdown in the state where the Secretary of State has instructed to create "emergency paper ballots", purchase storage containers for them, and extra staff to manually hand-count them.

Jefferson County specifically had previously tried to withhold payment from their vendor, ES&S, after enormous failures by the company during the county's March 7th primary. Reportedly, however, they were strong-armed by ES&S and told they would not program machines and ballots at all for the upcoming runoffs if payment was withheld.

We are hearing quite a few reports of similarly thuggish behavior, threats and tactics from ES&S and hope to have more details in a future report.

Unfortunately, States and Counties have sold off their public responsibility to carry out accurate and transparent elections to private corporations to whom they are now entirely beholden. On one side, there are the failing private Voting Machine Vendors, and on the other side, the U.S. Dept. of Justice threatening to sue when states and counties don't comply with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which kicks in this year.

Of course, as we've reported previously, it's the voters who are paying the real price for their democracy vanquished.

It's Primary Day in Ohio (and several other states) and, as we've been warning for some time, the meltdown is under way. This report in earlier, as with our previous report, from Akron's NewsCenter5...

More...

Just coming in from News Channel 5 out of Akron...

The report didn't specify, but the machine in question, and in the photos, was a Diebold AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) system. Look, people, those machines don't work anyway! Even when they're not smashed!

As today is Primary Election Day in Ohio, we'll do our best here at The BRAD BLOG, of course, to keep you up to date with any other "breaking news" out of the Buckeye State.

More photos...

UPDATE 5/3/06: WKYC has a video tape report. Apparently the man damaged at least two of the Diebold voting machines.

Our Electoral System is supposed to be open and transparent and accurate. Our democracy is worth fighting for and, if you believe the politicians in D.C., worth sending our troops to fight and die in order to spread around the world. The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) amongst other things, is supposed to help disabled voters vote in private and on their own. All of these things, I believe Arizona's Secretary of State, Jan Brewer would probably agree with. And yet, she seems to have a very different belief about how to ensure the integrity of our democracy at home and how disabled voters should be treated.

Therefore, I am inviting her to a public debate on the matter. I will travel to Arizona on a date of her choosing to accommodate her schedule. Tickets can be sold to the events, and all proceeds will go towards supporting our troops from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars for a charity which builds accessible housing for the most severely disabled of them. More on that below.

I appeared on the Jay Lawrence Show over the weekend on KTAR Newsradio 620 in Phoenix. (Link to full audio from the show at bottom of this article.)

Lawrence, and the entire station, are very rightwing. Nonetheless, to his credit, Lawrence is very concerned about the non-partisan crisis in our 2006 Electoral System vis a vis the proliferation of Electronic Voting Machines in the wake of the HAVA. This was my second time appearing on his show.

This time around, he attempted to invite his friend Jan Brewer to join us for a discussion on these important matters. Brewer has recently come under fire for her decision to bring Diebold systems into the state even after they were proven to be hackable in Leon County, Florida late last year. They were then confirmed to be even more unsecure than previously realized by an independent study [PDF] commissioned by CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson (a big Diebold supporter himself) after the security vulnerability was discovered in Leon County.

Lawrence said during the show that he had personally discussed some of these matters with her at a speech not long ago and learned that, apparently, she's no fan of The BRAD BLOG. As Lawrence reported during the show...

Of course, Brewer, despite many previous appearances on Lawrence's show, turned down the invitation to show up and discuss the matters along with me. She did, however, send a spokesperson instead who agreed to appear only if he would be allowed to do so without being questioned by me.

So at the bottom of the hour, after I'd been on for the first part by myself with Lawrence, SoS spokesman/attorney --- and, I've since learned, State Elections Director --- Joe Kanefield came on for a few minutes while I was made to sit on hold. Kanefield to tell several untruths to Lawrence and his listeners, to suggest that I have been "spinning" these issues, and then he scrammed before I was allowed to come back on the air to question or challenge his assertions "face to face."

During his drive-by appearance, Kanefield said that he's "absolutely confident" that Arizona's untested voting systems are "rock solid". But for an idea of just some of the misinformation and untruths that he gave to Lawrence and his listeners (while I was unable to respond) consider this exchange concerning the Leon County hack, and the statement The BRAD BLOG was able to receive from the Leon County Election Director, Ion Sancho himself, in response to it...

As John Gideon asked in today's Daily Voting News, why is it that the Financial Times of London is reporting on our nation's electoral meltdown this year, while the national mainstream media in America couldn't seem to care less?

The rest of the piece covers much of the territory --- the lawsuits, the ES&S failures, the Dieobld hacks, etc. from all over the country --- that we've been covering here over the last several weeks in regard to our approaching E-Voting "train wreck". You know, the one that we've written article after article about, complaining that the local media is reporting the stories as if they are solely local problems, while both they and the national media fail to connect the dots which clearly show that these problems are happening everywhere...and on a massive scale.

FT even bothers to mention the almost completely ignored (by the mainstream corporate media in this country) GAO Report on electronic voting which we first broke here, and then waited and waited as every national newspaper and wire service in the country completely ignored it.

FT even managed to advance the story a bit! Go figure!...

Well, heck, how hard was that?! Thank you, FT!

Oh, well. To paraphrase what they say about Vegas...What's reported by the The BRAD BLOG, stays on The BRAD BLOG.

At least until it's picked up by a respected foreign media outlet.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

Shuster attended the White House Correspondent's Dinner. He was able to get a short interview with Joe Wilson. Republican operatives have renewed their baseless claim that Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was not classified. For her part, Valerie Plame-Wilson stood silently by as her husband rejected the well used right-wing talking point.

More importantly, David Shuster reports that sources have told him how National Security was damaged when Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was leaked by the White House. His intel sources say that she worked with gathering intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The outing of her name specifically damaged our national ability to collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Says Shuster...

UPDATE FROM BRAD: It should be noted that RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna broke the Plame/Iran/WMD connection several months ago. They've got the text transcript of Schuster's report now up as well.

Crooks & Liars has several other noteworthy details and thoughts...