Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just 4 weeks ago the Athens Banner-Herald in Georgia editorialized in favor of the repressive new Georgia Voter ID law. This law had, just 3 days prior to the editorial, been found by a federal judge to be an example of a "Jim Crow-era Poll Tax" and thus the law was suspended. Critics have charged that the requirement for Photo ID at the polls will disenfranchise millions of mostly Democratic-leaning minorities, elderly, poor and urban-dwellers who don't own driver's licenses.

But things have changed since the Banner-Herald's original Op/Ed. One of the Georgia bill's sponsors, Rep. Sue Burmeister (R-Augusta), got caught with her sheet down when she made statements to the U.S. Department of Justice who had been tasked with determining the legality of the new law under the Federal Voting Rights Act. Her statements were released along with a story revealing that 4 of the 5 career staff members in the DoJ who were advising on the matter had recommended against giving approval to Georgia's new law. That advice was then overruled by the Bush-appointed Attorney General and the law was given DoJ approval just prior to be ruled as unconstitutional by two Federal courts.

In her statements, Burmeister is said to have told DoJ officials looking into the law that blacks in her district only vote when they are paid to do so. Those remarks are contained in the 51-page report from the DoJ's analysis recommending against approval of Georgia's law. Burmeister reportedly told officials that "when blacks in her precinct are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

Perhaps it is not so strange then that on November 22, after the release of the statements from Burmeister, the Athens Banner-Herald has admitted that perhaps there are changes that need to be made to Georgia's voter ID law. Perhaps it is not right, the paper now admits, to force all voters to have a state-issued voter ID card that costs the voter between $20 and $35. Perhaps it is not right to force a voter who cannot afford to pay for the card to sign a "Pauper's Affidavit" as the original law required.

So today, in a remarkable reversal, the Athens Banner-Herald's Executive Editor, Jason Winders, editorialized in a scathing article against Burmeister...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In New York it seems like a majority of voices, including the MSM, have come out in favor of optical-scan voting machines. Unfortunately the vendors working the state have all made the decision that they will not sell optical-scan machines no matter who, including the county officials, wants to buy them. In New Jersey we have another case of stupidity as elections officials conduct a recount on DRE voting machines....

Guest blogged by David Edwards

by Steve Bell
The Guardian

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It seems that the reports from California are less than accurate. They say that the test machine will be chosen from among machines used in 17 counties. That has never been agreed to by the state or Diebold. In fact, Hari Hursti has never been invited to fly over from Finland and no details have been set-up with BBV, according to Bev Harris. For some reason either the state or Diebold, or both, are misrepresenting the facts. A call to the California Elections Division found that everyone seems to be taking the day off....

Took a short break from taking a short break for Thanksgiving to appear on the Ed Schultz Show today. It was guest-hosted by our old pal, Tony Trupiano who has left his own show to run for Congress. So it was nice to both chat with him again, and hear him back on the air, if only briefly. We spoke about the latest electoral shenanigans in Ohio, California and across the country.

(BTW, concerning California's sudden flip-flop to consider re-allowing Diebold touch-screen machines back into the state after they'd previously de-certified them, please call CA Sec. of State Bruce McPhereson at 916-653-6814 ASAP and from the main menu press 6, then 3, to register your displeasure! As California goes, so goes the rest of the country!)

Anyway, my appearance on the Ed Schultz Show is here [MP3] for your listening pleasure.

As well, I've been remiss in getting archives up for various radio appearances of late. So for good measure, I'll toss in my latest appearance on Peter B. Collins Show [MP3] on KRXA discussing Murtha, Schmidt, the boil on Rush Limbaugh's ass and, of course, the crappy media coverage of important Election Reform issues (the other boil on Rush Limbaugh's ass).

Guest blogged by David Edwards

On Wednesday, Downing Street threatened The Daily Mirror with prosecution under the Britain's Official Secrets act for the disclosing a memo that indicated Blair had convinced Bush not to bomb the Arab language news network al-Jazeera.

News organizations in the U.K. can no longer report the contents of the memo but a report from London's Channel 4 News questions this first and historic use of the Official Secrets Act against the press. Their reporting concludes that White House pressure led to the threat of legal action against The Daily Mirror.

Video in Windows Media format...
Video in QuickTime format...
Audio in MP3 format...

Higher quality video available for download from Channel 4.

In related column printed in Daily Telegraph , MP Boris Johnson proclaims "I'll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera"

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It appears that the voters in New Mexico have been given a Thanksgiving present (or early Christmas present) and not the ‘turkey' they were going to have for elections. Their SoS, Rebecca Vigil-Giron has suddenly had an epiphany and has decided that the counties in the state should have an option between DREs and optical-scan systems. This is a complete change from her recent statements against the use of optical-scan systems. We also have an excellent article from our friend, Bob Koehler who talks about the recent Ohio election debacle....

Happy Thanksgiving from The BRAD BLOG!

Please take a few hours off, as I hope to do, to give thanks for whatever it is that we still have left in this country to be thankful for. And that is certainly plenty.

Also please be sure to take a few minutes to read the first Guest Blog effort from our new friend, the lovely actress and author Lydia Cornell.

We will continue, of course, to bring you exciting, provocative and necessary reports, opinions and occasionally bad attitude here at BRAD BLOG. We are enormously thankful for all the support that you've given us as we continue to fight the good fight for as long as it takes.

Please have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving! From "all of us" here at BRAD BLOG to you and all of your families... Brad

Guest Blogged by Lydia Cornell

Sex is sort of losing its appeal. Death is sexier these days, at least that's the impression I get from Ann Coulter, who makes a living calling for the "killing of Liberals" and repressing the free speech of Democrats. She may appear to be joking, but she is not. And Coulter actually claims to be a Christian. Like Pat Robertson and George W, she seems to take perverse delight in defining Christianity as the opposite of itself, so I suspect she belongs to the Antichrist trinity or the Taliban sect of Christianity.

I never mix religion with politics, but for Christ's sake, don't they know that Jesus was a Democrat? In fact, a bleeding heart liberal?!! The Great Peacemaker was the very essence of love and compassion; he was revolutionary in his softness and forbade vengeance of any kind. How the Christian right has twisted Christ's peaceful message is one of the riddles of our times. I've been bewildered to the point of jaw-gnashing agony at how certain fundamentalists can call themselves Christian, when they do not follow the teachings of Christ! I feel I'm going insane. Right after the 2004 election when You-Know-Who was elected, I actually developed a nervous tic in my left eye, like the Police chief in the Pink Panther, who was driven berserk by Inspector Clousseau. Of course there's no comparing the lovable Peter Sellers with the witless, war-mongering leader of the free world, but I don't want my eye twitch to come back so I'm trying to stop hating him so much. I think I figured out a way to talk to Ann Coulter: turn the other cheek and let her hit that one.

But it's so twisted and malevolent that Bush called himself a Christian and did the exact opposite of what Christ would do by rushing to war with 'shock and awe' --- and claiming he had an audience with God in this decision! The other day a plumber came to fix our sink and told me his wife has breast cancer; since I've had many miracles from prayer I told him I'd pray for her. Then I quickly apologized, "I'm a democrat --- but I pray." He laughed really hard and said, "Yeah well I think Bush is a war criminal."

Are we in the Twilight Zone? The only God I know is the God of Love. These right-wing "Christians" are engaged in the most dangerous perversion of Christianity I've ever seen! And despite what Cheney said recently defending our mission in Iraq --- all successful revolutions start from within; nothing is ever truly won by force. We could have gained allies in the underground and hovered over Saddam for years instead of carpet bombing precious Iraqi children, entire cities and looting ancient Babylonian museums. And by the way, whatever happened to that warehouse of weapons that was 'misplaced?' Does anyone remember what I'm talking about?

Anyway, Coulter seems to be a turn-on for certain young Republicans (the ones that go on field trips to hear Coulter spew hate..."with jokes" at anywhere between $16,000 and $30,000 a pop.) It was bad enough when our heroes were just anorectic models and athletes, but now we have a new generation of hate-speak-worshippers. It's true, hate sells, but I predict that the most exciting thing on the horizon is peace, even between Republicans and Democrats. Fighting and divisiveness are getting boring; 'moderate' is the new sexy. I mean in a world where everything is so intensely fringe, the only way to go is to the center, toward harmony. Think of Halle Barry, the most gorgeous mixture of black and white. Think of the 'Gang of 14': meeting in the middle, working things out, getting along --- it's ground-breaking! In other words, loving your enemy --- which is what The Great Peacemaker taught and what any good Christian would advocate.

So it was with peacemaking in mind --- that I returned the call from Bryan Harman, Vice-Chairman of the Alachua Republican Party...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Approval statistics by Survey USA
(thanks to kpete for the graphic)

UPDATE FROM BRAD:
Or...if we were less generous, and as cynical as Republicans, perhaps we would best put it this way:

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

We're probably not supposed to talk about this. So here goes.

As Chris Floyd explains:

As you can probably see, Chris explains things much better than I can. To tell you the truth, the whole affair leaves me practically speechless. But you can follow the story as it has developed so far, using the links and quotes below:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In yesterday's ‘DVN' I mistakenly characterized the California SoS's Diebold hearing as being in a room that was difficult to find and with people only speaking to a microphone and tape recorder. Unfortunately, I reported from the wrong article. The room used was, in fact, the same hearing room that had been used in past meetings and there were members of the elections staff in attendance. What is important is that there were very few members of the public who defended the Diebold TSx and there were many from the disabled community who all spoke about the complete lack of accessibility provided by these machines. Thank you to all of those who pointed out my error. I would also like to take this opportunity to join my associate, Ellen Theisen, in wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. Please be safe and enjoy the holiday....

The congressman man who ran sham hearings in House Administration Committee on last year's Ohio Election mess (the ones that exposed the insidious ACVR hucksters), was recently subpeonead by the DoJ where he is said to be under investigation on four different aspects of an ongoing probe, looks to be in big big trouble in the wake of the Michael Scanlon indictment.

Jesse of Stakeholder has a round-up of today's headlines on the apparently-soon-to-be-indicted U.S. Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH). Here's what Jesse's found just today at a quick glance:

Tribune Media Service columnist Robert Koehler weighs in tomorrow on the Ohio's impossible '05 Election Results.

The latest piece from the courageously curious columnist who has been one of very few in the Corporate Mainstream willing to question the dangers of our increasingly crumbling democracy, includes a puzzling acknowledgment by the Columbus Dispatch public editor on their poll which went inexplicably awry for the first time in its history. It will also mark the first time a Corporate Mainstreamer has even acknowledged the existence of the recent GAO report confirming the unbridled dangers of Electronic Voting Machines in America. The piece ends thusly:

UPDATE: The column is now available online, at this location.

"Mystery Pollster" Mark Blumenthal follows up his recent post on the matter of the extraordinarily questionable results of Ohio's November 8th, '05 Elections. All four of the Election Reform initiatives on the ballot that day mysteriously and spectacularly failed to win approval in stark opposition to the pre-election polling by the historically accurate Columbus Dispatch which had predicted most of them would win by large margins.

That they lost by large margins instead, has been the subject of some controversy. We've blogged about it (here and here) and responded (here) to Blumenthal's analysis of tweaks in the Dispatch polls methodology that he feels "might" have skewed their findings this time around. Despite the major changes in the "methodology" used to gather the actual Election Results in Ohio this year (44 of Ohio's 88 counties installed all-new Touch-Screen Electronic Voting Machines for the first time ever) Blumenthal's presumption is that it must have been the tweaks in the Dispatch poll's methodology rather than any problem with the Election Results as gathered by these all-new, untested, unaccountable, untransparent and demonstrably prone-to-failure Electronic Voting Systems.

In his latest article on the matter, he follows up by suggesting that citizens in Ohio take advantage of Public Records Laws in the state which --- according to Blumenthal's information gathered from the Ohio attorney general website --- allow for the examination of "paper ballots" 60 days after Election Results have already been certified by the state. Says Blumenthal:

While Blumenthal later calls for "more formal routine audit procedures with far more transparency," he stops short of accepting my previous invitation that he join those of us calling for a truly transparent democracy by ending the use of Electronic Voting Machines employing secret software protected by the Voting Machine Companies who have claimed that examination of their source code by the public would violate "proprietary trade secrets". So the privatization of our Public Elections by private (and partisan) corporations, paid for with our tax dollars is presumably just fine for Blumenthal. Which is good, because billions of tax-dollars are now being given to those corporations to do exactly that, even though millions of us agree with the non-partisan GAO that reported recently on how all of this is a threat to our democracy.

Beyond that, there are apparently a number of points the Mystery Pollster mysteriously doesn't seem to understand about all of this, or that he simply does not wish to acknowledge when he calls for "an enterprising voter or investigative reporter" to "check the ballot paper trail" in Ohio. For example...