Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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In Iraq, the month of May saw the largest number of Iraqi civilian deaths since the war began 3 years ago. The Baghdad morgue reported over 1400 dead in May. Over 400 of the dead Iraqis could not be identified. Some journalists, like veteran reporter Robert Fisk, claim that the officials are under-reporting the actual number of deaths. In addition, many more bodies can never be counted because explosions and road side bombs often leave little evidence of human remains.

What's clear is that the violence in Iraq is increasing at a pivotal time for the fledgling Iraqi government. Even the shell-shocked Iraqis are stunned by the new level of violence. For example, over a two day period, 18 severed heads wrapped in plastic have been discovered. The likely cause are the escalating sectarian revenge killings.

In this video, an Iraqi woman cries,

ADDENDUM FROM BRAD: Good timing for David Edward's post here. I was about to do one of my own, pointing out this report that 6,000 Iraqi corpses have been discovered in the last 5 months. Given Iraq's population of appx. 25 million, compared with the US's population of 300 million. The equivalent of 6000 deaths in Iraq over the past five months would be some 72,000 in America. If we had 72,000 murders via "sectarian violence" in America in just five months, would that be considered a civil war? Or would we criticize the media for not reporting all the "good news" in our country?

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

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Yesterday on the Lou Dobb's Show on CNN, Lou's crack reporter, Kitty Pilgrim did the second of a two-part (with more to come we hope) report on the ownership of Sequoia Voting by a foreign conglomerate that is directly owned by Venezuelan nationals with direct ties to the Hugo Chavez regime.

It was fun to see Lou all blustery and nearly spitting as he decried the fact that the US government had allowed a foreign owned company to buy a company that supplies voting machines to states and counties.

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ADDITIONAL THOUGHT FROM BRAD: It should also be pointed out here, when the questions/concerns about Sequoia's ownership are raised, that it's no different from the "local" privatized ownership of all of the other companies, such as Diebold, ES&S, etc. They are equally, if not more, partisan and their privatized (and secretized) ownership of our public elections should be of equal concern to Lou Dobbs, and all other, mostly rightwingers, who are suddenly concerned about the ownership of Sequoia!
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A transcript of the show follows but a lot is missed if you cannot watch the video above.

Also Jack Cafferty asked about the honesty of the election process in his "Cafferty Files" segment on CNN's "Situation Room".

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UPDATE: Tonight on Lou Dobbs - Warren Stewart, Legislative Director from VoteTrustUSA and a poll worker in the Bay Area in CA. and Avi Rubin, Computer Scientist and possibly a poll worker again this year in Maryland.
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Text transcripts from both of yesterday's segments follow?

Wish You Were Gore...

(Hat tip BRAD BLOG emailer Justin F.)

UPDATE 6:56pm PT: Judge Denies Injunction! Suit Dismissed! Details follow in an update following our original coverage...

A last-minute Election Eve compaint has been filed in a Los Angeles courtroom within the hour calling on LA County's registrar of voters, Conny B. McCormack to immediately remove Diebold elecronic voting machine tabulators, said to have illegal access to the Internet as well as uncertified tabulation software, from counting rooms at the county's main facility in Norwalk, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

The plaintiffs in the case are Cindy Asner and Cynthia Henderson, LA County Chair of the Peace and Freedom Party.

The emergency filing, being heard at this hour, is based on an affidavit filed today by Green Party election system inspector, John Wenger, a PhD and retired software engineer from Northrup Grumman who has been tracking LA County's use of electronic voting machines over the past month along with several other inspectors from both the Green and Democratic parties. The BRAD BLOG spoken at length with Wenger over the weekend, and has reviewed a draft version of his declaration being filed with the suit. (The final version of Wenger's declaration is now posted at the end of this article.)

Los Angeles county is the largest voting area in California. The state is holding its Primary Election tomorrow. Touch-screen Diebold voting machines --- now shown to be hackable and highly vulnerable to malicious tampering at both the point of the voting machine itself and its central tabulator software --- are used for early voting only in LA County. Though early voting in LA began several weeks ago and ended last Friday, tabulation of votes cast during that period will not begin until the polls close on Tuesday evening at 8pm PT.

The race is an important one to Election Integrity advocates since state senator Debra Bowen is running in a primary race in hopes of winning the Democratic nomination to take on Republican CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson who has been a supporter of vulnerable electronic voting machines, including Diebold's, in the state. As well, the LA County Registrar of voters, Conny B. McCormack has been a long-time supporter of Diebold and their election equipment and has even been featured, via photograph and endorsement, on promotional brochures distributed by the controversial Ohio company. (See graphic below.)

This year's primary is also being closely watched due to a Democratic primary challenge by anti-war candidate Marcy Winograd against powerful pro-war Democratic U.S. House Representative Jane Harman in the state's 36th U.S. Congressional district.

Further, another troubling detail about Diebold's touch-screen systems in the county was revealed on Friday of last week when The BRAD BLOG received an email indicating that one voter at least --- Michael Shure, a political commentator on Sirius Sattelite's The Young Turks radio program --- who voted on the Diebold touch-screen machines was given the incorrect ballot.

Shure, who lives in CA's 36th congressional district noted that his touch-screen ballot gave him the option to vote for Rep. Henry Waxman, who is running unopposed in his U.S. Congressional primary, instead of the Winograd/Harman race which should have been on his ballot.

"Unbelievable," Shure wrote in his email. "Had I not known, as I am sure many voters don't, who my Rep. was, and what district I live in, I would have been voting for someone else."

Indeed, Shure's experience underscores further dangers of combined precincts using elecronic touch-screen voting machines as Los Angeles offers during the early voting period when voters may go to any early voting location and cast their ballot on machines which --- supposedly --- offer them the appropriate ballot for their particular district.

The experience has left the Winograd campaign wondering how many other voters may have missed out on the opportunity to vote in that contentious race and whether or not they may need to file a challenge to the election in order to find out.

UPDATE 6:56pm PT: Judge Denies Injunction! Suit Dismissed! Details follow below...

We don't generally do endorsements around here for the most part. In the case of California state Senator Debra Bowen's primary race to be the Democratic nominee for California's Secretary of State, however, we're more than happy to make an exception.

While many Californians --- and even more non-Californians --- may not know it, the path towards restoring America's crumbling democracy may well rest in a little noticed primary race that will take place here on Tuesday.

Bowen, as state senator and chair of the state's Election Committee in Sacramento, has led the way where few Democratic elected officials have even bothered to acquaint themselves. Specifically, Bowen has studied, learned, investigated, held hearings and delved deep into that murky territory of electronic voting, electoral integrity and the threat to our democracy posed by the privatization of our public electoral system by corporate interests using secret software to "count" America's votes.

As private and partisan corporations such as Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia, Hart InterCivic and all the rest have spidered out across the electoral landscape, usurping American values in the name of insidious corporate greed and at the expense of transparency, auditability and confidence in our once-great American democracy --- all at the cost and waste of billions of your taxpayer dollars, by the way --- few politicians have bothered to wend their way through the impossibly arcane and brain-withering technical details wherein the devil lies, most assuredly, in these matters of electronic voting.

An avowed computer geek, Bowen has been paying attention to these matters from the get-go while the vast majority of elected pols today do little more than whistle past democracy's graveyard. She has fought for electoral integrity by successfully moving legislation into law which mandates audits (only 1%, but hey, it's a start) and paper records (not paper ballots, but hey, it's a start) for every vote cast in the Golden State.

While one would think such ideas would be no-brainers for every state in the union, it's remarkable how few seem to give a damn about any of those ideas and, in fact, have gone out of their way to fight off mandates for such accountability in elections. Debra Bowen, on the other hand, does give a damn...

It looked promising for a start. USA Today files a report today headlined "Spate of lawsuits target e-voting".

As we've been calling for for some time, a national media outlet begins to connect some of the many "local" dots around the country. Then, of course, they blow it.

Here's the good news, early in the story (all stuff we've reported long ago, but happy to see it reported here, of course):

No mention of other "some problems" in primaries so far this year in Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, etc. But okay. What gets us is that the story then goes on to quote only two sources, both of whom are E-Voting advocates and both of whom suggest there is nothing to worry about and that these systems "can be trusted."

Not one quote from any of the myriad computer scientists and security experts who have decried the enormous flaws and security vulnerabilities in loads of electronic voting machines describing them as shocking, alarming, critical, etc. etc. etc.

Beginning to see any patterns here?

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Wolf Blitzer hosted a "debate"/ambush on CNN's Situation Room between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Bush/Cheney '04 spokesman, Terry Holt. In his Rolling Stone article Kennedy shows that Republicans prevented 350,000 voters from voting or having their votes counted.

Blitzer allowed a more civil discussion than did Tucker Carlson in another recent interview with Kennedy. CNN must have decided that an interview with Kennedy --- which would be entirely warranted --- would have appeared partisan. Republicans don't need someone who is uniquely qualified to defend their illegal electioneering in Ohio. Terry Holt can parrot the same tired GOP lies talking points and unsubstantiated, evidence-free charges as well as any talking head.

Holt said he would turn Kennedy's charges of Republic election rigging "on it's head". His first line of defense was that "an exhaustive bipartisan study of all 88 counties in Ohio was conducted after the election and Republicans and Democrats... have agreed that there was no significant or insignificant fraud." Kennedy is quick with a strong response, saying that, "there has no been no bipartisan commission... It's simply wrong to say that."

Holt wasted no time in blaming the voter. The true threat to America's democracy are the statistically insignificant fake voter registrations. Especially dangerous are those voters that attempt to "stuff the ballot box" registering with fake names like "Mickey Mouse" and "Michael Jordan". Holt's second talking point is a favorite in the Republican's long term strategy to restrict voting rights. They use this argument for everything from establishing voter Ids to purging Democrat voters from the rolls.

Robert Kennedy found his voice and easily defeated Holt's weak attempt to divert attention from the real issues. A few "Mickey Mouse" registrations hardly compare to the fact that Republicans stole the 2004 Presidential election by subverting the will of 350,000 voters in Ohio.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Allow me to add to David's analysis here that there is not one known instance of phony "Mickey Mouse" or "Michael Jordan" registrations actually recorded as having voted. Holt spent no time speaking to the serious charges made by Kennedy in Rolling Stone but rather made up his own phony, unsupported nonsense. All the while Blitzer charged Kennedy didn't present evidence to support his charges (apparently, only if RJK Jr. had brought forward someone admitting they personally rigged the election would that have been evidence of anything). In the meantime, Blitzer allowed Holt to spread his unsubstantiated garbage without being challenged even once.

The complete text transcript from the video interview from Friday, June 2nd's edition of The Situation Room on CNN follows...

Much coming. But none of it for the moment, as I climb mountains over here for many hours today and tonight. Therefore, consider this an open thread if you like until I can come out from under...

That said, investigative journalist and BRAD BLOG friend, Greg Palast, whose new book Armed Madhouse hits the shelves this week has been kind enough to offer us 10 signed copies of the book for use as a premium to contributors here!

Couldn't come at a better time, frankly, as we are also being forced to expedite some software/design changes sooner rather than later due to increasingly virulent spam/hack attempts that have taken the site down at various times over the last several weeks. They are getting worse, and our hope is the new software will ward off some of those attacks (as well as allowing for many enhancements I've been hoping to make for some time --- more on all of this later.) To make it all happen sooner, rather than later, however, is going to cost no small amount of money for me, but it's gotten so bad I've got no choice.

So...The first 10 folks who send in donations of $50 or more will receive a signed copy of Greg's new book shipped to you by mail! (We're undercutting Greg himself who is offering same for $100 on his site!) If interested, please be sure to give your mailing address when you donate so we know where to ship it!

Thanks go to Greg for his generous offer and support of the blog! To learn more about Armed Madhouse, see my earlier posts about the day I recorded audio for the Armed Madhouse audio version with Ed Asner and Janeane Garafalo (here,) as well as some exclusive readings from those sessions by myself and Asner (here.) Or just stop by www.GregPalast.com.

To donate online click here. For snail mail donations, see the address in the blue box at right. (Though I can't guarantee you'll be amongst the first 10 if you go by snail mail, I receive few enough donations however, that you may actually still have a pretty good chance!)

I'd be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to thank all of you who have supported The BRAD BLOG throughout the years. Your generosity is consistently moving and help makes all of this possible. I never enjoy having to ask for support, but that's what we've got as of now. I do try to send a personal thanks via email to those who donate online, but it's almost impossible for me to reply personally to those who send in snail mail donations. So I hope this thanks goes at least some of the way to share my appreciation for your incredibly generous support, no matter what what form it may come by!

UPDATE 6/5/06: Thanks guys! We received 13 donations before I was able to get back here and cut it off, so I'm going to see if I can get 3 more books from GP. If not, I'll let the final three who came in know about it, and return the donations to ya, if you like. In the meantime, of course, donations from any readers out of pure altruistic support of The BRAD BLOG are always appreciated (and needed) either way. Thanks again! I'll try and make more such premiums available in the near future!

There's an excellent article today in the Salt Lake Tribune concerning Emery County, Utah's 23-year elected (and now embattled) county clerk, Bruce Funk. Funk allowed computer security experts to examine his new Diebold touch-screen voting systems, resulting in the discovery of an enormous security flaw that would allow anybody with a bare minimum access to the machines to completely change the election software, the operating system, and even the computer firmware in a matter of minutes --- and with no password necessary!

We broke the early details on this story several weeks ago. States around the country have been scrambling to figure out how to deal with this huge security flaw ever since (as it effects every Diebold touch-screen machine in every state in the country, and access to one, can effect all the others in the same precint and/or county). States other than Utah, anyway, whose officials are attempting to push Funk out of his job and are claiming that everything is just fine with their hackable Diebold touch-screen voting systems. Nothing to worry about here.

Read the article. It's very good. But I'm pulling it out, just so that I can give you another taste of Diebold's sad spokesman, David Bear's latest --- and perhaps most pathetically ridiculous --- statement to date on this thing...

And why would anyone, with millions and billions of dollars at stake in each and every one of these elections ever have any interest in committing such a felony? Good lord.

Bear's classic 'Orwellian/Bushian Doublespeak' concerning a "redundant enhancement" is one for the hall of fame. Keep slingin' it, Dave!

Palm Peach Post columnist, Jose Lambiet gets another scoop in the ongoing saga of Ann Coulter's apparent vote fraud felony down in Palm Beach.

Lambiet reports today that Coulter is now lawyering up to fight the charges that she knowingly registered to vote in Florida at the wrong residence (using her real estate agent's address). That, despite signing an "oath" on the registration form swearing to the truth of the information provided.

After committing what then appears to be Step One of a felony charge that could bring her a $5,000 fine and 5 years in prison (as she agreed she understood on the form when she signed it), she then went on to vote in an election last February and was told she was registered elsewhere and needed to change her address. Instead of doing so, she hurriedly left the precinct without changing her information, and apparently went on to illegally vote at the precinct where she was fraudulently registered.

Faced with losing her right to vote in Florida, the rightwing hatemongering extremist (and Republican party superstar) who mercilessly criticized Florida voters in 2000 for their failure to follow directions at the voting booth, looks to be preparing to fight back. According to Lambiet...

The BRAD BLOG has posted several Exclusive documents from this sorry tale over the last several months since it broke. Amongst them:

As well, as we reported previously, the $25,000 homestead tax deduction she claimed for her new $1.3 million crib in Palm Beach would also now seem to be in question as possibly fraudulent since, according to Florida state law, one can only take such a deduction if the property in question is one's primary residence.

Lambiet reports today that the Palm Beach Elections Supervisor, Arthur Anderson, who had previously given Coulter until April 30th to explain herself (she didn't respond), will now wait "a few more weeks" before beginning a procedure to revoke her voting rights and then possibly refer the case to the State Attorney for prosecution.

Then again, she's a Republican. And this is Florida. So "the rule of law" no longer necessarily applies in such cases.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Tucker Carlson hosted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last night on MSNBC's The Situation. Kennedy has written an extensive new article in Rolling Stone which exposes how the the Republicans planned, coordinated and executed a plan to subvert the will of voters and put George Bush back in the White House.

As usual, Carlson conducts the interview with the attention span and intellect of a 3-year old (and that may be an insult to 3-year olds). Before Kennedy is allowed to speak, Tucker begins pulling out thinly veiled Republican and corporate media talking points designed to halt any post-election debate. In his lead-in, Tucker says, "Is it really possible that a conspiracy of this magnitude has been kept quiet this long?" Seconds later, turning to Robert Kennedy, Tucker asks, "You are alleging a massive (Carlson's emphasis) conspiracy to, as you put it, fix the 2004 election. A conspiracy of this size would have required the complicity of literally thousands of people. Why have none of those people come forward to admit they were part of it?"

By ignoring the evidence and repeatedly putting together words like "conspiracy" and "massive", Tucker uses one of the first and favorite talking points for those wishing to discourage the truth about Republican electioneering. Tucker implies that a conspiracy to steal a presidential election is logistically impossible. Anyone who believes such theories are irrelevant "crack pots", internet kooks, partisans and wear tinfoil hats to block out the mind control signals.

Tucker's next trusty talking point minimizes the evidence: "I have no doubt --- and I don't think that anybody would --- that there were voting irregularities in this election as there are in any election. Probably some crookedness, again, as there are in any election ." Carlson is implying that liberals, frustrated by Kerry's loss, are blowing normal election imperfections way out of proportion.

Tucker Carlson continued an assault on Kennedy and his article throughout the short interview. Kennedy fights for time to respond and does a good job indicting the media (and Tucker) for ignoring a very obvious problem. Tucker responds by saying that if the stolen election were real then it would have been a news story --- as if truth and reality only exists if the media reports on it.

In the end, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., managed to remain poised and believable. This interview alone may have done little to prove to MSNBC's viewers that there is significant evidence of a stolen election --- but the piece did prove one thing to us: Tucker Carlson is a complete ass.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Speaking of complete asses... Wolf Blitzer is scheduled to interview RFK Jr. tonight at 7pm ET (4pm PT) on The Situation Room.

In a sidebar editorial to today's expos頯n what Robert F. Kennedy suggests was a stolen 2004 Presidential Election in Rolling Stone a call is made for an official investigation into the Electronic Voting Machine scam.

Sub-titled "Electronic voting machines pose a grave threat to democracy," the editorial details one confirmed problem after another with Electronic Voting Machines (most of which we've been reporting here at The BRAD BLOG for the past two years). Included are details on how Diebold scammed their way into Ohio and helped push the Help America Vote Act through congress in 2002 (as we originally reported our own expos頨ere.)

"Enough." the RS editorial concludes, "Only a complete investigation by federal authorities can determine the full extent of any bribery and vote rigging that has taken place. The public must be assured that the power to count the votes --- and to recount them, if necessary --- will not be ceded to for-profit corporations with a vested interest in superseding the will of the people. America's elections are the most fundamental element of our democracy --- not a market to be privatized by companies like Diebold."

Hear! Hear!

Our discussions with Kennedy over the last several weeks, in advance of today's article, make it clear that he's not done with this issue yet. Not by a long shot. Stay tuned...

The astounding amount of corruption now catching up with the GOP is almost impossible to keep up with at this point. (Especially when your humble blogmaster is on the road supposedly to be enjoying a few days of R&R...How's that going, Brad?...Yeesh...)

Two stories of note from today and yesterday...

YESTERDAY: Thomas Noe, former head of the Lucas County, OH GOP and a "Pioneer" level (responsible for more than $100,000 in contributions) fundraiser for Bush/Cheney '04 has pled guilty to three charges including funnelling more than $45,000 in illegal contributions to the Bush/Cheney re-election effort in Ohio. He faces still faces more than four dozen other charges related to stealing more several million dollars from a rare-coin pension fund he managed for the state. Noe's wife, Bernadette, was the head of the Lucas County board of elections and was forced to step down after "irregularities" were found in their management of the 2004 election. Some of those points are discussed in Bobby Kennedy's Rolling Stone article on the gaming of the 2004 election today.

TODAY: The FEC finds that Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist broke the law by not declaring some $1.4 million in personal loans for his campaign. He's being fined $11,000. Just another day for Republicans who seem to have lost their once-vaunted interest in "the rule of law."

What will TOMORROW bring?...Place your bets...

As reported yesterday exclusively by BRAD BLOG, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s exposé "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" on the gaming of the 2004 Presidential Election is now live at Rolling Stone's website.

The online version of the article has detailed footnotes for sourcing, etc., which Rolling Stone tells us are not available in the published articles to hit stands tomorrow around the country. The issue is currently available on newsstands in both NYC and LA, according to an RS spokesman.

Here are extended excerpts from the article...

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Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in "tinfoil hats," while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as "conspiracy theories," and The New York Times declared that "there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale." But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004.

Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots ? or received them too late to vote ? after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment ? roughly one for every 100 cast.

The reports were especially disturbing in Ohio, the critical battleground state that clinched Bush's victory in the Electoral College. Officials there purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls, neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives, shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines and illegally derailed a recount that could have given Kerry the presidency. A precinct in an evangelical church in Miami County recorded an impossibly high turnout of ninety-eight percent, while a polling place in inner-city Cleveland recorded an equally impossible turnout of only seven percent. In Warren County, GOP election officials even invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count.
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But what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election.
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In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes ? enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
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Indeed, the extent of the GOP's effort to rig the vote shocked even the most experienced observers of American elections. "Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen," Lou Harris, the father of modern political polling, told me. "You look at the turnout and votes in individual precincts, compared to the historic patterns in those counties, and you can tell where the discrepancies are. They stand out like a sore thumb."

In a complaint said to be the broadest yet filed to halt the rise of the electronic voting machines, a non-partisan group of voters have announced they are filing suit today in Colorado to stop the purchase and use of Direct Recording Electronic ("DRE" or touch-screen) voting machines in the state, The BRAD BLOG can now reveal.

The suit, being filed today in Denver District Court and modeled after similar actions filed previously in California, Arizona and New Mexico, calls for an immediate halt to the use of touch-screen machines made by all four of the major electronic voting machine vendors currentlly doing business in Colorado.

The group, advised and organized by VoterAction.org contends that voting machines made by Diebold, Sequoia Voting Systems, Election Systems and Software Inc. (ES&S) and Hart InterCivic "have a well-documented history of problems with security, reliability, verifiability, and disability access."

According to a press release issued this morning (posted in full below) by the Denver law firm of Wheeler Trigg Kennedy LLP the machines "are easily hacked and compromised, and have a history of operational problems which have disrupted elections across the country."

Defendants named in the suit include Colorado Secretary of State Gigi Dennis and the Boards of county commissioners in 9 different CO counties.

"The Secretary of State's Office has failed to issue rules setting minimum standards for security of these systems. The election rules permit the DRE manufacturers to simply tell the State that their machines are secure," said Wheller Trigg Kennedy attorney Paul Hultin in the release. "Worse, the Secretary is not following the law. No certification reports required by law have been prepared even though these systems have been certified for months and counties are preparing to use these dubious systems in the upcoming election," he says.

"Some of the security risks with these machines are so high that it is unconscionable that their manufacturers, who have known of the problems for years, have not taken the necessary steps to correct them," says Univesity of Iowa computer science Professor Dr. Doug Jones, who is one of several experts who will be offering testimony in the case.

"The Help America Vote Act is being turned on its head, weakening the integrity of our elections in the rush to purchase untrustworthy DRE computerized voting systems," said Lowell Finley, Co-counsel for the Colorado voter plaintiffs, election law expert, and Co-director of Voter Action, according to the release. "The sanctity of our elections is too important to turn over to private corporations which operate without accountability. There are better and more secure options available, such as optical scan-paper balloting."

The complete filing is now online here [PDF]...

We're busy covering the Robert Kennedy article on Election 2004 in Rolling Stone today (we'll have extended excerpts on BRAD BLOG shortly), so we'll leave you with the complete press release below for more details on this developing case...