Today Premier/Diebold has again had to accept the blame for voting machine failures. This time the optical scan machines that had tallied absentee ballots in Sarasota County would not upload the totals to the main server and refused to post elections in Hillsborough County. Election officials in Sarasota ended up having to count 10,000 ballots by hand. It is a good thing they had the paper ballots to count by hand or those votes would have been lost....

Bob Novak, the rightwing columnist who treasonously revealed the clandestine identity of CIA WMD investigator Valerie Plame, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, but recently returned to producing short squibs for his syndicate, including the latest on Joe Lieberman's chances of being named as John McCain's VP on Friday:

We should be so lucky.

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Denver...

[Updated at end of article...Including details on Hillary Clinton dramatically saving the day...]

Allow me to stress the unconfirmed nature of this report before I even tell you what I'm hearing. It's difficult to get information and/or confirm out here on such things, so take it with the grain of salt that it's currently intended to be served with.

That said, a reliable source on one of the state delegations tells me that today's nominating speeches have been moved up from 4:30pm to 3:45pm MT. (That much, we've now been able to confirm from a couple of different sources.) The reason for the move, so the speculation has it, is that there may be concerns of a floor fight on the way in regard to the roll-call nominations of Clinton and Obama.

I don't have much more than that, and Clinton's hopes for her supporters to move their support to Obama during last night's speech seemed pretty damned clear. So, for now, let's consider this report a rumor only for the moment (which I don't usually like reporting without confirm). But if the source is correct, it's certainly something noteworthy enough to watch out for, along with all of those caveats.

Todd Beeton at MyDD reports on Hillary's comments, within the last hour or so, at a meeting of her delegates. Some of her noteworthy comments to her delegates, as reported by Beeton, follow...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Denver...

Mike Sheehan, of both Scholars & Rogues and RAW STORY, cornered me on Monday for an interview on a number of important issues. Here's his Q&A with yours truly, mouthing off on a number of them...

Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

In an article this morning from the St Petersburgh (FL) Times the reporters report that Diebold/Premier voting systems failed to work properly in Hillsborough County.

They report:

However, Florida Today reports that Brevard County had problems with their Diebold voting machines and this problem is recurring...

Late night in the Pepsi Center, after almost all of the delegates had cleared out, and only a few folks in the press corps remained, Sen. Joe Biden came out to do a walk-through for tomorrow night's speech. We happened to be there to catch it, along with a phalanx of camera's and Andrea Mitchell who asked the only questions, including the insightfully probing "Senator, what did you think of Hillary's message?"

Surprisingly, Biden didn't say "it really sucked, Andrea. Worst speech I've seen in years." Here's the quick video...

...Later, at the CNN Grill, someone slapped me on the ass and said, "Good game, buddy!" When I turned around, it was an apparently inebriated Charles Barkley.

These conventions are weird.

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Denver...

I'm up in the press skyboxes at the Pepsi Center tonight where Hillary Clinton just finished her speech. The place was absolutely jammed, literally, to the rafters, as the "UNITY" "HILLARY" "OBAMA" signs flowed on schedule through the throngs.

How she did will be up to you to decide. Or rather, for ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCFOX to tell you how to decide. May have more later tonight, though it's been a very long day here. So let's consider this an open thread for your thoughts on tonight's pageantry, until I'm able to check back in again...

Guest Blogged by Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us...

Velvet Revolution - co-founded by Brad Friedman - today launched its newest campaign at StandingForVoters.org, calling on candidates across the country to pledge to challenge elections when necessary.

"This election, let's make democracy the winner!" the Standing For Voters site proclaims. Readers of The BRAD BLOG know that's quite a stretch, that we're a long way from having a true democracy in this country. Yet challenges by candidates --- before, during and after the elections --- could be an important step in the right direction. In many situations, only candidates have standing to challenge elections.

StandingForVoters.org is primarily directed towards candidates themselves and serves to educate them about election integrity issues, types of election challenges, and recent history of candidates who challenged elections. Voters are encouraged to participate by finding candidates who will pledge; tips about how to do this are provided on the site, including:

The first two candidates to sign the site's more robust pledge, "The Super Pledge," are no strangers to election integrity issues. Ellen Brodsky, candidate for Supervisor of Elections in notorious Broward County, Florida is a long-time election integrity advocate, founding Broward Election Reform Coalition. Brodsky was thrilled to pledge, saying, "You can count on me to speak about fair, accurate and transparent elections in every breath I take."...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

It appears he really is running for President of the Hanoi Hilton.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

This sounds like a story you might read on the spoof site, womenforjohnmccain.com, which my colleague Trish at Pensito Review wrote about earlier today, but, sadly, this is no joke. Or at least it's not meant to be.

Yesterday, just in time for the start of the Democratic National Convention, the McCain campaign released a new ad that features Debra Bartoshevich, a nurse from Washington, who claims to be a "proud Hillary Clinton Democrat" who now plans to vote for McCain.

But at news conference in Denver arranged for the Republican National Committee, Bartoshevich revealed what appears to be a shaky grasp on her candidate's position on an issue that is fundamental to actual Hillary Clinton supporters:

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Denver...

It was a long and hot day in Denver. The mercury topped out at 90 as we roamed the streets from one venue to the next. At least on the ground, as we got our bearings today, mostly far off the grid of the incessant and inane ramblings of cable news coverage, it was a fairly run of the mill afternoon and evening.

Given the world we live in, the lack of news is probably a good thing. So, at the risk of disappointing Fox "News", nothing blew up, huge riots did not break out, most everyone seemed to be in a good mood everywhere we went, and even the security detail, present but not overbearing, were polite and welcoming, even as parts of the city were blocked off in Baghdadian fashion.

Here then, are a few random and sometimes personal observations and notes as seen from on the ground and throughout the day...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Boulder, CO...

The following video report, as seen live on Fox "News" yesterday, demonstrates that the far-right "news" channel has no clue what the words "raucous", "out of control" or "freedom of speech" actually mean, as "reporter" Griff Jenkins is seen taunting DNC Convention demonstrators, only to receive chants of "Fuck Fox News", live on air, in the bargain...

The video also demonstrates (again) that, to Fox, "far left" is anybody who doesn't cow-tow to Fox's fringe kook extremist Republicanist agenda. That is, unless wanting to keep U.S. troops in Iraq forever, and launching yet a third war with Iran is the mainstream American view, and only "leftists" are against such things.

We'll be in Denver later today, and we'll try to look for Jenkins to find out if he wishes to explain his performance. If not, clearly it'll be because he "doesn't believe in freedom of speech".

UPDATE: The following longer clip (hat-tip BRAD BLOG commenter "Floridiot") shot by a citizen "off air", shows that this place could be a tinder-box with Fox, apparently, more than willing to light the match if needed. With temperatures set to reach 90 degrees later today in Denver, we'll hope things stay cool and Fox thinks better of their strategy of taunting peaceful demonstrators...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Boulder, CO...

Just as I went off the grid late last week, this news came in, so some of you may be ahead of me on this one. In either case, it's still worth noting that GOP/DoJ vote suppressor, Hans von Spakovsky was secretly hired by Bush's bad joke of a "Commission on Civil Rights" to oversee the '08 elections, as reported by TPMMuckraker's Kate Klonick late last week.

While the story is mindblowing, it's not all together surprising given the CCR's embarrassing track record under Bush. See the amazing flashback video of the CCR's Peter Kirsanow testifying to Congress in 2007, as posted below after Klonick's lede, and everything will likely make "sense"...

Blogged by Brad Friedman from Boulder, CO...

If you didn't happen to pay close enough attention to Ellen Theisen's guest blog on Friday, now that I'm back on the grid (after a few blissful days in the mountains with family friends on the way to Denver here), let me re-iterate the main points of her article quite directly: Diebold has admitted that their tabulator software, known as GEMS, and used all across the country, in at least 34 states, does not count votes correctly.

In fact, it actually loses votes, by not counting them at all, yet gives the system administrator no indication that the votes were not counted. Instead, it tells them that all votes have been counted correctly. This bug has been in Diebold's software --- where it remains to this day-- for years. Diebold has only admitted it now that it's been found by someone else (a number of counties in Ohio, of all places) and with the 2008 Presidential election less than 80 days away. Washington Post's coverage here.

Coinciding with that startling admission, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)'s Gracia Hillman, one of the two Democratic-recommended appointees, has gone on public record stating that the federal certification testing process is too stringent.

While all of that was made clear in Ellen's blog item, I found both of the above points so remarkable that I wanted to underscore them now that I've finally made it to Denver (or at least Boulder, for the moment), since I was simply stunned to read it myself after getting back on the grid.

Is anybody there? Does anybody care?

UPDATE: CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight covered the stunning admission by Diebold on their show Friday. Here it is (thanks to Alan Breslauer, as usual!) ...

UPDATE 8:43pm PT: McClatchy's Greg Gordon picks up the ball, and advances it a bit, noting the failure in oversight by the feds which allowed for the failure, as we've been trying to get across here for years. He begins this way...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The 3 a.m. call:

Vice presidential candidates are often called on to be the aggressors in the campaign. A comment Biden made earlier this year may have resonated with Obama: