Notable news around the nation in regard to Electronic Voting, Election Reform and Voting in general is coming now at a more and more frenetic pace. We've got much more we're personally working on, but today there were a few other small-ish, yet notable-ish stories worth mentioning. Here they are --- wrapped into one single, user-friendly, BRAD BLOG item...

1) California May Want to Get Ready for Diebold Related Lawsuits
Voter Action --- the group who has successfully received a Temporary Restraining Order against the purchase of Sequoia voting machines in New Mexico while they enjoy unprecedented "discovery" on such machines --- has turned their eye towards Diebold in California, given the latest developments/shenanigans concerning SoS Bruce McPherson's re-certification in apparent violation of state laws and regulalations. The Voter Action press release issued today indicates that litigation in California, similar to that in New Mexico, might be very appropriate. Stay tuned.

2) Greens/Libertarians Demand Reinstatement of Federal Ohio '04 Recount Suit
Yes, they're still fighting for your vote to be counted. A Federal judge recently dismissed their lawsuit charging that the 2004 Ohio Presidential Recount was gamed. The reason for the dismissal: The point was now moot, since the 2004 recount procedures would not be used again. But, according to 2004 Green Party Presidential Candidate David Cobb, what the judge didn't know when he dismissed the case, was that Ohio's SOB SoS, J. Kenneth Blackwell, recently announced that recount procedures would be the same in the future. Game back on, says Cobb in his motion to re-instate the case.

3) Diebold Whistleblower Charged With Three Felony Counts
The LA Times reports today (link above) that Stephen Heller, the man who released internal memos from Diebold's California law firm in 2002 showing they were aware of a number of election law violations pled "not guilty" to the charges. Says his attorney, "Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections." Diebold fought to keep the docs from being published. They lost. Eventually it all led to a multi-million dollar settlement with California and BlackBoxVoting.org, who has more on this...

4) TV News Waking Up to Election Reform Issues!
WGAL in Philadelphia covers the Electoral mess hitting their state. The second of their two-part report takes a look into the unsavory legal backgrounds of virtually ALL of the American Voting Machine companies. From ES&S to Sequoia to Danaher to Diebold, etc. Here's to more local news outlets jumping into the game where the national media is failing!

5) George W. Bush Acts Like He Gives a Damn About the Voting Rights Act
A few years ago, he didn't know what it was. Now, with it coming up for renewal in 2007, after his Dept. of Justice has all but gutted it, Bush has the temerity to call for its renewal as if he cares about it. Says Bush in this short video today (thanks David Edwards!): The VRA is a "milestone in the history of civil Rights. Congress must act to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965." Like he could give a shit.

6) Parallel Universe: Election Reform as Covered by Fox "News"
A preview of how the MSM (led as usual by Fox) will likely cover Election Reform as soon as they notice the massive crisis. Which is to say, they'll report on everything that doesn't matter, but that which Fox and the GOP tells them is important. In their article, Fox, of course, puts the emphasis on States that haven't implemented HAVA fast enough, Photo ID requirement laws, the non-existent problem of "Voter Fraud" (yes, all the Baker/Carter Commission cretins, including our friend, the unrepentant Robert Pastor make unsurprisingly Fox-friendly cameos) and finally, at the end --- the very end --- a brief nod to a few concerns about Electronic Voting. The biggest concern there? "Inexperienced poll workers" having problems with the "new technology." Hey, it's the "#1 Name in News" for a reason, baby!

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

From Alabama comes a report that ES&S had an internal communications problem and they provide the optical scan machines used in Belforest in their elections. "The company delivered "data packs" --- the electronic devices in which the voters' selections are stored --- programmed for absentee voting, causing the two machines to reject the ballots, Johns said. The situation did not affect the voting, as voters filled out their ballots and slipped them in an emergency bin used for occasions such as this one, he said." Imagine if that had been DREs instead of optical-scan. Just why is there an IrDA port on those Diebold machines? Just a reminder, that this will be the last Daily Voting News until next Tuesday evening. I will be off line until then. Have a great weekend....

We hate to pile on... (Or do we?)

But, really, with all the recent discussion of California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's mind-blowing about-face re-certification of Diebold --- against state law, we hasten to add --- this may be a good time to point out one small item that we've been meaning to mention for a while.

As Jody Holder's recent comment points out, McPherson's silly "conditions" for re-certification of Diebold in California require a few much-less-than-adequate knee-jerk "safe guards" towards protection of the handling of the hackable memory cards in Diebold's voting machines. (Here's McP's full "Certificate of Conditional Certification").

Never mind, as Holder mentions, that the protective seals to be required are easily peeled away without tearing. Or that such voting machines have been stored in poll workers houses for weeks leading up to an election. More to the point, for the moment, there are ways to manipulate the information on those memory cards even without removing them or breaking the seals. This is more of a concern than ever, since it was recently proven, by the now-infamous Harri Hursti hack in Leon County, FL, that changing the information on the memory cards can force election results to be flipped...without a trace being left behind.

On that note, here's the little item we've been meaning to point out. It's a photograph from the side of a Diebold AccuVote TSx TS6 touch-screen voting machine:

Now we have no idea what that "IrDA" port is meant to be used for with a touch-screen voting machine, but we do know that the IrDA (Infrared Data Association) is an Infrared port used for wireless connection between two devices. We used to have one on the back of our notebook and desktop computers which we used to keep the two systems synched up via wireless data transfers over that Infrared port.

A few election watchdog groups, including some members of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) who works with the federal authorities on these matters, have issued warnings about the IrDA port and protocols on voting machines. However, little --- if anything --- seems to have been done to mitigate the rather obvious security threat posed, as far as we can tell.

Here's how a page at Microsoft.com, last updated December 4, 2001, explains cable-free Infrafred data transfer on the Microsoft Windows CE operating system (the operating system which happens to be used in Diebold's AccuVote touch-screen voting machines --- like the one pictured above)...

There ya go.

The issue of the IrDA port on touch-screen voting machines hasn't been much discussed as far as we can tell. VotersUnite.org issued an alert mentioning it, with a photograph (seen at right), back on October 26, 2004. The alert warned:

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) --- who works with the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to develop and recommend guidelines for electronic voting machines --- issued a similar warning [PDF] about the Infrared ports on voting machines in a report which warned "The use of short range optical wireless," like infrared, "particularly on Election Day should not be allowed."

As mentioned, since touch-screen machines have been stored at poll workers' houses and other unsecured locations prior to Election Day, and since data can be transferred to the machines and their memory cards via Infrared --- even without removing the cards or breaking their protective seals --- the IrDA ports would seem to be a tremendous concern.

The NIST report discusses such concerns and some of the troubling security issues with IrDA protocols:

The undated report --- from the EAC's own standards body, NIST --- then goes on to describe how simple and readily available IrDA software drivers are to obtain for use with UNIX and most Windows Operating Systems, including Windows CE. As well, it points out that such software could add executable code to the machines on, or prior to, Election Day and could then delete itself after ithe code has completed its main purpose [emphasis ours]:

Obviously, that last paragraph is very troubling. But also note the section about COTS.

The source code for that "Commercial-Off-The-Shelf" software is what Diebold recently argued that they couldn't provide to North Carolina after they changed their law to require all voting machine vendors to submit such code in order to receive state certification. Diebold went to state court arguing they shouldn't be forced to supply the source code for COTS software. Eventually, they lost that battle, and notified North Carolina they preferred to pull out of the state entirely (if the state wouldn't change the law for them) rather than complying with the state law requiring the submission of all such source code.

And another comment posted to NIST's voting website [PDF] by James C. Johnson on October 5, 2005, also discusses the concern, revealing that the use of the IrDA protocols could be used at any time, even after final "Logic and Accuracy" tests have been performed, and thus "totally compromising the system":

Perhaps some of you have additional thoughts on this matter. Like why such a port would be needed, or even present, on a touch-screen voting machine at all. And why the existence of such a port --- to our knowledge --- has hardly been discussed at all in conjuction with these machines. Especially in light of the now-infamous Leon County, FL "hack test" proving that executable code can be added to Diebold's memory cards resulting in a completely flipped election...as we've said...without a trace being left behind.

CORRECTION: We had previously identified the machine in the article's first photo as a TSx, when it's actually from a slightly older TS6 like those used in Maryland and elsewhere. The second photo, with all of the various ports identified, was originally taken from the Diebold AccuVote TS User's Manual. We have conflicting reports on whether the IrDA port is still used on the newer TSx machines and will try to follow up later with definitive information when we can get it.

UPDATE 6/28/06: Something happened during our import to the new software here at BRAD BLOG to munge up the comments section of this post. We'll see if we can figure out how to restore them correctly. Until then, we've turned off the comments on this post.

God bless the doctors...and the U.S. Constitution...Sanity prevails, if only for the moment, in California.

Crumbling down.

One of the original Neocon architects and a signer of the infamous PNAC letter, Francis Fukuyama, says the movement has failed and has "evolved into something I can no longer support," according to this report.

Further, he makes what can only be seen as an exceedingly uncomfortable --- yet perfectly apt --comparison between the Bush Administration policies and ... Leninism.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Texas began early voting for their primary with the news that many counties still do not have their paper ballots or their ballot programming complete. In California the fall-out from last Friday's announcement by SoS McPherson is making news. One can only wonder when the lawsuits will begin....

Inveterate Huff Po contributor, R.J. Eskow picks up on our coverage of the latest mind-blowing Dieboldery by California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and what it may bode for the Golden State as the GOP sets their sights on political manifest destiny.

Connecting a few dots, and noting big Bush Adminstration gunslingers, like Steve Schmidt, who are roving their way westward to help shore up the Governator's re-elect prospects out here, Eskow concludes:

Note: Eskow's appropriate concerns about McPherson's inexplicable Diebold double-cross don't even mention the Dept. of Homeland Security's warning about their hackable tabulator software, the recently flipped-without-a-trace-left-behind mock election in Leon County, FL, the GAO Report confirming the dangers of electronic voting, and his link to a page describing the failure rate of Diebold machines in a massive election test last summer pins the percentage of failed Diebold touch-screen machines at just 10% (a later report confirmed the number was more like 20%, and a later one still pegged it at 30%.)

It also still remains unexplained why McPherson didn't wait to hear back from the federal "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA) --- which isn't actually independent, as it's created and funded by the Voting Machine Companies themselves --- to whom McPherson had sent back the Diebold memory cards after the Leon County hack test revealed their machines employed hackable "interpreted code" which is expressly banned by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) guidelines for software used in electronic voting machines.

Back in December, McPherson's office sent a letter to Diebold explaining that they would not re-certify Diebold in California until the ITA completed their re-examination of the code in light of the hack test discovery:

Apparently, the SoS's office was just kidding.

They went ahead and re-certified Diebold out here last week without waiting to hear back. They announced their decision late on Friday, at the start of the long holiday weekend and in apparent defiance of state election law and McPherson's own "10 Strict Standards" [PDF] which include "State certification testing does not begin until the federal qualification testing is successfully completed."

Apparently, he was just kidding about that as well.

With all of that in mind, readers of this blog would be remiss if they failed to take the actions described in Eskow's link to Skippy. Five phone-calls and/or emails this week are all that may be needed to finally see representatives from these unpatriotic Voting Machine firms subpeonaed and forced to answer questions --- under oath --- in a public hearing before elected officials concerning their secret software, shitty machines and under-the-table efforts to work around state and federal election laws. Hit that link, and call the five members of the California legislature's Rules Committee now!

By the way, McPherson himself also refused to show up at that hearing and refused to send a representative from his office to boot.

It should also be noted that Diebold is not the only bad player here. Add ES&S, Hart-Intercivic, Sequoia and several others to the list of cowardly unAmerican firms who recently refused the invitation to show up to testify before the California State Senate's Election Committee last week. All of those companies, apparently, believe it's none of our damned business how they count the votes (or not) in our American democracy.

Take action.

For full disclosure, we should also mention that we had the privilege of meeting both R.J. and Skippy in person over the weekend in an L.A. Blogger's get together out here. Good folks all of them, and we're delighted to see them jump into this most important game of all.

And finally --- since we've been looking for a good excuse to post this video --- we'll take this opportunity to give you an exclusive peek inside the "brain" of the man whose perplexing decision to re-certify voting machines and software known to be flawed and hackable may well effect similar decisions by Elections Officials around the entire country.

The following short Q&A with CA's SoS was video-taped by Dave Berman of GuvWurld about two weeks prior to the recent about face by McPherson. It's somewhat revealing --- particularly in the last couple of minutes where Dave gets to ask the questions --- as to the mindset and intellectual capabilities of the man currently appointed by Arnold to oversee free and fair elections in the country's largest "voting market" (as Diebold refers to it).

At one point in the questioning, when asked about the re-examination of Diebold software by the ITA, McPherson says, "If they're going to be certified, they're going to have to meet those levels of satisfactions to me...We, uh, we've, uh, just said that, uh, you have to meet these strict requirements and if they do, we'll consider it."

Apparently, McPherson was just kidding there as well....Since he recertified them without, apparently, waiting to hear back from the ITA.

Without further ado then, we give you the man, the myth, the elusive and rarely seen genius that is California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson --- as videotaped exclusively about two weeks ago in Humboldt County, just prior to his re-certification of Diebold voting machines in this state.

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

UPDATE: CA State Senator Debra Bowen (chair of the Senate Elections Committee) issues her own call to action to force McPherson to review his outrageous decision. Her reasons are summarized thusly:

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

A recently revealed secret memo from general counsel of the U.S. Navy warned the Bush Administration to halt the "disastrous and unlawful policy of authorizing cruelty toward terror suspects."

The memo shows that torture and abuse of detainees was a policy of the Bush Administration despite legal warnings from lawyers within the Military. Determined to continue the abusive policies, the Bush Administration sought out legal opinions which allowed them to go "above the law."

The New Yorker exposes the secret document (PDF) in a newly published article by Jane Mayer. In an interview with CNN American Morning, Mayer said:

UPDATE: The name in CNN screenshot above should be spelled "John Yoo" instead of "John Woo". For more information on the history of torture policies in the Bush Administration and John Yoo, check out this video from the CBC report "A Few Bad Apples."

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

What's going on in Maryland? The Gov is against a vvpb; now he is for it. Democratic members of the legislature who are for a vvpb are belittling the Governor's change of heart as being political and are claiming he is creating chaos. Now kids! Can't we just get along and give the voter a vvpb like they want? Meanwhile in Pennsylvania the Governor has said he will veto the legislation that requires a voterID...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff repeated the Katrina talking points on at least three networks yesterday. Maybe he forgot his talking points to deflect questions about a decision by the Bush Administration which will allow a company located in an Arab country to takeover six of the largest ports in the U.S.

Dubai Ports is located in the United Arab Emirates which has a history that causes many Republicans and Democrats to believe that the proposed takeover will compromise national security.

The corporate media seem to have replaced their focus on the Cheney shooting scandal with the Bush port give-away scandal. This clip is a quick compilation from the last 48 hours of pundits, politicians and other talking heads as they wake up to the latest Bush blunder.

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

Michelle Pilecki at Huff Po picks up on last week's story alleging that Ann Coulter committed a third-degree felony recently by voting in a precinct other than the one where her "$1.8 million crib on Seabreeze Avenue" in Palm Beach County reportedly is. She says it's a lie. The reporter who wrote the story says it's not:

UPDATE 3/30/06: The Palm Beach Election Supervisor jumps in, and gives Coulter 30 days to explain herself before possibly referring felony charges to the State Attorney. Details here...

It's a curiously tardy call, WaPo, but welcome aboard.

From an editorial in today's Washington Post:

There's more, but note WaPo's additional spanking of MD Elections Administrator and huge Diebold supporter, Linda Lamone:

Looks like our old friend, the indefatigably corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), is making news again.

St. Petersberg Times takes a front page look at the "allegations pil[ing] up" against Feeney. Here's some highlights:

So will Feeney disclose who paid for that trip to China last month, in which he visited the Chinese Space Agency and called for more cooperation with them? Perhaps he should, considering that NASA, where his wife also works, is in Feeney's district. Even more notably, Feeney spent years as the general counsel and registered lobbyist for the firm Yang Enterprises, Inc. --- which harbored an illegal Chinese alien eventually found guilty of espionage charges related to sending military missile guidance chips to China --- a firm that currently has lucrative contracts with NASA.

Full disclosure on this matter would seem to be particularly important, given the revelation of Feeney's lies regarding his continuing relationship with the Yangs and their company.

On a related point, here's an unfortunate little tidbit from the article:

The list of allegations against Feeney continues in the article, along with some ink for Clint Curtis' run for Congress against him:

Here's a complete list of Reps who received money from Duke Cunningham. Feeney is among those accepting the most, but has not returned the money at this time.

Hat-tip to Jesselee from Stakeholder, who has more on the St. Pete Times article.

Clint Curtis' campaign website, where he needs much financial and logistical support if he's to have a chance of taking on Feeney and the Florida Republican Machine is right here.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...

Mary Matalin appeared on NBC Meet the Press (transcript) to defend Vice President Cheney's handling of the shooting scandal. She attacked NBC White House correspondent David Gregory and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for their attention to the discrepancies in Cheney's story.

So, Matalin slips in the inflammatory "jihad" remark and then accuses Gregory of "saving up for that line"?

I created a video compilation of the exchanges between Matalin, Gregory and Dowd that is posted at Crooks and Liars. If you haven't already seen it, watch the clip here in streaming flash format or download other video formats at Crooks and Liars.

Matalin's performance is a popular topic throughout the blogosphere: Arianna Huffington, firedoglake, Think Progress, AMERICAblog, James Wolcott, Hullabaloo, Talking Points Memo.