California Secretary of State Debra Bowen's Election Fraud Unit has just announced that felony charges have been filed against a Sacramento woman who appears to have forged the names of five voters while gathering signatures for a 2006 ballot initiative.

The initiative was sponsored by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which hired the woman to gather signatures for a petition to get the initiative onto the ballot. She earned 75 cents per signature, netting her a total of $3.75 from the allegedly fraudulent signatures, according to the press release just sent to The BRAD BLOG by the SoS's office. (Complete press release posted at end of article.)

The signatures were excluded before the initiative qualified for the ballot, which eventually passed during the June 2006 election.

So why all the effort and resources expended to bring felony charges for such a paltry sum, for an election that's already over, particularly when the signatures weren't even used?

The reason, as we see it, is two-fold. And there are lessons to be learned from both explanations. And not just in California where powerful GOP operatives are hoping to gain enough signatures to put an Electoral College busting measure on the June 2008 ballot in desperate and cynical hopes of splitting the Golden State's electoral vote on a proportional basis in order to game the 2008 Presidential Election.

The new Secretary of State of Ohio would do well to take away the important lesson, once again from her sister in Sacramento...

We don't normally re-run entire items from elsewhere here. This one, however, is important (and short) enough to merit it. From Paul Kiel over at TPMMuckraker...

You can register your opinion on Hans von Spakovsky, who is as evil as his name evokes, with the Senate Rules Committee and Feinstein (D-CA) here: 202-224-6352, or via their website.

Let's play Republican-like politics.

Turns out, some 50 (mostly Republican) members of the Senate are in favor of attacking "the honor, integrity, and patriotism" of those who have served honorably in the U.S. Armed Forces.

We knew that already, and not only from the Republican filibuster of a bill that would have given members of the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq as much time off as they were forced into serving in the field.

But a less-discussed vote in the Senate last week underscored just how much Republicans despise honorably serving members of our military, and how impotent Democrats seem to be at exploiting that fact...

[UPDATED POST-SHOW]

Santa Cruz County Clerk, Gail Pellerin joined us on the Peter B. Collins Show again tonight, live, to follow up on last week's interesting and rather spirited (at times, contentious-ish) hour.

The audio archive and full text transcript of last week's hour is posted here if you missed it.

The audio from this week's show, along with the transcript, courtesy of Santa Cruz voter Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us.

Since last Friday's show, CA SoS Debra Bowen has pronounced that the voting machine "sleepovers" Pellerin told us she'd planned for her Sequoia voting systems again in 2008 "don't comply with the security requirements" for those voting systems in California.

As well, we've gotten the opportunity to chat a bit via email with Pellerin since then, and are encouraged that we can begin working more together than apart, as is necessary, I think, for Election Integrity advocates and Elections Officials. It's the voting machine companies who are the real villains in this matter, and they've been quite successful at driving an opportunistic wedge between advocates and officials.

UPDATE, AUDIO & TRANSCRIPT: The show went very well. Pellerin stuck around for the entire hour and it was a great discussion with several interesting and newsworthy revelations, along with some very good callers as well. I think we may be getting somewhere. At least I'm hopefully tonight for the good folks of Santa Cruz...

As we could all use something to lighten things up around here, and it's so amusingly off-base, and it's a slowish posting day, and clearly someone needs some attention, why not...

Some pseudonymous blogger named "Vigilis" with some blog named "Molten Eagle" has called me out. I am so wounded to the core by his stinging and ingeniously well-supported critiques and barbs that I just must respond in desperate defense of my once-good name.

In his item called "Confronting Brads Baloney Blog", our man (I presume) "Viligis" instructs his readers (reader?) that "today's leftist propagandists...refuse to stand and debate" before alluding to me (presumably) as "con artists and their ilk [who] shift topics as rapidly as possible by disparaging opponents with both charges of falsehoods and rancorous name-calling."

"Of course," our friend "Vigilis" ironically charges: "this is done without citation of the slightest facts." (More on that in a minute.)

But it's not just me of whom the anonymous blogger is critical. It's you! You commenters! Especially you female commenters, whom "Vigilis" calls out not once, but twice in his amusing post:

I have "frontmen"?! Cool!

But wait, it gets more tickling!

"Vigilis" then asks, "How can serious people behave so irresponsibly?" before dropping the most absolutely, amusingly ironic (read: immeasurably foolish) graf, particularly in light of his earlier charge that "propagandists" and "con artists" like us ply our trade "without citation of the slightest facts."...

We just spoke with Greg Palast, whose Armed Madhouse paperback (or "mysterious 'yellow book,'" as lazy Washington Post blogger, Emil Steiner "reported" it), was being waved and alluded to by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer just prior to his being Tasered by UF cops earlier this week.

Palast says he is offering the journalism student a job as a paid intern. Meyer had described Palast, in his question to Sen. John Kerry, asking why he conceded the 2004 Presidential Election so early, as "the top investigate journalist in America."

"Did you notice he never let the book touch the ground?" an impressed Palast wryly noted.

Meyers was Tasered by the authorities as the majority of the students in the crowd sat passively during their fellow student's pleas for help and shrieks of pain. He was then arrested and charged with a felony for "inciting a riot and disrupting a school function." (Police report here [PDF])

"His attorneys seem to be keeping him on ice," Palast told us, when we asked if he'd been able to officially offer the gig to Meyer.

Indeed, our note to Meyer sent Tuesday, inviting him to Guest Blog his experience here at The BRAD BLOG, has so far similarly gone unanswered.

We were in Nashville a couple of months ago, at a meeting of the Davidson County Board of Elections. We tried to warn them that they would run into trouble with their ES&S touch-screen voting machines, probably sooner, rather than later. But the Kool-Aid drunk Republicans on the board would have none of it. "Paper ballots are the biggest scam ever perpetrated on America," one of them told us. To our astonishment, he actually seemed to believe himself.

That GOP blend must be some very tasty Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, the nice Democrats who were in the majority on the board sat there and said and did nothing. They were very very nice. And completely clueless.

And now, next door in Memphis (Shelby County), where they use equally bad Diebold touch-screen machines, Mayor Willie Herenton is calling for an end to Early Voting, which began this week, as reports of votes flipping began coming into his office just after polls opened...

And thus, Stephen Colbert hits on precisely the most alarming issue at the heart of the Tasering incident: The students (and Kerry) stood by. Did nothing. America pacified...

As we wrote to some folks in a discussion list yesterday:

I should also add that, according to the Police Report [PDF], Meyer was arrested on an absurd felony charge of "inciting a riot and disrupting a school function."

If that was "inciting a riot" worthy of Tasering, I can only shudder at what the authorities' reaction would have been to someone who was actually inciting a riot.

And I believe my shudder is ultimately, and exactly, the point of such displays by the authorities.

As Naomi Wolf pointed out, such tactics have worked very effectively in the past.

Eternal Vigilance: More Than Just a Swell Bumpersticker Catch-Phrase.

Our initial coverage, and early thoughts on the incident, are posted here...

Related: Wheelchair Bound Woman Tasered to Death

Considering Riverside County, CA, was the first in the nation to purchase Sequoia Voting Systems' malfunctioning, unsecure touch-screen voting machines for county-wide use in 2000, and that the county's Board of Supervisors were once the most ardent supporters of the company --- one of the Supes even going so far as to foolishly bet "1000 to 1" that the system couldn't be hacked --- the latest news from Riverside, no doubt, comes as a very bitter pill for the failing voting machine company.

And better still, the county now has a golden opportunity to restore its reputation by leading the nation in bringing accountability to the real villains in this regrettable saga.

"Riverside Co. Pulls Plug on Electronic Voting" read the headline of one of the local news reports after Tuesday's Board of Supervisors meeting where they wisely voted against throwing good money after bad.

The Board refused to authorize $500,000 for uncertified Sequoia optical scan voting machines, as recommended by the county's Sequoia-lovin' Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore, in order to replace their recently decertified Sequoia touch-screen systems which had previously been purchased (twice!) for some $27 million.

"I will not vote for another dime to go to Sequoia," said Supervisor Roy Wilson, finally catching on, according to the report from KESQ....

Good lord. Looks like the "Straight Talk Express" has driven straight over the cliff. But nobody has managed to tell McCain yet. Not even McCain. And to think I might have once considered voting for this guy...

(On an unrelated note: Working on a number of things today, so posting has been light. Reading with interest, however, the outpouring of reaction and comments from BRAD BLOG readers to the Tasering Incident. Let's call those comments "recommend reading" for the moment, as most are quite thought provoking. I may have more of my own thoughts on it all later...)

Congratulations to Florida's U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney (24th District) for being named one of Congress's "Most Corrupt Members" for the third consecutive year! The latest round of notables was posted today by the watchdogs at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Attaboy, Tom!

And all while staying out of jail --- so far --- for improprieties associated with disgraced GOP à¼ber lobbyist Jack Abramoff; being disgraced Tom Delay's #1 supporter in Congress; well-documented allegations of vote-rigging in 2000; all even while continuing to protect your enduring friendship with Communist China-associated, illegal-immigrant employing spies, business partners, and benefactors!

No easy feat, that! Especially since just staying alive while hanging around you has gotten so difficult for so many over the years!

We'd list more of your considerable accomplishments here, but we seem to have made a career of it already. So we continue to invite readers to peruse your impressive record on their own! Here's the short version, for those in a hurry.

Keep up the bad work, Tom!

Fortunately, it happened at a John Kerry event. So we'll likely hear a whole lot about this incident. Had it happened at a Republican event, Fox "News" and the rest of the news channels that receive their assignments from them would have made this a one-day story at best.

The blurry-ish video version of the incident seen at right shows the entire statement and questions asked by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer. He was waving the recently released paperback version of investigative journalist Greg Palast's Armed Madhouse and recommended the book to Kerry before asking him about his early concession to the 2004 Presidential Election.

"He says you won the 2004 Election, isn't that amazing?" proclaimed Meyer, referring to Palast's claims in the book. The 21-year-old student continued on to speak about "multiple reports of disenfranchisement of black voters in Florida and Ohio on the day of the election" and "electronic voting machines in Volusia County, Florida, that counted backwards."

"So amidst all of these reports of phony, bogus stuff going on, how could you concede the election on the day?" he asked as security guards surrounded him. "How could you concede the 2004 election on the day? In this book, it says there were five million votes that were suppressed. Didn't you want to be President?!"

Kerry is heard earlier in Meyer's statement acknowledging that he has the book and that he's "already read it." Though we've seen the incident now on all of the cable news channels, several times, we've not seen any of them show the actual statement and questions being asked by Meyer.

She's hinted as much previously, and her new security requirements issued in the wake of her landmark "Top-to-Bottom Review" of e-voting systems would seem to preclude them, but CA Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has now given her most direct comment to date on the matter of voting machine "sleepovers".

"Sleepovers don't comply with the security requirements," Bowen said in response to a question we submitted on the matter during a conference call with the Secretary sponsored by the Courage Campaign.

"It's really simple," she added, after a pause following her immediate, direct reply to the question.

She went on to explain how unauthorized access to a single machine, by a single person, could allow an entire county's election to be flipped, putting everyone's election at risk.

The complete question and Bowen's full answer is transcribed at the end of this article.

The matter of voting machine "sleepovers" --- the practice of sending pre-programmed, election-ready voting systems home with pollworkers, often days and weeks prior to elections, for deliver to polls on Election Day --- first became a controversy last year after The BRAD BLOG exposed the issue as it occurred during San Diego's special election to replace disgraced Republican U.S. House Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Our exhaustive coverage (see: Busby/Bilbray category) of the resulting scandal, continued throughout some 100 articles here.

The special election in San Diego was the first federal contest to have taken place after several analysis of Diebold's e-voting system found that the systems utilized undisclosed software code prohibited by federal standards. The particular type of code is banned at the federal level since it can be exploited to flip an election undetectably.

Subsequent studies at Princeton University and elsewhere revealed that inappropriate access by a single person, to a single machine, could virally affect every other machine used across the same county.

The revelations made the notion of voting machine "sleepovers" all the more stunning to those of us who recognized the remarkable threat the practice posed to the security of our elections...

Unbelievable...

UPDATE 10/6/07: On his second attempt, Atchison succeeded in killing himself in federal prison. Details on that, and our inference on his being a Republican right here...