Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I’m back after a much needed rest and with a freezer re-stocked with fish. Today, in catch-up mode, I am running some of what I think are important items from the last week. In two cases these items come from VotersUnite.

One is a recount of public hearings here in Washington state with regards to an upgraded voting system to count the “Ranked Choice Voting” ballots in one county’s upcoming primary and general elections. We were very pleased with the openness and willingness of state and local election officials to work with us and listen to our concerns, and then to act on those concerns. I would also like to give a plug to a book review done by my associate, Ellen Theisen, for a book called “Cassandra, Chanting.” The book is an excellent piece of fiction and I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in elections and electronic ballots. The author is “Anonymous” but is part of the NIST team so his or her concerns should be all of our concerns. This fiction could easily be fact and we may never know it.

Also please note the call for help from Arizona. Activists there have a ton of data given to them by the courts but they need technical help wading through it.

NOTE FROM BRAD: We interrupt this DVN to note we're happy to have Big John back safely on dry land! Thought you all might enjoy you're once-yearly look at the man who makes it happen every day. Apparently his trip to Alaska wasn't just for the halibut this year. Though this year's champion catch came in at "about 121 lbs.," John tells us, making last year's King Salmon seem downright puny.

"The deckhand [in orange] is the one holding the bigger of the two fish which weighs nearly as much as he does," says Gideon the Giant. Mind you, John is, himself, about 7 foot 13 inches. Both literally, and figuratively...

...And now back to your regularly scheduled Daily Voting News...As usual, notable stories are all linked below...

Guest Blogged by Luke Ryland of Let Sibel Edmonds Speak...

So, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds is again proven right. For more than a year Sibel has been predicting that Dennis Hastert will join a lobbying firm involved with Turkey, and now we learn that Hastert is joining Dickstein Shapiro.

In the "Representative Engagements" section of Dickstein's website, we learn that they represented "the government of Turkey in connection with the development and financing by private sponsors of the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline and TransCaspian gas pipeline spanning from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean."

Dennis Hastert, who is listed in Sibel's "Rogues Gallery," was referred to in FBI wiretaps as apparently accepting bribes from Turkish criminal elements associated with the Turkish government, as documented in Vanity Fair in 2005 and elsewhere.

The short clip at left is from Kill The Messenger, a documentary about Sibel's case, where they discuss some of Hastert's involvement as mentioned in Vanity Fair.

In researching the Vanity Fair article, as mentioned in the clip, journalist David Rose interviewed various congressional staffers and counter-intelligence officials who are familiar with the case. He reported that there were three separate types of bribes allegedly paid to Hastert:

1. "(T)ens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks."
2. "(T)ens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information."
3. "(A)t least $500,000"

Hastert was lucky that there was literally zero follow-up in the mainstream media to these most serious charges. Hastert did not sue Vanity Fair for libel; instead, Hastert got his spokesman to send Vanity Fair a bizarre Letter to the Editor in response, 6 months later. The BRAD BLOG has the letter here, along with Sibel's effective debunking of Hastert's response.

The only action taken in response to the startling revelations in Vanity Fair was by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) which filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking them to investigate the "(T)ens of thousands of dollars to be paid to Hastert’s campaign funds in small checks"...

Our friends at GoLeft.TV and RAW STORY have picked up on our call from late last week to help the folks out at Fox "News" by letting them know about Ann Coulter's voter fraud. Last week, Fox asked viewers for help in their "voter fraud special investigation."

Be sure to let them know about Coulter's several felony acts down in Palm Beach County, Florida, (well-documented at the link above) by writing to them at their super-special tipster address: VoterFraud@FoxNews.com.

GoLeft's coverage of the story follows (1:45 mins), with a kind nod to The BRAD BLOG, as they join our call to action...

From their coverage:

Last week's entire "RAW REPLAY" can be seen in full, with transcript, right here...

Book Review by Ellen Theisen of VotersUnite.Org

“According to mythology, Apollo, the sun god, was so taken with Trojan Cassandra’s beauty that he gave her the gift of prophecy. When she did not return his love, he punished her with a curse. Reluctant to revoke a gift once given, Apollo’s curse was to make Cassandra’s prophesies fall on deaf ears.” ~Cassandra, Chanting, page vii.

Cassandra, Chanting is a novel that — while copyrighted in 2008 — will be nothing short of too familiar to election integrity activists around the country.

The blurb on the jacket starts out by saying:

But even though the plot is intriguing, it isn’t what I found most intriguing. And even though the book’s primary message of our election system’s vulnerability is as serious as it is true, the author’s stark revelation of that truth isn’t what captured my heart.

As a long-time election integrity activist, what I loved most about the book is that the anonymous author has clearly been paying attention, and he (yes, that much we've been able to learn about him - ed) managed to put into novel form the Alice In Wonderland world that many of us have been living in for the past three, four, five, or even more years...

I should say first off I don't have a dog in the hunt. I support neither Obama nor Clinton in this nomination race and couldn't tell you now whether I'd vote for either of them next November. I've stated long ago that both of those candidates have plenty of supporters, so I'll be supporting the voters this year, since they don't have nearly enough support.

With that said, this morning's meeting in the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee (RBC) has been an interesting one to watch. All sides in the unfortunate matters of fighting over how to seat (or not) the delegations from Florida and Michigan at this year's national convention have argued smartly for their various cases.

But where the DNC's RBC is concerned --- no matter which candidate the various members of the committee may already be on record as supporting in general --- there should be only one consideration in their ultimate decision: what will be best for the party itself and whichever candidate ends up being their nominee.

Everyone at today's meeting spoke in general consensus that party unity is key. If that's truly their belief, then every side in the dispute needs to place unification first as the top priority for any final rulings on whether and how to seat the MI and FL delegations at the Democratic Convention.

To that end, the version for those with short attention spans: The party must agree to the Florida compromise which nets a 19 delegate advantage for Clinton while giving delegates at the convention a 50% vote. They must also agree to the Michigan state party's compromise of awarding the Michigan delegates 69/59 in Clinton's favor with a 50% vote at the convention.

And while it's not necessarily germane to the decisions being made by the DNC RBC today, Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida should be made Barack Obama's Vice Presidential nominee.

For the longer explanation of the above, please read on...

By all means, let's not pay attention to this report until after November.

This is a follow-up to several previous items we ran last week (here, here and here) on a number of elections in Arkansas where the outcome was reversed after the lucky discovery of mistallies on the ES&S electronic voting system which failed widely in a number of counties during local primary elections there last week.

Here's the latest explanation, most notable passages excerpted below, on what went wrong in Faulkner County's very low turnout election for their District 45 State Representative Democratic Primary in which voters casting ballots in the Cadron Township Constable race had their votes recorded erroneously for the Dist. 45 State Rep race instead.

While these same touch-screen voting systems, the ES&S iVotronic, are widely used across the country, and have failed notoriously in a number of races over the years, and thus, theoretically prone to the same or worse failures this November when the turnout will be far higher, the full article by Joe Lamb in Arkansas' Log Cabin Democrat notes two more additionally chilling points:

• "[T]he votes for the constable race were later found to have recorded accurately on the voter-verifiable paper trail and therefore would not have appeared erroneous to voters either." (Which means there also would have been a fight, in any contested recount, about which numbers actually reflected voter intent!)

• "What makes the situation all the more baffling, [Faulkner County Election Commissioner Bruce Haggard] added, is that the machine in question, along with its associated software and coding, were found to have worked to perfection during early voting." (So pre-election tests and early voting gave no indication that something would go wrong on election day, despite election official and voting machine company claims that such tests protect against such problems!)

Full article here, most notable extended excerpts follow below...

Last week we told you about the hard fought victory by the Pima County (Tucson), Arizona, Democrats to finally gain access to the Diebold databases which include the tallies of how folks voted in elections going all the way back to 1998.

The county had argued (on Diebold's behalf, natch) that the database files were both proprietary, and a security risk should they be released. The judge, finally, found that to be nonsense, and ordered the release of the files which the local Election Integrity advocates now hope to comb over for evidence of fraud and/or other malfeasance.

Now that they've got all the info, they're seeking a geek or two who may be able to help build a tool to make it a bit easier to go through the mountains of data they now finally have access to.

AZ's Libertarian Election Integrity champ Jim March, whose been working closely with the Dems, sends us the following "Help Wanted" ad, seeking a programmer to help 'em make sense of "the world's largest private collection of Diebold election data files anywhere." (Note: If someone could kindly Slashdot this item to maximize the number of coder geek eyeballs it gets in front of, it'd be much appreciated!)...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Last Thursday Keith Olbermann began an excellent conversation with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley on the Karl Rove subpoena matter by stating, "Joe Wilson's dream of watching Karl Rove frog marched out of the White House in handcuffs is long since gone. But a new dream has been born tonight. What about a Turdblossom perp walk out of the front door of Fix News."

Later that night The BRAD BLOG asked Ambassador Joe Wilson to comment on Olbermann's statement and the Karl Rove subpoena.

As seen in the video at right, the freshly shorn former Ambassador responds to the news and our question at a small gathering where he was speaking in Los Angeles. He said he was unsure whether or not Congress will be able to "get to" Rove, though he was certainly behind the effort.

"Whether they will actually be able to get to Karl I don't know," Wilson told us. "But it's great to keep the pressure on him. It forces him back on defense." He then added: "It's amazing to me the extent to which these guys have operated with absolute impunity, absolute disregard for American law and American jurisprudence."

Following below is the entire 40 minutes or so of Wilson's talk to the small gathering last week in Los Angeles, covering all aspects of his ordeal with the Bush administration...

We've long argued that same-sex marriage was, for all intents and purposes, a done deal. Marriage equality, under virtually any legitimate conservative reading of the U.S. and most state Constitutions, cannot be denied.

If the segment, at right, from tonight's O'Reilly Factor is any indication, it looks like even Bill O'Reilly is finally coming to grips with that fact, in light of the new poll showing for the first time that a majority of Californians are finally in favor.

Neither O'Reilly, nor his guest, "family law attorney" and "gay marriage opponent" Don Schweitzer, seem to be able to come up with a single legitimate reason to oppose it. The uncomfortable silences while they reach for something...anything...is really something to see. And if they've lost O'Reilly, well, the dead-enders may take a while longer to get the message, but it's over. The good guys will win this one...

What's a Grand Ol' Party to do when they wish to disenfranchise Democratic voters via the specious specter of "voter fraud" when they can't actually find any evidence to make their case? Why, call their media wing at Fox "News" of course!

Fox picks up today where the DoJ and Republican Party have had no luck so far, but not for lack of trying. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, publicize 'em, and make it sound like you're beating 'em, at least.

David Edwards and Muriel Kane report at RAW STORY today that Fox is running a "special investigation" into non-citizens throwing elections:

RAW has the amusing video from this morning as well.

Well, you heard 'em, kids. Fox is looking for voter fraud! Feel free to email them this link: https://bradblog.com/CoulterFraud documenting the no-uncertain-terms case of Ann Coulter having committed voter fraud in Palm Beach County, Florida!

Fox would love to hear from you at: voterfraud@foxnews.com. Feel free to let 'em know I sent you, in case they have any further questions. I'll be happy to speak to them, and help 'em root out those voter fraud criminals!

BTW, Fox & Friends, at least, already knows about Coulter's voter fraud, since they called me last year to ask me to appear on their morning show to talk about it after Liz Smith ran an item on the matter in Murdoch's NY Post pointing to BRAD BLOG's coverage...

I don't mind admitting it. For an Election Integrity journalist, HBO's Recount is pure pornography. Anticipation for Sunday's Memorial Day premiere showing was at the top of last weekend's holiday agenda. And the excitement grew still more late Friday when the good folks of PDA Florida made my week (my month? my year? my last four eight years?) by sending me an actual Palm Beach County "CES Votomatic III" voting booth, one which they tell me was among the 24 used in HBO's film itself.

Since I have a very difficult time paying the bills around here --- contrary to popular opinion, election integrity blogging isn't the windfall it might otherwise appear --- perhaps I'll consider the kind gift a reward for my too-many years on this beat. Though perhaps my consolation prize would be a better way to look at it.

When I first opened it, actual chads (HBO's film advises the plural of "chad" is actually "chad") from the 2000 election spilled out of the machine all over the office floor. The gods of democracy and the goddess of the Butterfly Ballot were taunting me. I rather enjoyed it. I learned long ago that I'd have little choice.

So it was with great anticipation that I sat down on Sunday night to watch the film as it premiered, along with the "Diebold Document Whistleblower" (and my new colleague at VelvetRevolution.us) Steven Heller and his wife, and Robert Carillo Cohen, one of the filmmakers of HBO's landmark documentary, the Emmy-nominated Hacking Democracy which enjoyed a re-airing earlier in the day, as the cable net set the stage for its newest democracy thriller/heart-breaker, Recount.

None of us, including Heller, who anticipated hating the fictionalized re-telling of America's crushing democratic abortion of 2000, would be disappointed...

Guest blogged by Ellen Theisen, VotersUnite.org

The actions and attitudes of election officials all too often seem like Alice's experiences down the rabbit hole. So, it's nice occasionally to report on positive developments by public officials who actually listen to the concerns of citizens, rather than simply ignoring serious defects discovered in our voting systems. I'm happy to report such a story today. For a change.

On May 6, Patty Murphy, Voting Systems Support, Secretary of State’s Office, notified my VotersUnite.org colleague and fellow Washington state resident John Gideon and me that two new voting systems were to be tested for state certification here on May 13 through May 16, and that the Review Board would hold a hearing on May 23. The Board’s job is to thoroughly review certification applications and make recommendations to the Secretary of State. The two systems were:

• An ES&S AutoMark/optical scanner system, tested against federal standards and qualified by NASED.
• A new, untested touch-screen/optical scanner system made by Sequoia Voting Systems

John and I were concerned about the Sequoia system. Pierce County, WA, voters recently voted to use Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), a system where voters may specify their preferences in particular races on the ballot as "first choice," "second choice," or "third choice." However, no state-certified system had the software needed to tabulate RCV ballots. So Sequoia developed their software specifically for Pierce County. They had applied for “emergency” provisional certification from the state, which would allow them to bypass state requirements for independent testing to the federal standards.

Tabulating RCV ballots is much more complicated than tabulating traditional ballots. With RCV, after voters mark their first, second, and third choices for certain offices, the tabulation is done in a series of “rounds.” The candidate with the fewest “first choice” votes after each round is eliminated; then in the next round the second choice on those ballots is counted as if it were the first choice. Rounds continue until one candidate has the majority of the votes. For a fuller explanation, see the Pierce County website.

John and I had planned to go to the testing on May 14, but at the last minute the testing for that day was called off so officials could investigate a problem that had shown up the previous day.

As we found out later, officials had found the Sequoia system had tallied votes wrong.

Later in the day, the SoS office's Murphy emailed us to let us know what happened...

Not really. But it's a damned funny headline. And it's probably accurate "enough" for the New York Times, where accuracy doesn't much matter anymore, apparently.

We'll have some of our own thoughts very soon on Recount, which we much enjoyed over the holiday weekend. Until then, our preview of the new HBO film, filed before we finally got to see it when in premiered Sunday night, is posted here.

But it's worth noting, for the moment, that the New York Times, the disgraced "Paper of Record," even today persists in misreporting the story of the 2000 Florida Election debacle. As Larry Beinhart documents today at Smirking Chimp:

Read Beinhart's piece for the remarkable details in what really is one of the "most bizarre, and still completely unexplained, journalist events in modern times." Unfortunately, he doesn't include links in his coverage (please add them if you can, Larry!), but for the doubters, here's the report [PDF] showing that Al Gore did, in fact, receive more votes in Florida in 2000 than George W. Bush. That, despite the stunningly contrary headlines, as Beinhart shows, from almost every paper that reported on that complete state count. Even the papers who bothered to report --- if you read them closely enough --- that Gore received more votes than Bush, still used inexplicably misleading headlines for the story.

Given the wholly inaccurate claim, as includied in their review of Recount, it would appear that NYTimes is intent on simply ensuring the matter is inaccurately reported forever. We'll remember to keep that, and their year-long front page pre-Iraq War-mongering, in mind next time we're inevitably told by some wingnut on the radio, just how "liberal" the NYTimes is.

Also, it's with no small amount of sadness that we note the passing of legendary producer/director/actor Sydney Pollack who died on Monday at the age of 73.

Pollack had been slated to direct Recount originally, but was forced to bow out due to being diagnosed with cancer last August. He lived, at least, long enough to see Recount premiered on Sunday night on HBO. He had stayed on with the production as Executive Producer.

Given his great sense of humor, we'd like to believe he would well have appreciated the satirical headline above.

[Ed Note: Had to break the list up over four different postings, since the blog software would not allow an item even half the size of the entire list. --- BF]

U.S. troops killed in Iraq & Afghanistan, since the beginning of both wars, confirmed by the U.S. Dept. of Defense as of 5/22/08 [from A to D]...

U.S. troops killed in Iraq & Afghanistan, since the beginning of both wars, confirmed by the U.S. Dept. of Defense as of 5/22/08 [from E to K]...