[Hat-tip @BrookeJarvis on the Twitters.]

Well, golly, who coulda seen this coming? And I suspect it's just the beginning...

There were other similar stories Tuesday, during the first full roll-out of the Wisconsin GOP's new anti-voter law, passed disingenuously under the guise of curbing "voter fraud". And Tuesday's was just a tiny election. For example, this from Isthmus' The Daily Page...

While the GOP and its operatives have been on a tear over the last year (and many more), falsely claiming an epidemic of Democratic "voter fraud" meriting the potential disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal (and mostly Democratic) voters through polling place Photo ID restriction laws in order stop it, the recent spate of actual voter fraud by high profile Republicans --- both alleged-with-much-evidence and actually-proven-in-a-court-of-law --- continues apace.

The latest high-profile Republican to join the ranks of apparent voter fraud felons is Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana. Like Republican Sec. of State Charlie White, who was found guilty of three counts of felony voter fraud (and three other felonies) earlier this month, Lugar hails from Indiana, the very first state in the nation, ironically enough, to implement voter suppressing polling place Photo ID laws in 2008.

And, like White, those draconian laws did absolutely nothing to stop Lugar from apparently committing voter fraud under the law, since the only type of voter fraud potentially deterred by polling place Photo ID laws are the incredibly rare cases of in-person polling place impersonation. Where voter fraud occurs to any measurable extent, it is in cases like Lugar's, White's, and all of the GOP superstars we'll remind you of again below.

The allegations against Lugar, who has been registered to vote at a house he has not lived in since 1977, were detailed quickly Tuesday night on the Rachel Maddow Show. A complaint against Lugar has been filed by a group of Indiana "Tea Partiers" challenging his eligibility for office, as publicized last week by Lugar's primary opponent in the 2012 election, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

Maddow's report, embedded below, was the prelude to her interview with independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders is one of four non-Republican U.S. Senators who have now requested a study by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the problem of "voter fraud" in this nation, particularly in the 14 states where Republican legislatures have recently passed polling place Photo ID restrictions under the pretense of stopping it. If that study finds what all of the other legitimate ones have found to date, we'll learn yet again how extraordinarily rare in-person voter fraud is and, at the same time, how many thousands and/or millions of Americans stand to be disenfranchised by the very laws that Republicans pretend are meant to deter it.

Here's her report...

And, by way of service to those who may yet to have noticed, here again is an update of our quick summary of the recent (and quickly growing!) spate of serious fraud allegations and convictions of a number of very high-profile Republicans other than Lugar. The list, please note, also includes several of this year's GOP candidates currently vying for the party's nomination for President of the United States...

Last week was a bad week to be Republican con-man Andrew Breitbart. But, really, what week isn't?

First there was his embarrassing, angry, drunken, video-taped "stop raping people" bender outside of CPAC, followed by his sober, but completely debunked, attempts to justify it all on the morning after.

And now comes this...

See Courthouse News Service for the rest of the details.

You'll recall the Rightwing race-baiting hoaxster Breitbart published a deceptively edited video of Sherrod from a 2010 speech at an NAACP event, which, he claimed, included a "racist tale" that provided proof that "this federally appointed executive bureaucrat lays out in stark detail, that her federal duties are managed through the prism of race and class distinctions."

After the full context of the video became known, and that she was actually relating a story from which she had learned a lesson decades earlier, Breitbart continued lying about it, claiming he had only charged racism among the NAACP, not Sherrod. He claimed the short video clip offered evidence that they, not she, was racist, despite the quotes from his article, and the headline which is still: "Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism-2010".

He continues to tell the same lie about it all to this day, even as he faces Sherrod's lawsuit, and did so again as recently as last week during an interview with Cenk Uyger on The Young Turks on Current TV.

Breitbart's Sherrod deception (see Media Matters' complete timeline here) resulted in her firing by the White House which, as they similarly did in the ACORN case, failed to review the full context of the deceptively presented material before tossing her under the bus and forcing her to resign. The White House eventually apologized and asked her to come back. She declined and then filed her defamation suit against Breitbart. They never made good, however, on having signed the federal bill that eventually destroyed ACORN, the four-decade old community organization which legally registered millions of low- and middle-income voters to vote, legally helped them receive loans to purchase houses, and fought back, for years, against the very predatory lending practices by the vulture capitalists who eventually tanked the global economy.

Breitbart's then employee, the now convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe is still battling a lawsuit by an ACORN worker who was inappropriately terminated after Breitbart published O'Keefe's "severely edited" videos of him and other ACORN workers (none of whom, as 5 or so different independent investigations have all determined, committed any crimes.) As we reported last September, Breitbart may very well be pulled into that lawsuit as a defendant as well, as the case continues to move forward.

Yes, it's a bad year --- actually, lifetime --- to be Andrew Breitbart.

It was "standing room only" in the combined supercaucus in Washington County, Maine today, according to the Bangor Daily News. The paper reports "Ron Paul scores big wins in Hancock and Washington counties," the two counties which had yet to hold all of their caucuses before Maine's hapless, attempted vote suppressor and state GOP Chair Charlie Webster prematurely announced Mitt Romney the "winner" of the state caucuses by just 194 votes one week ago tonight.

But, according to both the paper's tallies and the state party's, Paul's pickups today were not enough to top Romney, as one more town has yet to caucus (Castine is currently scheduled for March 3), and as revised results, posted by the state GOP late last night, continue to be scrutinized...

[Late tonight, after promising not to do so, and then changing their minds under pressure, the Maine GOP has finally released updated results. Those new results are linked and examined in the UPDATE now added to the bottom of this article.]

"The fight for Maine is far from over," says Cincinnati's Fox19 reporter Ben Swann, as he reported new numbers for Maine's 2012 GOP Caucuses last night.

The State's GOP Chairman Charlie Webster had announced last Saturday night that Mitt Romney had won Maine's caucuses by just 194 votes over Ron Paul. But, as we've been reporting, several counties had yet to even cast their votes at that time and, as we detailed in a follow-up report last night, the results of caucuses in dozens of towns across the state had simply been zeroed out in the state GOP's officially published results [PDF].

A firestorm of criticism directed towards the hapless Webster --- who had unsuccessfully fought last year to keep legal student voters in the state from being able to cast their legal vote at all, under the fraudulent guise that they were committing "voter fraud" --- has resulted in his backtracking on just about everything, including his own previous attempt to keep results from caucuses yet to be held from being included in the final results at all.

Swann says that he was able to ascertain results from several of the caucuses that had been reported by the GOP on Saturday as showing no votes at all having been cast. That, despite caucuses having been held in many of those towns last week, several of them a full week before Webster's apparent attempt to disenfranchise voters and steal the election for Romney last Saturday night.

Romney's lead, before the remaining 2 of 16 Maine counties vote tomorrow has now shrunk from 194 votes to just 157, according to new results obtained by Swann...

[Now UPDATED TWICE with new details at bottom of article.]

It figures. The one time we're on the road and unable to keep up with things on a minute-by-minute basis, a major election would be stolen outright. And there's not a disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction in the world that could have done a thing to stop the thieves.

Despite the reputation The BRAD BLOG has gained in some quarters over the years, I don't believe we have ever outright declared an election as "stolen." That has now changed as the Republican Party of Maine has blatantly stolen the 2012 GOP Caucuses in their state for Mitt Romney, as we detailed yesterday.

That fact is just the latest data point in a remarkable and rapidly expanding spate of GOP election fraud by very high profile Republicans across the nation, as we also detailed in yesterday's report.

The question now: Can it be "stolen back"?

Happily, even though we're on the road, the issue is being covered very well this time around by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. Her coverage last night honed in on a few additional points in this remarkable story, underscoring the blatant theft and breathtaking hypocrisy in the entire embarrassing, if enlightening, affair.

Among the points she expanded on last night (several of which we'd flagged in our coverage yesterday): the call by a Maine county Republican committee for the immediate removal of the shameless and breathtakingly dishonest state GOP Chair Charlie Webster and how the state party leadership not only seems to have lied to voters about results from postponed caucuses to be held this Saturday in Washington County, but how new evidence from Waldo County suggests the party may have simply just made up "results" out of whole cloth --- and then tried to keep those fake numbers a secret from the public in order to award the race to Mitt Romney by 194 votes over Ron Paul.

All of that, remember, before an entire county --- Washington County, one of just 16 in the entire state --- has even managed to hold their caucuses and vote at all in the statewide contest.

This is remarkable stuff and perhaps made more remarkable by the fact that this isn't currently at the top of every news outlet in the nation...

The state GOP itself has stolen the state for Mitt Romney in Maine's 2012 Caucuses. Period.

Might Romney be the actual winner once all votes are actually cast and counted? Perhaps. But the fact is, the Maine Republican Party has purposely blocked that from happening and the apparent loser in all of this --- beside the voters of Maine --- is Congressman Ron Paul who, according to the official results reported by the state GOP last Saturday night, "lost" to Romney by just 194 votes.

Adding to the outrage, the election fraud was perpetrated by the Chairman of the state's Republican Party, Charlie Webster.

Readers of The BRAD BLOG may well remember Webster as the man who spent months attempting to wholesale disenfranchise thousands of legal student voters in the state of Maine, on the entirely fraudulent basis that they were committing "voter fraud" because they were out-of-state students who, living in Maine and going to school there most of the year, should be, nonetheless, barred from voting there.

Federal law clearly states otherwise, allowing such students to vote in Maine. And even the Sec. of State there, Republican Charles E. Summers, Jr., who investigated Webster's "evidence" for his case, found it to be entirely baseless. (Though that didn't keep Summers himself from sending threatening letters to many of those perfectly legal student voters, in apparent hopes of intimidating them into not casting their votes in The Pine Tree State.)

While Webster was pretending that massive voter fraud was occurring in Maine, he has now, himself committed a massive case of election fraud by announcing the winner of last week's Maine Caucuses as Mitt Romney despite his full knowledge that voters in at least three different counties have been entirely disenfranchised, with their votes not included in his "final" results. Many of those voters haven't even been allowed to cast their votes yet at all.

Last Saturday Night, the scheduled end of the week long state caucuses, Webster announced before live television cameras with much fanfare: "I'm now gonna announce the winner of the Maine GOP poll. And that winner is Mitt Romney."

But Webster was lying, and committing a massive act of knowing election fraud in the process as he made his announcement. His deceptive act was simply the latest in a grotesque and growing series of election fraud acts carried out this year by high-level GOP personalities and officials, including confirmed and alleged fraud by several of the party's Presidential contenders...

On Tuesday, we dismantled the latest absurd attempt by pretend journalist and real federal criminal James O'Keefe to demonstrate the rampant "voter fraud" that he and his Republican Party claim to be so pervasive in these United States so as to require polling place Photo ID restrictions guaranteed to prevent little, if any, voter fraud at all, while serving to deter hundreds of thousands of legal (disproportionately Democratic-leaning) voters from being able to even cast their legal vote on Election Day.

We noted that O'Keefe's silly new video purporting to show his proudly unnamed and unseen co-conspirators being told that no ID is necessary to register to vote via third party application is extraordinarily misleading at best, as it fails to note that all newly registered voters who failed to register in person are already required --- by federal law --- to show ID before voting at the polls for the first time. We did concede, however, that those O'Keefe's band of merry pranksters might fraudulently register could, potentially, go on to commit voter fraud via absentee ballot (if they wished to risk the high penalties of a felony). However, as we pointed out, the polling place Photo ID restrictions O'Keefe and his GOP friends are arguing for with his latest series of "Voter Fraud Investigation" silly propaganda videos, would do nothing to prevent absentee voter fraud.

It appears, however, in fact we may have given O'Keefe far too much credit in even conceding that much, as a followup article on our report elsewhere has since revealed.

Yesterday, Mediaite's Tommy Christopher cited our short-order dismantling of O'Keefe's latest ruse and that I had explained in the piece that I'm "currently on the road and don't have enough time for [O'Keefe's] idiocy as is."

So Christopher did us the favor of picking up the ball at the point, humorously noting "so I generously made time for this idiocy, and found out that even O'Keefe's absentee scenario is false"....

Convicted federal criminal James O'Keefe and his band of co-conspirators at his ironically named Project Veritas outfit have another new video in their "Voter Fraud Investigation" series out. So that means, naturally, they're misleading the public again.

This time, O'Keefe's video portends to show some of his courageous, unnamed and unseen cohorts at various voter registration centers in Minnesota, asking whether they can have voter registration forms to take home to "Thomas Brady" and "Timothy Tebow", so they can register them to vote. The unseen voices are heard asking the helpful public clerks whether ID is necessary for those folks to register to vote. They are told that ID is not necessary in order for them to submit registration forms.

You'll recall that with O'Keefe's previous video --- in which they committed polling place voter fraud during the New Hampshire primary in order to "prove" that polling place voter fraud exists in the Granite State, despite no more than, at best, two known incidents of it over the past decade in the entire state --- he claimed: "Unlike the establishment media, Project Veritas works to release full, unedited versions of its investigations and stories," before he then linked to a video purporting to be the "full, unedited version" of his New Hampshire "investigation" videos. What he linked to, however, wasn't the "full, unedited version" of those videos, as they failed to show, among other things, the (at least) one incident in which one of his partners was chased out of the polling place. In other words, O'Keefe lied. That's what he does.

So I don't know if he has released an "unedited" version this time or not. I'm currently on the road and don't have enough time for his idiocy as is, so I haven't checked to see if there's another version of this. But let's go ahead and presume, for the moment, that the following edited version accurately-ish represents what happened when he sent his people into Minnesota voter registration offices...

Okay. Now let's dismantle O'Keefe's latest horse shit...

Iowa's "First-in-the-Nation" Caucuses managed to publicly tally some 122,000 hand-marked paper ballots at 1,774 caucus sites within an hour or two after votes were cast, in such a way that any problems or typos in the state GOP's reporting of the results could be quickly verified by many different sources as inaccurate, thanks to the thousands who were able to oversee the hand-counting on caucus night.

This year Iowa had the tightest results in state history --- just 34 votes were ultimately reported as separating the first and second place candidates --- and yet almost nobody is shouting "fraud" or questioning the results in the Hawkeye State today after what was, in truth, a model of transparent democracy.

Contrast that with the embarrassing and disastrous mess that took place across the state of Nevada on Saturday --- and in the days that followed --- where just 33,000 hand-marked paper ballot votes were cast (down from 44,000 in 2008), but where GOP officials were unable to report even preliminary results to the public until 1am on Monday!

In the bargain, candidates and media and the public are questioning even those late late late results, while nowhere near as many votes were cast, and the results do not appear to be anywhere as close.

So what went wrong in Nevada this year that didn't go wrong in Iowa?...

The chief election official in the very first state in the nation to implement polling place Photo ID restrictions --- under the guise of preventing "voter fraud" --- has been found guilty of three counts of felony voter fraud today.

In an early morning verdict following 12 hours of deliberation, a jury in Hamilton County found Indiana's Republican Secretary of State Charlie White guilty of three counts of voter fraud related to having voted in a precinct where he did not live and where he was illegally registered to vote. The Hoosier State's controversial first-in-the-nation Photo ID restrictions, originally implemented in 2008, did nothing to prevent either White's illegal registration or his unlawful vote for himself as Secretary of State in 2010 when he was elected to office.

Of the seven criminal felony counts White had been charged with in March of 2011, the jury also found him guilty of three other Class D felonies related to perjury and theft, while clearing him of one Class C felony for fraud on a financial institution.

White has vowed to appeal the decision in hopes of lowering the convictions to misdemeanor charges, rather than felonies.

Under Indiana law, a felony conviction makes White ineligible to serve in state office and would create a vacancy to be filled by Republican Governor Mitch Daniels. However, even if today's felony charges are upheld, the fight over who will replace White as Indiana's chief election official is likely to continue for some time, since a separate recent ruling against him in a related civil case could take precedence over today's verdict.

Republicans are hoping Daniels will be allowed to name White's replacement, even though a judge last December ordered White immediately removed from office and replaced by his Democratic opponent from the 2010 election, after determining that White had been illegally on the ballot in the first place thanks to his improper registration.

White's conviction is the latest in what is shaping up as spate of voter fraud convictions, allegations, and investigations of high profile GOP officials, including allegations against several of the party's 2012 Presidential candidates...

[Now UPDATED at bottom of article.]

Hilarious. For some odd reason, the latest super-secret Koch Brothers Winter Seminar for millionaires, billionaires and elected Republicans and judges, once again near Palm Springs this year, decided to up its already tight security big time. They were forced to buy out an entire resort (using an alias) for several days in Indian Wells, closing down its restaurants and golf courses to the public and sending home many of its workers for the duration. Not that any of that kept ace reporter Lee Fang from finding out about it and heading out there, as detailed in his new exclusive today:

Heheh...Sounds like that must have cost a lot of additional money! Sorry if we caused you any problems, Mr. and Mr. Koch!

By the way, the exclusive by Fang --- formerly of ThinkProgress --- kicks off the new Republic Report blog ("Investigating how money corrupts democracy") with a bang today. The new muckraking project of the similarly new United Republic ("Democracy is not for sale") organization, includes the work of Fang, a number of other great and (mostly) progressive muckrakers and trouble makers, but also includes...wait for it...Jack Abramoff!

Yes, that Jack Abramoff --- the former, now-disgraced, previously-imprisoned, but now-finally-free and supposedly-reformed GOP uber-lobbyist! Steve Clemons at The Atlantic explains in his profile of the noteworthy new project today.

Fang's contributions (follow him on Twitter at @LHFang) alone would be reason enough to keep an eye on Republic Report. Everything else is more than enough icing on a tantalizing new cake to demand the site be bookmarked immediately...in our always humble opinion, of course.

UPDATE 3:50pm PT: Amanda Terkel and Ryan Grim at Huffington Post report a source inside the Koch's democracy-hating meeting near Palm Springs this year says the group "pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections" during the course of the retreat, and offered another interesting thought as well...

There are at least a dozen things in this story out of Indiana that make my head wanna explode. I don't have time to really detail any of them in depth for the moment, so check it out in full if you're inclined and might like your head to explode too.

But one graf in the piece is begging me to highlight it.

The story, as I say, is about Indiana where, apparently, votes cast during the Early Voting period are considered to be Absentee Votes for some reason. Voting during the Early Voting period takes place on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting machines (head, explode) in Indiana at Vote Centers. State law requires that Absentee Votes be identifiable --- in other words, that they can be tied to the person who cast them --- so that if a voter should die between the time they cast his/her vote and Election Day, officials are able to go in and remove the vote (kapow).

That is done --- with the Early/Absentee Votes cast on touch-screen machines --- by including an ID Number on each ballot which, some might accurately point out, robs the voter of a secret vote in the bargain (boom).

That's the background for the story. But then comes this remarkable comment, included as part of the explanation of what happens when/if a person dies before Election Day and their ballot must be removed [emphasis added]:

My suggestion for a new Indiana state motto: "In Vendors We Trust".

What could possibly go wrong?

I joined Thom Hartmann on his Big Picture TV show last night to discuss The BRAD BLOG's exclusive report from earlier in the day confirming the Virginia State Attorney General's newly launched criminal investigation into the 1,500 allegedly fraudulent signatures turned in by the Gingrich Campaign in their failed attempt to be included on the VA GOP Primary ballot...

By the way, since we broke the news yesterday morning, several outlets have picked up and/or confirmed our report. Though, frankly, not as many as one would think given the nature and scope of the story. Certainly not as many who would have picked it up had either the now-defunct ACORN, or any Democrat been accused of doing the very same thing.

Other than our report, Tommy Christopher's coverage at Mediaite was probably the most detailed (and included both my name and a link to our story), followed by Dan Roem at National Journal (who credits the story to having "broke in the liberal blogosphere" --- though at least he included a link here...even though that link was broken when I last checked), then Julian Walker at The Virginia-Pilot (who didn't bother to credit anybody for the story) and NBC4-Washington who, in their short piece, did manage to mention and link properly to The BRAD BLOG.

There were a few other mentions (Dave Weigel at Slate, for example) but, far and away, the greatest way our stories are spread are by you guys and others spreading the word yourselves through comments at other sites, email, and via Twitter and Reddit. (The comments on the posting at Reddit --- where a huge number of folks up-voted the story --- were very, um, enlightening, as you'll see if you bother to read them.)

Of course, Fox "News", who mentions, actually highlights, every time an ACORN worker is accused of farting over the years (whether they actually farted or not) has yet to say a word about this story. Wonder why.

Just thought you might be interested in how folks sometimes deal --- or don't --- with original, exclusive stories that we break here. Sometimes they pick them up, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they offer appropriate credit, quite often they don't. That, despite the hundreds of stories we've broken over the years, with an impeccable record for accuracy and independent verifiability in just about every damned one of them.