Guest Blogged by John Gideon

The following shocking information just came in to "Train Wreck Central" from Brad who is on the road, lord knows where. A special hat tip to Thom Hartmann and Rich McClear of KUDO1080, the Air America Radio affiliate in Anchorage, Alaska.

As readers of The BRAD BLOG know, Diebold and the State of Alaska have been doing all they can to keep the State Democratic Party from looking at the data from the machines used by the voters to register their choices and by the local officials to tally the votes. The BRAD BLOG has reported that questions began to arise about results from the 2004 election, including the reported revelation that "district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889." The Democrats asked for election data from the Diebold machines and the state has 'flip-flopped' on whether they would release it or not. This resulted in claims by the state that any data they released would be proprietary and would belong to Diebold Elections Systems Inc. (DESI).

The above led the state Democratic party to file a lawsuit to get the data they have been requesting.

The following is from an email from Rich McClear:

So the state and Diebold have stalled, flip-flopped, obfuscated and misled while they kept the Democrats from proving that there were huge problems with the election results in 2004. One can only hope that the court will decide that the stall needs to stop now, but it might be best not to hold your breath.

UPDATE 11/28/06: Alaska is at it again. They're refusing to release the 2006 election database despite a court order to do so. Details now here...

Blogged by Brad from the road and on the fly!...

Just a quick post to say thanks to all who have been covering for me here, in particular Winter Patriot who has been thawed out and called up for duty to allow me some much needed time away.

I'm traveling across the country, and not getting as much down time as I'd like for the moment, as I'm in touch with folks in re: the Busby/Bilbray election fiasco and their plans for announcing several new initiatives to call for accountability there shortly. As well, working on several related issues via the phones etc.

I've not been online at all since last Thursday night, and only on briefly today. So forgive me if I've not been able to answer your email, or otherwise report on so much of what is going on right now. We'll see more and more Guest Bloggers here in the coming days and weeks to cover much of that in my absense, which I hope you continue to understand. I really need to find some time away, even if I'm unable to get away 100% in the bargain for now.

Thanks also to John Gideon and David Edwards for keeping up the battle here, and I hope you'll welcome some of the new names (like Emily Levy, etc.) that you'll be seeing here over the next several weeks. Please offer them all the support you can!

If you haven't noticed, the disinfo campaign down in San Diego by Registrar Mikel Haas and his compatriots in the media is now in full swing. Haas is lying left and right, and his friends at the Union-Tribune and elsewhere are all too happy to help! Please feel free to let such media outlets know the truth about what's going on where you can in my absence.

This unsigned editorial today in the U-T was simply incredible! According to them, we're "Internet conspiratorialists" again. Someone please let them know that if we are, so is CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson whose own office confirmed dozens of ways that Diebold voting machines could be hacked, along with NYU's Brennan Center for Justice who detailed more than 120 security threats to E-voting security, and even the Washington Post who declared that a "Single Personal Could Reverse an Election".)

So much disinfo from the liars and scoundrels in San Diego who are entrusted to run the people's elections, so little online time (for me at least) to counter it all. Thanks in advance to those of you who can continue to do so in my absence! And thanks for your understanding over the next several weeks while I continue to be gone!

(Note to Winter Patriot or John Gideon: Feel free to add links to any of the above text as you are able or inclined!)

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Not for nothing is Chris Floyd one of my favorite journalists. He's one of my favorite bloggers too.

Why? Because he cares so much, because he writes so well, because he pays such close attention. And because he never fails to mention things like this:

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of the California Election Protection Network and the CA-50 Action Committee

While San Diego's North County Times could have been reporting on Friday's protest outside the Registrar of Voters' office, instead the NCTimes donated its column-inches to the noble cause of further misinforming the public about the June 6 election debacle and the people's fight for democracy.

In Recount fee goes unpaid: San Diego Registrar says no recount happening in 50th District race, staff writer Erin Schultz appears satisfied to report Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas's lies as fact:

The poor woman went to all the trouble of filing for a hand count under the recount provision and then didn't bother to pay the fee, eh? Not so fast. It just might be relevant to mention that it was an improperly required fee. The only fees the Registrar of Voters' office is allowed to charge are the actual costs of a recount. The exorbitant $6,000 demanded by the RoV's office as a deposit for the first day’s counting should have been reduced significantly when the voter requesting the recount advised the RoV that no counting panel would be needed on the first day, as she was still awaiting documents needed in order to proceed with the recount. Haas has failed to provide these documents despite Barbara Gail Jacobsen’s being legally entitled to have them and despite—or perhaps because of—their significance to the recount.

And why weren't the documents provided? What is Haas trying to hide?

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Brad has been too busy lately to remind us that his investigations, his blog, and everything else he does nowadays are funded by a few ads and a few donations. Too few donations, if the truth be known.

He's usually too modest to say what this means to him personally, but I'm not.

Brad used to have a career in which he made money. But that is no longer the case.

Clearly, Brad believes the work he does now is even more important than the work he used to do; I agree with him about that, and evidently so do you. It's just a tad inconvenient that his current work does very little to help him pay the rent.

If you appreciate the work Brad does, if you like reading (and maybe even commenting) on his blog, if you would like to see his investigative work continue, if you care about the future of our country, if you care about the truth and want to see more of it ... these are all good reasons to consider making a contribution.

It's easy to do --- see the blue box in the right-hand sidebar. And even if you can't contribute very much, please remember that every little bit helps.

How much does it matter? That's for you to decide. In my opinion, there is nothing at stake here except our future.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

According to an article in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer the recent Cuyahoga County primary fiasco was the result of widespread dysfunction in the county's election offices, where officials ignored specific warnings of the looming calamity, according to a report also released today that blames election chief Michael Vu and deputy chief Gwen Dillingham.

According to the paper:

In a companion article the Plain Dealer reports on the 13 warnings and gives some examples:

Tonight's "Democracy At Risk" featured a discussion of Wednesday's congressional hearings on electronic voting.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Readers of The BRAD BLOG know that the state of Arkansas had a "Train Wreck" in their primary election and that much of the blame was laid at the feet of their voting machine vendor Elections Systems and Software. Now the Associated Press and The Arkansas Democrat Gazette both report that an independent study has been done at the request of the state and the study agrees with what The BRAD BLOG has said all along.

According to the Associated Press article:

and they go on to report:

ES&S has the largest slice of the voting machine business in the country. They found it impossible to support a string of state primaries held over a 5 to 6 week time span. How are they ever going to be able to handle a general election where all 50 states vote at the same time?

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Big Cat is still on his "vacation" (as you can tell from his appearance yesterday on "Catherine Crier Live") and the kitten who has been trying to fill his "shoes" (do cats wear shoes? mine doesn't!) is too busy to blog very much at the moment. Maybe later, as they say, but not right now.

That shouldn't deter YOU! If you have something to say, please say it here!

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

NOTE FROM BRAD: I'm still out on the road, will be for a while, and thus unable to check into the net with much frequency! Not getting all of my email either because of it, so my apologies. Thanks Dave for getting this up! More when I am able to check back in from a location with net access and enough time to get caught up-ish.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

A few good news items for friends and allies of The BRAD BLOG:

Brad Friedman and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are scheduled to appear on Court TV Thursday afternoon (2PM Pacific time, 5PM Eastern) with host Catherine Crier, whose election coverage lately has been excellent!

ALSO: News Hounds covered DemocracyFest and even included a picture of Brad Friedman.

From the News Hounds item, here's a link to a website you might enjoy visiting: The CA50 Action Committee. Its "Get News" page says the first thing to do is visit The BRAD BLOG!

Cool! That's the same thing Mike Malloy kept saying the other night on Air America!

One more item of minor consequence: your lowly and nearly frozen correspondent has resumed blogging again, if only because Cynthia McKinney Is Getting Robbed And Nobody Is Even Blogging About It! So, in the words of an old familiar phrase, please don't read my blog.

UPDATE: Video of the Catherine Crier Live appearance (with RFK Jr. as well) is now online here...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Staff Writer Leslie Wolf Branscomb of the San Diego Union-Tribune actually gets some of the story right in her July 19th piece: Reliability of voting machines questioned.

Brad mentioned this story yesterday, noting that it was among "the worst" of the most recent local coverage of the Busby/Bilbray election, which, as all regular readers know, happened over a month ago and is still under a cloud of doubt.

Just before he left for his "vacation", Brad mentioned that "the reporters continue to allow Haas to pass on his knowing obfuscations, and the media is usually too lazy or ill-informed to bother to call him on it. So that's your job now!" and he also said: "Please help such media out by giving them the facts to counter Haas' ass-covering spin, misleads, red-herrings and bald-faced lies."

And so, without further ado ... after the fold you will find extended excerpts and some commentary from your lowly and nearly frozen guest-blogger.

And please also read Brad's post on the subject, if you haven't done so already.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

A timely reminder from our friend Jay:

I'm getting ready to go out of town for a bit, and will need to rely on 6 or 7 of you to help keep San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas' misleading statements and out-and-out lies from making their way into "conventional wisdom".

He's working hard to cover his ass right now in regard to his horrendous administration of the June 6th U.S. House special election between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray, in which he allowed programmed, hackable, election-ready Diebold electronic voting machines to become effectively decertified (at both the state and federal level) when he sent them home with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election. As he well knows, that means he allowed illegal votes to be cast on those decertified voting machines used across the entire California 50th congressional district.

There are loads of articles on all of this today in the San Diego papers and on the local television news websites. That's all good, in general, even though the reporters continue to allow Haas to pass on his knowing obfuscations, and the media is usually too lazy or ill-informed to bother to call him on it. So that's your job now! Especially while I'm otherwise on and off the grid over the next several weeks trying to sneak in some much needed R&R.

(On that note, I'm leaving ASAP, but am scheduled to appear live tomorrow night on Catherine Crier's CourtTV show at 5pm ET. Probably will have to do it from Vegas, where I'll be nearby. Currently RFK Jr. is booked along with me on tomorrow's show.)

So, very quickly before I scram, here are are Mikel Haas' top three spins, lies and misleads of late that he's shoveling out to media, as witnessed in coverage over just the past 24 hours on San Diego's Channel 8, Channel 10, the North County Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, just to name a few. (Channel 10 and the U-T story had the worst of them)

Please help such media out by giving them the facts to counter Haas' ass-covering spin, misleads, red-herrings and bald-faced lies. Here are his latest Top Three most dangerous, disingenuous and misleading whoppers...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Atlanta Progressive News has published a long article about a situation we were very interested in yesterday, which otherwise seems poised to fall off the map. How curious!

The APN piece is called Machine Vote-Flipping Claimed in McKinney Primary and I have found it on the net in a very few places. But I can't find any other news about this story on at all. Anywhere. Even the "McKinney for Congress" website is quiet --- it hasn't been updated since yesterday afternoon as far as I can tell.

In the interests of getting this story a bit more exposure, we provide not only a link to it (above) but we will also post generous excerpts below the fold.

By the way, according to the "official" results of the election, McKinney got more votes than any of the other candidates, but not a majority, and she will have to go through a run-off against her most successful opponent, Hank Johnson, to whom votes were being flipped yesterday according to the reports we have received.