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Latest Featured Reports | Thursday, October 31, 2024
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2006 4:22pm PT  

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, blogs today on Electronic Voting. Here's just one of the money quotes...

I think about the history of ATMs when I hear all the nervous Nellies wetting their pants over electronic voting machines. I believe those worries are totally misplaced. Now don’t get me wrong – there’s a 100% chance that the voting machines will get hacked and all future elections will be rigged. But that doesn’t mean we’ll get a worse government. It probably means that the choice of the next American president will be taken out of the hands of deep-pocket, autofellating, corporate shitbags and put it into the hands of some teenager in Finland. How is that not an improvement?
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New Report Said To Be As Important As Princeton Viral Hack Study of Diebold Touch-Screen (DRE) Systems...
By John Gideon on 10/31/2006 3:11pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday the University of Connecticut released a report of the results of a study they did of the Diebold AccuVote Optical Scan voting system the state will be using in the future. This new report, commissioned by the Secretary of State, is as scathing as the recent Princeton Report accomplished on the Diebold TS Direct Recording Electronic machines.

In his blog, Johns-Hopkins University Computer Scientist Avi Rubin says:

"Reading this report was a hair raising experience for me. Diebold has clearly not learned any of the lessons from our 2003 report, and it is startling to see that their optical scan ballot counter is as vulnerable to tampering, vote rigging, and incorrect tabulation as the DRE."
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Video by Democratic Sec. of State Candidate in California Critical of CA SoS Bruce McPherson's Certification and Lack of Security Requirements for Diebold Touch-Screen Systems...
By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2006 3:08pm PT  

Democratic Secretary of State candidate, Debra Bowen has released a new video ad on her campaign website showing how easy it would be for hackers to break into a garage where pre-programmed, election-ready Diebold touch-screen systems are now being "stored securely" by poll workers around the state.

Such a break-in could allow them to easily manipulate a single Diebold touch-screen machine to implant a virus on it would could then pass itself from machine to machine, resulting in an entirely flipped election. Nobody would ever know.

We have long since been critical of CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's re-certification of Diebold voting systems after his own technical advisory board at UC Berkley had advised him the machines could be tampered with in dozens of ways.

His further lack of enforcement of security requirements for the use of the systems --- he has sat by and allowed them to be sent home for weeks ahead of the election with poll workers on so-called "sleepovers" --- is both an outrage and a violation of his own state requirements and federal law.

Yesterday, we detailed (with photographs) how San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas has been handing thousands of such hackable voting machines to poll workers in his county since October 16th of this year. Those irresponsible "sleepovers" now allow those poll workers --- or anyone who may wish to access the machines in their garage --- a full 3 weeks prior to the election to find the 60 seconds needed to flip every race in San Diego County.

Bowen's Diebold "sleepover" break-in ad can be viewed at her campaign website. It's also posted in full below...


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Information Duplicates Previous Reports of Votes Flipping on Paperless ES&S Machines in Bexar County, TX, Dallas and in Other States...
By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2006 2:24pm PT  

Reports now from yet another Texas county that votes are hopping from Democratic to Republican on paperless touch-screen ES&S systems during Early Voting. This time in Jefferson County...

Friday night, KFDM reported about people who had cast straight Democratic ticket ballots, but the touch-screen machines indicated they had voted a straight Republican ticket.

Some of those voters including Lamar University professor, Dr. Bruce Drury, believe the problem is a programming error.

Saturday, KFDM spoke to another voter who says it's not just happening with straight ticket voting, he says it's happening on individual races as well, Jerry Stopher told us when he voted for a Democrat, the Republican's name was highlighted.
...
Jefferson county clerk Carolyn Guidry says her office has checked the calibration of the machines and found no problems.
...
She says the electronic system is very sensitive.

Last night we reported similar problems as reported by a State Rep in San Antonio (Bexar County) on the same ES&S machines. As well, the problem was earlier reported occuring in Dallas.

Previous vote-hopping reports from other states (all benefitting Republicans) have so far come in from South Florida, St. Louis County, Missouri and Arkansas.

We've create a new Touch-Screen Vote Hopping category here so users can check all such reported incidents at a glance.

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Lou and Kitty Look Into the Sale of Sequoia Voting To A Company Owned By Venezuelan Nationals
By John Gideon on 10/31/2006 9:15am PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

As Lou and Kitty look into the investigation by the US Treasury Department into the sale of Sequoia Voting Systems to Venezuelan nationals Lou summarizes and speaks for many; "The idea that we are at this stage with all of the problems that you've documented that have been demonstrated with these machines, the ties between the testing laboratories and the manufacturers, the fact that software is proprietary and that election officials wouldn't be in charge of a recount on these things, it's just mind-boggling."


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

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Audio Interview with Texas State Rep. Jose Menendez on KTSA with Chris Duel (and Brad) Says Paperless Voting Machines Failing in Bexar County...
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2006 11:41pm PT  

The drumbeat of reports from around the country of touch-screen voting machines failing during Early Voting continues to grow. These aren't "glitches." These are failures.

So far, the reports have all involved Democratic (or Green) votes flipping to, or otherwise benefitting, Republican candidates. In South Florida, St. Louis County, Missouri, Virginia, Arkansas, Dallas, and now San Antonio, Texas.

While I was guesting this evening on the Chris Duel show on KTSA News-Talk 550 AM, we received a call from Democratic State Rep. Jose Menendez, who reported several incidents that have come to the attenion of his office during Early Voting, which is already under way in San Antonio. The reports concern votes flipping and candidates not showing up on the summary screens of Bexar County's paperless ES&S touch-screen systems.

During the short interview (audio posted in full at end of this article) Menendez reported an incident involving a teacher in his district who noticed that one of the candidates wasn't showing up on the confirmation summary screen. I later learned off air that the missing candidate was Menendez.

Another incident involved a voter who voted for a straight party ticket only to have it flip to a straight party ticket vote for the other party.

Menendez didn't identify which parties were involved while on air. Since then, Duel followed up to let me know that the straight party ticket the voter intended to vote for was Democratic and it flipped to Republican.

Menendez said during the interview that he now plans to file legislation requiring a paper "trail" on all voting machines across the state of Texas where none are (incredibly) now required. As you'll hear, I made it clear that it's paper ballots that are needed, not uncountable and uncounted so-called paper "trails." For the moment, his efforts are unfortunately too little, too late to do anything for 2006. While he may not have realized the dangers to our democracy and national security until now, Bexar County Election Administrator Jacquelyn F. Callanen has no such excuse. She needs to be held directly accountable for her failure to provide an auditable voting system to her voters.

Callanen, however, seems to be selling Menendez and other concerned citizens the usual bill of goods, as most of the country's election directors are now doing in hopes of saving their jobs. I pointed out in no uncertain terms, hopefully, on air during the interview, that Callanen needs to be held accountable. Her office's number is: 210-335-VOTE, and their webpage is here. Here's the interview...

-- AUDIO: Brad on the Chris Duel Show with Rep. Mendendez, 10/30/06 [MP3, Appx 16 minutes]

UPDATE: Votes reported to be hopping from Democrat to Republican also now in Jefferson County, TX. Details here...

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One of the Country's Worst Places to Vote, Led By One of the Country's Worst Election Administrators, Mikel Haas, Instructs Poll Workers to NOT Tell Voters They May Vote on Paper Ballots if They Wish
An EXCLUSIVE First-Hand Account and Photos of Delusional Election Director's Irresponsible Scheme...
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2006 2:46pm PT  

More than 10,000 pre-programmed election-ready Diebold touch-screen voting machines, to be used for the first time across the entirety of San Diego County this November 7th, are now in the cars, garages, homes, and hands of poll workers and lord knows who else across one of Southern California's largest voting regions.

As reported in several first-hand accounts from San Diego poll workers just after recent training sessions (see end of article for one of those first-hand accounts), the voting machines were sent home on so-called overnight "sleepovers" with temporary poll workers beginning on October 16th, allowing for a full three weeks prior to the election for poll workers to find the 60 seconds they might need to hack a single machine. One tampered machine could affect the results on every single voting machine, in every race in the county.

San Diego Registrar Mikel Haas --- easily one of the country's worst and most irresponsible election administrators --- is unconcerned. He's also instructing poll workers not to give out paper ballots despite a recent order from the California Secretary of State.

The ability to easily insert malicious viral code onto Diebold's touch-screen systems has been proven, and video-taped by Princeton University and others. A single person could hack an entire election, flipping votes undetectably, and no trace would be left behind after the election.

But it's not just tampering that should be of concern to the voters of San Diego. It's the fact that these particular systems are amongst the most unreliable in the country. They simply do not work.

Diebold touch-screen voting systems are innacurate. Their screens freeze. Their printers jam and fail to create reliable "paper trails" and frequently they simply fail to start up at all. All of which occurred during Primary Elections in states across the country earlier this year, resulting in thousands of legally registered voters being disenfranchised, or turned away without being able to cast a ballot.

Incredibly, Haas has ordered these systems to be used for the first time in this November's general election, without even a test run during the June 6th Primary & Special Election, when a blended system of both Diebold optical-scan (paper-based) and touch-screens was used.

The few touch-screen systems in place during the June election (one per polling location) went almost completely unused. And yet Haas has ordered them for use across the entire county this November, despite notorious failures by these same unreliable systems in states like Georgia and Maryland and --- perhaps most notably --- Cuyahoga County, OH, where the systems in first-time use failed monumentally during the Buckeye State's Primary Election.

USA TODAY wrote Friday about the aftermath of Cuyahoga's Primary Elections and the extraordinary measures now being taken to turn the county's temporary poll workers into rocket scientists able to trouble-shoot the many expected problems with the systems. After some 300+ recommendations were made by an independent audit of that particular train wreck, elections officials are scrambling and bracing for the worst.

Haas, however, has taken no such measures and, indeed, his poll worker training has reportedly consisted of instructing folks to sing the praises of electronic machines and avoid handing out paper ballots to voters despite the recently unearthed memo from the California Secretary of State's office instructing all Registrar's that all California voters may vote on paper if they wish.

An account of one such training class by Ken Simpkins, the Carlsbad attorney who filed an election contest to challenge the results of the Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray Special Election sleepover fiasco last June, reports that workers are being told not to give paper ballots to voters even if machines are unavailable when voters show up to vote.

"If the machines were not ready at the opening of the polls and voters were there," Simpkins writes about instructions given at a training class he attended, "voters should be asked to wait until the machines are ready." His full description of that and other stunning moments from Haas's training is at the end of this item.

In an accidental fit of reporting, the far-right San Diego Union Tribune yesterday asked Haas about the ongoing "sleepovers" in an article on concerns about the county's upcoming beta test election. As usual, his obnoxious answer was just another "fuck you" to the voters of San Diego:

Taking the machines home has been condemned widely by those who fear hacking. Some believe the "sleepovers" used in San Diego and other counties effectively invalidate election results, because the "chain of custody" of election results cannot be ensured.

Haas disagrees. "We know exactly who has the machines," he said. "We know where they live."

Never mind that we've previously reported first-hand accounts from poll workers who took voting machines home with them during the June 6th election, where they admitted that family members, and any number of neighbors, may well have had easy access to the machines in the "secure storage space" known as their garage or their car. But Haas knows "where they live." So rest easy, San Diegans!

Also, never mind that such sleepovers are in violation of state and federal law. But, hey, it's San Diego! Mikel Haas territory! He makes the rules and can do whatever he wants!

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Would You Expect Anything Less?
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2006 2:44pm PT  

Chaos is now raining down on the voters of Ohio. Anyone surprised?

With yet another court decision today restoring disenfranchising Photo ID requirements in the Buckeye State (after they had previously been disallowed via an earlier court injunction days ago), we're now barrelling towards yet another clusterfuck in Ohio, wherein the only winners will be those who don't want people to vote or to have their votes counted accurately or at all (namely Republicans.)

Columbus Dispatch covered the story here...

[Cleveland attorney, Subodh Chandra]...said last night’s court action guarantees more confusion among voters and poll workers and puts votes at risk of not being counted.

"We hope that the 6th Circuit is not taking the position that one must permit an election to be a train wreck before one tries to stop the wreck," Chandra said. "That’s what appears to be happening."

...Alhough, as usual, we prefer the coverage from our friends Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman at the Free Press: America's definitive news source for all the ugly election news on the ground from inside Ohio's former democracy. Their detailed report today starts this way...

With a major GOP federal court victory, the Ohio 2006 election has descended into the calculated chaos that has become the trademark of a Karl Rove election theft, and that could help keep the Congress in Republican hands nationwide.

Through a complex series of legal maneuvers, and now a shocking new decision from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the GOP has thrown Ohio's entire process of voting and vote counting into serious disarray. The mess is perfectly designed to suppress voter turnout, make election monitoring and a recount impossible, and allow the Republican Party to emerge with a victory despite overwhelming evidence the electorate wants exactly the opposite.

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Profanity-Laced Missive from Right Winger Sent After Popular Radio Host's Recent Appearance on Fox 'News', Says 'Would be Happy to See AK-47 Send You Into Eterntity'
Miller Calls America-Loving Wingnut On Air, Man Claims Letter Wasn't a Threat... [UPDATE: Audio of Phone Call to Man Now Included!]
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2006 10:39am PT  

A man from Centerville, Ohio, identifying himself as "Sock" Sokolowski has sent a death threat to radio host Stephanie Miller after her recent appearance on Fox "News'" Hannity & Colmes.

The BRAD BLOG has obtained a copy of Sokolowski's profanity-laced letter which includes a closing salutation claiming that he is "From the right 'Right'". The letter is posted, unredacted and in full at the end of this article.

On her popular Stephanie Miller Show this morning, the radio host telephoned "Sock" --- who included his address and phone number with the letter --- to confront him live and on air about the letter.

UPDATE:
-- You can now listen to this morning's phone call here [MP3].
-- The video of Miller's
H&C appearance that began the whole "kerfuffle", as producer Chris Lavoie just described it to us, is here on Youtube. BTW, in this appearance Miller brilliantly says to Colmes: "It's called journalism, Fox News should try it sometime."

Despite numerous clear threats in the letter, Sokolowski --- who opens his missive by writing "As with Cindy Sheehan the best thing that could happen to you would be seeing some WONDERFUL activist sticking an AK-47 up your Glory Holes and sending you into eternity" --- claimed several times during the phone call that he didn't threaten Miller in the letter.

Writing that "I am a paci-fist [sic]", Sokolowski typed "this is not a threat". He then went on to write that he hopes and prays "that someone decides you're better off as statistics."

"Honestly," the letter continues, referring to both the radio host and Sheehan, who lost her son in the War on Iraq, "should I hear of either you leaving this earth prematurely I would initiate a personal celebration that would make Animal House appear to be just another quiet Sunday in church."

Promising to to mail copies of Miller's H&C appearance to "some WONDERFUL people," Sokolowski threatens that "we must identify this nation's enemies and though we keep friends close, we MUST keep our enemies even closer and you two vile bitches are just that."

Referring to both women as "mother fuckers," Sokolowski writes that he hopes for further exposure for both Miller and Sheehan on "TV shows...as GUARANTEED your words will someday possibly accelerate your demise."

He concludes the note by explaining that he "would love to celebrate and would for days on end as I would and will when still another America HATER meets his/her maker."

The Stephanie Miller Show has said that they will be posting now posted a profanity-free version of the letter in the Daily blog section of StephanieMiller.com. The BRAD BLOG, however, is happy to post the entire unredacted letter below, exclusively and in full. Only the phone number and address have been removed...

FURTHER UPDATE BEFORE THE LETTER 12:50pm PT: It looks like our man "Sock" is a rather prolific letter writer. Former CIA man Larry Johnson of NoQuarter has identified this man and posted another letter which "Sock" apparently sent to a local newspaper. Given the text of his letter to Miller, this passage from his railing for the importance of "conservatism" in America, strikes at our irony bone:

As proven in the Bush v. Kerry presidential race, [Americans] want the candidates to offer their agenda for the nation rather than simply hate and venom for the opposition. They want to consider alternatives on a range of issues, but all the left offered was a hatred toward our president.

Moreover, KamaAina at DU has located another laugher of letter from "Sock" to the Dayton City Paper from last year, headlined "CONSERVATISM IS WINNING THE WAR". That commentary calls for, among other things, the ascendency of George "Makaka" Allen and Condi Rice as our next President and VP.

Here now, "Sock's" not at all "hate and venom" filled death threat to Stephanie Miller in full...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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ES&S iVotronic Machine Same as Those Reportedly Flipping Votes in Missouri Senate Race in St. Louis County...
[UPDATED: Another Report, from Tampa Bay Tribune, of Votes Hopping from Democratic Candidates to Republicans!]
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2006 9:20am PT  

ED NOTE: BRING YOUR VIDEO AND STILL CAMS WITH YOU TO VOTE, ESPECIALLY ON TOUCH-SCREEN, TO DOCUMENT THIS STUFF!

The Miami Herald is reporting that votes on touch-screen voting systems in in South Florida are flipping from Democrat to Republican candidates.

Not a single report of a vote flipping from a Republican to a Democrat so far. As usual.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen --- the final voting step.
...
Debra A. Reed voted with her boss on Wednesday at African-American Research Library and Cultural Center near Fort Lauderdale. Her vote went smoothly, but boss Gary Rudolf called her over to look at what was happening on his machine. He touched the screen for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis, a Democrat, but the review screen repeatedly registered the Republican, Charlie Crist.
...
Joan Marek, 60, a Democrat from Hollywood, was also stunned to see Charlie Crist on her ballot review page after voting on Thursday. "Am I on the voting screen again?" she wondered. "Well, this is too weird."

Marek corrected her ballot and alerted poll workers at the Hollywood satellite courthouse, who she said told her they'd had previous problems with the same machine.

Poll workers did some work on her machine when she finished voting, Marek said. But no report was made to the Supervisor of Elections office and the machine was not removed, [Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman Mary] Cooney said.
...
Mauricio Raponi wanted to vote for Democrats across the board at the Lemon City Library in Miami on Thursday. But each time he hit the button next to the candidate, the Republican choice showed up.

The Herald didn't mention it --- but we will --- the type of touch-screen voting machine reportedly failing in Broward was the ES&S iVotronic.

That's the same model of voting machine that was also reportedly flipping votes in St. Louis County from Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill to Republican Jim Talent in Missouri's extremely close U.S. Senate race as we reported late last week along with several similar incidents reported in both Texas and Arkansas as well.

Note in the Herald report linked above, the Broward Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman also admits that "it's not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot --- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual."

A "15-step process" for recalibrating by poll workers with a few hours training? Brilliant.

And this...

Broward poll workers keep a log of all maintenance done on machines at each site. But the Supervisor of Elections office doesn't see that log until the early voting period ends. And a machine isn't taken out of service unless the poll clerk decides it's a chronic poor performer that can't be fixed.

Cooney said no machines have been removed during early voting, and she is not aware of any serious problems.

Relax, people. It's only democracy. Do you actually want it to be accurate too?! George Will's column on Sunday, --- which either supports electronic voting or doesn't, it's hard to tell --- seems to think you're probably asking way too much.

UPDATE 2:40pm PT: And more reports coming in now from Florida of votes hopping from Democratic candidates to Republicans. This one via Tampa Bay Tribune...

I twice selected the Democrat, and twice it indicated that I had voted for the Republican. I called that vote two times, and on the third attempt it accepted my vote correctly.

Upon leaving, I told the woman to whom I handed my voting card about the problem. She said, "Sometimes these things just don't work."

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Spencer Overton's 'Stealing Democracy' and Paul Rieckhoff's 'Chasing Ghosts' in Limited Supply!
PLEASE CLICK THROUGH AND HELP SUPPORT THE BRAD BLOG AT THIS CRUCIAL TIME!
By Brad Friedman on 10/29/2006 7:41pm PT  

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 10/29/2006 5:00pm PT  

...With a huge nod to Tom Tomorrow who presented a similar toon a full three years ago...well before many of us even understood how scary these things are...

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG emailer Melisa U.)

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Sadly, it's a REPUBLICAN Who Is Speaking Out About the Clear and Present Threat to Our Democracy
While the GOP Prepares to Yell 'Fraud' This Year if Necessary...
By Brad Friedman on 10/29/2006 3:36pm PT  

"The equipment has been tested by independent agencies and federal agencies," Diebold's Chief Disinformation Officer, Mark Radke lied to Diane Sawyer in a recent Good Morning America interview on ABC.

Sadly, the only ones there to counter Radke's knowing and misleading disinformation was a computer scientist from Princeton, and a Republican governor. Not a Democrat in sight.

The National Democratic Party, to their eternal shame, has remained virtually silent about the grave national security threat --- as it has been described by almost every computer scientist and security expert with whom the The BRAD BLOG has discussed the matter --- which our country now faces vis a vis the nationwide use of inaccurate, uncountable, unaccountable, hackable and, yes, untested electronic voting systems.

To be crystal clear, Radke was simply lying in his statement to Sawyer. He knows damned well that not a single independent body --- nobody, none, zero...no computer scientist, security expert or federal, state or local election official or organization --- is allowed to test Diebold's voting systems in full and release their findings publicly. The same is true for the systems of every other voting machine company in America.

The only federal testing of these systems is done by the so-called "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA), a consortium of three private corporations chosen and paid for by the voting machine companies themselves. The ITAs test only what their client Voting Machine Companies tell them to test. They do so in secret and without releasing the results of their limited testing publicly.

Lou Dobbs Tonight filed a very good report on the ITA scam the other day. The video and transcript are here.

ABC's online coverage of the interview goes on to report that "Approximately 40 percent of Americans will use these machines to vote in November."

That is wrong. Well over 80% of American voters will use such machines this November. ABC should know better by now.

Most disturbingly, the DNC has said and done literally nothing about the problem, and has let it fall to the Republican governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich, to speak about the issue nationally.

Says Ehrlich about the need to scrap these dangerous systems at the end of ABC's report:

"I don't care if we paid half a billion dollars or a billion dollars [for these systems]," Ehrlich said. "If it's going to put the election at risk, there's no price tag for a phony election."

Ehrlich is 100% correct. As we reported last August after we were invited to address state party chairs and the DNC's national attorneys at their Summer convention, the national Democratic party continues to whistle past democracy's graveyard. As far as we can tell, not a thing has changed since then.

In the meantime, as we've reported previously, the Republicans are positioning themselves to be able to scream Democratic fraud via electronic voting machines along with their even more disingenuous claims of "voter fraud." Here's a blog item posted today by some wingnut who quotes a couple of our reports from months ago as "proof" that Democrats are preparing to flip votes via Sequoia Voting System electronic machines. The blogger's supposed basis for the report is the claim that Sequoia was purchased by a consortium tied to Venezuala's Hugo Chavez.

You'll also note the anonymous blogger linked the above points only to problems reported on Sequoia systems, ignoring the mountain of reports that voting systems made by Republican-based companies such as Diebold, ES&S and Hart Intercivic are equally, if not more, unfunctional, inaccurate and vulnerable to tampering and fraud.

We don't see the Dems waking up any time soon, as they have failed so far to challenge any of the outrages already plaguing the system during early voting --- from illegally truncated screen displays, to touch-screen votes flipping from one candidate to another, to illegal voting machine "sleepovers" with poll workers as are now occuring in California, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. By the time Election Day rolls around, poll workers in San Diego County, for example, will have had more than three weeks to have found the 60 seconds they would need to game a single pre-programmed, election-ready Diebold voting machine --- that they've been allowed to keep in their houses since SD County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas has been handing them out like candy since October 16th. (NOTE: We'll have much more on that tomorrow.)

The Democrats, so far, have failed to do a damned thing about any of it, choosing instead to close their eyes, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. Good luck.

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By John Gideon on 10/28/2006 1:22pm PT  

Blogged By John Gideon, 28 October 2006

Still over a week from election day and already the problems are piling up. Meanwhile the vendors and their shills are making excuses and attempting to sell the voting public a line of garbage. Among the shills is a federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, that is supposed to assist the voter and, instead, has sent their chairman out on the road to defend the vendors.

In a blog posted yesterday, Brad said it well:

"The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a complete and utter failure. The current commissioner, Paul DeGregorio, has done nothing to instill confidence in elections or provide a lick of oversight in the deployment and use of these voting systems across the nation in the Midterm Election. In his latest interviews and editorials, he is reprehensibly doing nothing but echoing Voting Machine Company propaganda and Election Officials who choose to be apologists for them."

In a rebuttal to DeGregorios' opinion piece in the Tallahassee Democrat Avi Rubin, Johns-Hopkins Professor, computer scientist and author of "Brave New Ballot" had this to say in his blog:

"I have not seen any reason to trust our nation's voting equipment. Trusting it just because an election official says we should is not good enough for me. I want to trust a system because I don't believe it can be compromised, not because someone implies that not trusting it is not patriotic."

In The Mean Time Across The Nation...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 10/28/2006 12:51pm PT  

An absolute mess on the ground.

In Ohio, Cuyahoga County's attempts to change the way poll workers are trained in light of their Primary Election Day disaster seem clear, from the startling USA Today coverage, to be a disaster in the making in and of themselves. Read it, and be amazed at the unbelievably complex gyrations now required to address the 300+ recommendations made to the county after their Primary Day meltdown. It's amazing. "Election Cliffhanger: Will it all Work?"

In Maryland, the Republican governor warns of a "crisis in the wake of Diebold revelations."

In Colorado, Sequoia has fucked up the Absentee Ballots so that 30,000 of them must be re-copied by hand by pollworkers.

UPDATE: By John Gideon 4:15PM: Today the county announced that they had awoken from their day dream of duplicating 30,000 ballots. They have decided to do the smart thing and just set up another machine to count the incorrect ballots.

I'm on the road, and haven't been able to follow closely for the last 12 or 24, so there is much more out there that is not covered here (keep an eye on John Gideon's 'Daily Voting News' each day for all the frightening stuff and the utter mess that we simply can't cover in detail), but clearly the links above are just the tippy-top of the tip of the iceberg.

Buckle up.

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