Florida's new Republican Gov. Charlie Crist continues to get far in front of Congressional Democrats concerning issues of Election Reform. Previously, he has called for the Sunshine State to replace all DRE touch-screen voting systems with paper-based optical scan systems (and touch-screen ballot marking devices for the disabled) and today, he succeeded in restoring voting rights for former felons to all but the most violent criminals after they've served their time.

While Democrats in Congress, and their public-advocacy group supporters such as People for the American Way (PFAW), MoveOn, Common Cause, and VoteTrustUSA, continue to dally around the edges of reform vis-a-vis Rep. Rush Holt's Election Reform Bill (HR811) in the House and a forthcoming companion bill from Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, shamefully, it's the Republican Florida Governor --- of all people --- who is proving to be the true Progressive in the fight for real reform.

There's plenty of blame to go around, of course. The GOP Legislature in Florida is hanging on to their own share of shame in fighting Crist's bi-partisan proposals to replace disenfranchising, democracy-stealing DREs. In Maryland, it's the Democrats in the Senate who are killing Election Reform after House Dems had approved it (as tepid as that reform would be in only requiring useless, panacea "paper trails" for the state's paperless Diebold touch-screen systems. LATE UPDATE 3/6/07 5:07pm PT: Stunning turnaround suddenly in MD's Senate, support for a paper ballot bill! Breaking details here...)

New Democratic Secretaries of State Debra Bowen in CA and Jennifer Brunner in OH are meeting their voter mandates and doing their respective best to correct dysfunctional, unverifiable, easily gameable voting systems, but they are also facing challenges from both Republicans and local Elections Officials alike who are fighting to put their own self-interests over those of the voters. As usual.

In the meantime, the currently-flawed federal bills in the U.S. House and Senate are on the verge of getting worse, not better, through the drafting, mark-up, and amendment process, as legislators bend to the demands of henhouse-guarding Elections Officials along with the uncritical support for "Election Reform, any Election Reform, whether it'll bring true Reform or not" by powerful groups such as MoveOn, VoteTrustUSA, Common Cause, and others.

By way of example, MoveOn sent out an email to members yesterday calling for unflinching support of the Holt bill, despite knowing it to be flawed and VoteTrustUSA yesterday sent out an "All-811-All The-Time" newsletter yesterday to members without a single article, from among the mountains available, critical of the bill. That, despite recent testimony to Congress by their own policy director, Warren Stewart, asserting that "the direct electronic recording of votes to computer memory is inimical to democracy." Both the Holt and Feinstein bills currently drafted would allow for exactly such systems, and in fact, institutionalize the practice for years to come.

Both MoveOn and VoteTrustUSA declined to respond to our queries seeking explanation about their mailings yesterday.

So what's going on here?

Legislation that would have been smashing in 2005, but has since been shown to be desperately out of date in 2007 given the mountains of new evidence which revealed itself during the 2006 Election Cycle and beyond, is mired under the weight of bureaucratic deal-making and go-along-to-get-along public advocacy. All of which is by-and-large enabling the Democrats who seem to be fiddling as democracy burns.

It's all made worse, for the moment, by the largest and most influential of the public-advocacy groups, PFAW, who continues to dominate the debate on many levels. The group, which The BRAD BLOG has come to learn wields great power and proxy throughout a large swath of the civil rights community, is not only currently against a much-needed ban of DRE voting systems, but --- far more disturbingly --- is actually advocating in favor of their use.

We reported recently on that point, but the evidence is perhaps more clear in PFAW's own published analysis [PDF] (pages 2 & 3) of the Holt bill [emphasis ours]:

PFAW's position, as expressed above, is wholly unsupported by scientific evidence, common sense, or anything else as we have learned while investigating the matter over the past several weeks and months.

When a Republican governor from Florida has gotten ahead of Democrats on this issue, it's safe to say that something has gone terribly wrong.

If someone within the Democratic caucus doesn't stand up soon and bring the type of leadership to this issue that Crist has brought to Florida, they risk becoming the owners of a dysfunctional electoral system previously designed-for-disaster, via the Help America Vote Act of 2002, by the now-disgraced, Republican felon, former Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio.

Is there nobody in the U.S. Congress with the leadership skills and courage to stand up and do what is both right and well-supported by scientific evidence in order to make America's broken system of democracy right again?

Is there nobody who will stare down the disingenuous and/or fearful and/or ill-informed and/or self-serving factions standing in the way of restoring America's once-great shining example of democracy to the world?

As the right to vote and to have that vote counted transparently and accurately underpins every other right we have in this country, we'll continue to keep digging, advocating, investigating, reporting, and hoping. The alternatives --- and consequences --- are far too dire to do anything less....

As reported by Democracy Now on Wednesday...

Ah yes, the always reliable GOP "vote fraud" scammers' "ACORN canard" rears it's ugly (and unsubstantiated) head again. The NEWSWEEK article referenced above is here.

ACORN is the "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now", a group which has successfully run voter registration drives across the country in low-income and minority areas.

As we reported back in December of 2005 --- when high-level GOP operative James Tobin was actually found guilty of jamming Democratic 'Get out the Vote' phone lines in order to keep voters away from the polls in 2002 by "orchestrating an election day phone-jamming plot against New Hampshire Democrats" --- the ACORN nut had already fallen off the Republican's "vote fraud" tree.

ACORN had "been vindicated of the various bogus charges, as virtually all of the frivolous lawsuits and investigations the GOP liars made so much noise about had simply collapsed by then," as we reported at the time in linking to ProjectVote.org's coverage.

And yet, the scam, built deep in the heart of Texas (by Rove and his slimy, democracy-hating operative buddies at the phony ACVR), just kept rolling...

New Mexico attorney John Boyd, who was working with state Dems at the time, had a front-row seat to the bogus 2004 "voter fraud" charges in the state, and wrote about it, in some detail, for BRAD BLOG a few weeks ago.

It's always been about undermining democracy for these jerks. From 2000 on up to 2008, the quest for power trumps the people in the minds of the wretched GOP evil doers.

Wow...Just wow. Bill O'Reilly goes Morton Downey Jr.

The latest phony issue created by O'Reilly is crucifying the mayor and police chief of Virginia Beach for not having previously deported an undocumented immigrant who ended up killing two teens in Virgina Beach in a drunk driving accident. He's mad not because the guy was a drunk driver, apparently, but because he was "an illegal alien." O'Reilly was whacked all morning about it on his radio show, and then flipped his shit on Fox "News" tonight with Geraldo, charging him with "wanting anarchy." Give it a look...

A news conference was held in response to O'Reilly's batshit episode, in which he told the father and sister of one of the dead girls: "The authorities in your town would not obey the law, defied the law of the land and somebody needs to be held accountable sir. I want you to keep in touch with us. We're gonna get the mayor, Oberndorf and the judge, Whitehurst, because they're the villains."

At the news conference, with Mayor Meyera Oberndorf, the father of the other killed girl said: "We need to heal, and to bring immigration, that's disrespectful to a family who's just mourning."

O'Reilly has gone frickin' psycho. And again we ask, as we did after he cut off the mic of a 29-year army veteran two days ago: Why is this guy still on TV? The same reason Morton Downey Jr. was, we guess. Trainwrecks get great ratings.

(Hat-tip Oliver Willis.)

I recently interviewed whistleblower Stephen Heller, while guest hosting Cynthia Black's Action Point on Air America/Nova M Pheonix.

It was Heller's first live broadcast interview and his wife Michelle Gregory also joined us for a bit. A documentary film crew was on hand to capture the event.

Heller is the Los Angeles actor who stole incriminating documents while working as a temp at Diebold's powerful law firm Jones Day and turned them over to Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who, in turn, gave them to Ian Hoffman at the Oakland Tribune where many of them were published. The documents showed that Diebold had illegally installed uncertified hardware and software in California during the 2004 primary, which led to the decertification of their touch-screen DRE voting systems in the state.

Incredibly, Heller was many years later --- notably, long after the 2004 Election --- charged with three felony counts. He eventually pled guilty in a deal to one of the charges, as he discussed during our interview, to protect his family. As well, he was given the assurance that he'd serve no jail time and the charges would likely be removed entirely from his record after a year or so.

The complete audio and text transcript of the half hour interview is now posted here.

Here's just a few of the highlights from Heller's first live interview:

On why he took the documents in the first place...

On the privatization of our public election system...

On not being able to talk while he was under indictment:

On whether he believes himself to be a whistleblower:

On the legitimacy of Diebold elections and George W. Bush...

All of that, plus what happened when police raided his home, why it took so long for charges to be brought, his wife Michelle's plan to write a book on the life of a wife of a whistleblower (check the full interview to learn the planned title ) and much more.

We'll soon be publishing a guest blog from Heller here at The BRAD BLOG, on whistleblowing and why those thinking about doing it, should.

The complete 3/25/07 interview with Stephen Heller, both the audio and text transcript, is now posted here...

On a related note... In the corporate media's misleading and self-created "two-person race" for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have each raised approximately $25 million in the first quarter of this year.

Neither, however, has gone on record in favor a paper ballot --- one that is actually tabulated --- for every vote cast in America.

Dear People of France: Welcome to our nightmare...

But not to fear, ES&S, just as here in America, is on the job! Spokesholes are standing by, ready to lie in France, as quickly as they do here...

"Proven themselves"? To be what? Shitty? Uh, yup...Bonne chance, mes amis!

Ohio's Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner cleaned out the last dead-ender from the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Board of Elections today. That would be the chairperson of the BoE and the head of Ohio's Republican Party, Bob Bennett (see previous coverage here.)

Bennett was the last of the four directors of the Board of Elections (supposedly two Democrats and two Republicans) to leave the board of the state's most Democratic-leaning county. The other three resigned after requested by Brunner in the wake of the convictions of two Cuyahoga Elections Officials for rigging the 2004 Presidential Election recount, a raft of disastrously run elections and a new criminal investigation into malfeasance at the county election board. The new investigation includes the early printing of absentee ballot results and an unexplained network cable left attached to the central tabulator overnight.

According to a statement posted to the SoS website, Brunner notified Bennett today about his suspension in writing, and has also announced yet another new charge against him:

Accountability to continue in Ohio...

While he was still the 13-year Monterey County, CA, Registrar of Voters, Tony Anchundo once told us live on air that "There is obviously going to have to be some trust and faith in the elections official, or in this case, it's me."

On Monday, the disgraced Anchundo reported to jail after pleading "no contest" last December to 43 criminal counts of forgery, misapplication of funds, embezzlement, falsification of accounts, and grand theft:

We've said it before, but obviously it bears repeating (particularly to the members of CACEO - California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials and the shameful Santa Cruz Sentinel): Trust no one when it comes to your elections. You should never have to. Especially those who tell you they should be trusted.

While it should be self-evident by now, it's our duty to remind you (and the CACEO and the Santa Cruz Sentinel as previously owned by former CA SoS Bruce McPherson) that our country and Constitution and Rule of Law were not built on trust. They were built on checks and balances. The best elections officials in America (if not necessarily the CACEO) will tell you as much:

• Leon County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said in a speech last May: "Trust no one. If it can't be verified, it can't be used."
• Yolo County, California Registrar-Clerk Freddie Oakley wrote last June in response to many of her colleagues: "They also argue that, 'We have to trust our poll workers…' To this I can only say…only if they are incorruptible."

On that note, no American should have to trust in an electronic voting system which counts votes in secret, as never verified by the voter or any human being. Doing so makes as much sense as "trusting" in Tony Anchundo --- object lesson #1 in all that is wrong with trusting anyone or anything in this regard.

See the notice below on how you can (and must!) take action now to make sure Congress finally gets the message!

Since Brit Hume of Fox "News" has never quoted us (rather, me, Brad Friedman) by name as far as I know, I thought it would be worth elevating the following update from our piece over the weekend which was critical of Obama, to note the once-credible Hume having done so today, in order to smash up a Democrat, of course. Oh, the irony never stops.

The original BRAD BLOG article from which Hume quotes us (me) was critical of Obama for reportedly telling AP over the weekend that Senate Dems would cave by sending an Iraq spending bill to the White House without troop withdrawal timelines, if Bush vetoes the current one as promised.

Hume failed to mention, of course, that we also noted the dubious provenance of the report: The Associated Press. Neither did he mention the ensuing updates and discussions about whether AP had the story right or not. Though, in fact, Obama has not gone out of his way to correct the record, or call out AP for being inaccurate, save for this middling response in the Union Leader today. Markos at DailyKos --- who is infamously singled out along with us (happy to tarnish his reputation) in Hume's piece --- has thoughts on Obama's response with which we will also associate ourselves in a rare meeting of minds.

So for infamy's sake, the video of former newsman Hume using us to slime Obama ("Liberal Bloggers Turn on Barack Obama") is at left. We'll presume he means "turns back on" versus the sexual connotation. Either way, we're happy to serve. Video courtesy of the indispensable NewsHounds.us and the indefatigable Alan Breslauer.

Please note: Unlike the Fox "News" website print version of Hume's "Political Grapevine" (see the update from the original article below), Hume referred to us as "popular" in the video version. We shall add it to our CV right away...

In one of his most shamefully transparent swiftboat attacks yet, Bill O'Reilly twisted and perverted the comments of 29-year U.S. Army Colonel Ann Wright last Friday, for having the temerity to explain that when Americans parade their own prisoners of war before the cameras, it's difficult to have the "moral high ground" in making the case that Iran has violated the Geneva Convention by doing similarly with their captured British troops.

For the record, Wright spent years educating troops on the Geneva Convention at Fort Bragg and understands it cold (unlikely, O'Reilly). She also spent 16 years in the diplomatic corps before resigning in protest as the Iraq War began. I interviewed her on the illegalities of the war while at Camp Casey in Crawford, TX, in August of 2005. Her explanation was exceedingly enlightening. (MP3 here, appx. 22 mins, as part of the collection of highlights from our 50+ hours of special BRAD SHOW "Operation Noble Cause" live broadcasts.)

Crooks & Liars' coverage of the interview, includes a transcript from the wrap-up of the attempted O'Reilly hit piece (in which he only seems to have hit himself):

Watch the video. It's absolutely shameful.

(Hat-tip for the video to Chrish at the indispensable NewsHounds.us for "watching FOX so [we] don't have to.")

The deafening noise of scampering rats from the sinking ship continues.Following on the heels of Bush-Cheney's chief '04 campaign strategist, Matthew Dowd, over the weekend, GOP insider and Bush/Cheney family friend, Vic Gold, unloads on the two to WaPo in advance of his new book, Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP.

Gold, who was asked by Lynn Cheney to write the profiles of both Bush and Cheney and their wives for the official commemorative 2000 Inauguration program tells WaPo today:

And on Cheney...

The above point is particularly interesting in light of what Gold wrote about Cheney for the commemorative Inaugural program:

Indeed.

The parade of similar such defections, we suspect, will continue --- exponentially --- apace...

(Hat-tip to John Cole at Balloon Juice.)

Harri Hursti drove up to Los Angeles last Friday after his appearance that morning before the Riverside County, California, "Blue Ribbon" panel convened to investigate massive problems during the County's 2006 election, and continuing concerns from Election Integrity advocates about both the performance and security issues surrounding the Sequoia Edge II DRE touch-screen voting systems in use down there.

We sat down to interview Hursti for a documentary film for an hour or two on Friday night, and we continued chatting into the wee hours. After getting home around 4am, we suspect we'll be playing catching up for a few days.

The headline from those discussions last night is probably that Hursti, now famous for his hack of a paper-based Diebold optical-scan voting system in Leon County, Florida, in late 2005 (as seen live in HBO's documentary Hacking Democracy), advocates digital optically-scanned paper ballots --- where the image of the scan can then be made available to all on the Internet --- as the most secure and most transparent method of voting for the type of elections we have in these United States.

That may come as a surprise to advocates of Rep. Rush Holt's Election Reform bill, who have been pointing to the "Hursti Hack" as a way to suggest that op-scan tabulation is "just as bad" as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting systems. Holt's bill (HR811) would allow for the continued use of DREs, despite the continuing warnings from computer scientists, disabilities and minority rights advocates, and the Election Integrity community that the devices should be banned.

Hursti heartily disagrees with those Holt supporters and told us again that DREs are not safe for use in elections, with or without a so-called "voter verified paper audit trail." He's asked for us to help facilitate a meeting for him with Holt and his staff to discuss the matter, and we are attempting to do just that.

As well, Hursti's position may also come as a surprise to those who have pointed to the "Hursti Hack" in their call for 100% hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) in American elections. While Hursti said he recognizes that such a system works well enough in other countries where ballots are much simpler, he feels the thousands of ballot styles and pages and pages of candidates and propositions would likely make all HCPB unwieldy here. By contrast, he explained that in Finland, voters go to the poll and cast a single vote for President as the only race on the ballot, which is simple enough to hand count on the night of the election.

He rattled off the many different systems of democracy in many different countries, from Europe to Asia, as well as a history of how America has come to its current mess, going back as early as the late 1800's to discuss the evolution of our modern day system in this country. Clearly, he's done his homework and is well worth listening to on these matters.

Hursti also gave high marks to California's new Secretary of State Debra Bowen for her recent announcement of "red team" hack testing for all of the state's currently certified electronic voting systems, as part of her "top to bottom review" of those systems. Other computer scientists and security experts have lined up to join in praising Bowen for this unique, first-of-its-kind attempt to finally test the security of these systems.

On the other hand, many of the state's elections officials have come out against such testing of their precious, hackable, un-transparent voting systems. And, surprise surprise, so has the Santa Cruz Sentinel --- the paper once owned by thankfully-former CA SoS Bruce McPherson --- in a laughable editorial late last week claiming that "paper ballots carry an even greater risk" than electronic voting systems, and that Bowen's planned test criteria is a "solution in search of a problem."

We're not sure what cave the Santa Cruz Sentinel has been living in, but we're guessing they've been sharing their hard tack and canned spam with their buddy, the gone-but-apparently-not-forgotten McPherson, the one responsible for certifying these god-awful systems in the first place for the state, despite mountains of evidence suggesting it was unwise. We're also guessing they've never sat down to chat with Harri Hursti.

Hursti's visit to Riverside, as we reported here last week, was in response to County Supervisor Jeff Stone's challenge last December that nobody could manipulate the county's Sequoia election system. After Hursti volunteered to take Stone up on that "1000 to 1" challenge, the county has been waffling ever since. So quite a few members of both the public and the press were on hand yesterday for Hursti's testimony before the "Blue Ribbon" panel.

Although Hursti traveled all the way from Finland, Stone and every other member of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors were apparently too busy to make it up the road to meet Hursti and listen to his presentation...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL) tells AP today that he believes Senate Democrats will vote to fund the Iraq War without withdrawal timelines if Bush vetoes the currently pending spending bills as he's promised to do.

Presuming he's been accurately quoted by AP (not necessarily always a safe bet), this means Obama was willing to show his hand and, essentially, give permission to Bush to go ahead and veto the bill without consequences. Brilliantly done.

If we ever need to negotiate for anything, remind us to not call on Obama to represent us.

"I think that it's important for voters to get a sense of how the next president will make decisions in a foreign policy arena," he told AP.

Great. We've just gotten that "sense," and if that's your plan, then thanks but no thanks.

For all of George W. Bush's indescribable incompetence, at least he understands that you don't show your hand to those you are negotiating with. Thus, his "all options are on the table" rhetoric, when dealing with foreign powers like Iraq, Iran, etc., in our opinion, is actually quite appropriate. Terrifying, in the hands of a dangerous, bumbling dope like Bush, but quite appropriate for international negotiations in a general sense.

We're sorry to see that Obama doesn't seem to get that.

And one other disturbing quote from the AP article...

Uh, wrong, Senator. Yes, the American people must continue to do their part in pressuring their Congressional reps, but you need to do your part and lead them, as you were elected to do. Your comments --- as reported today by AP, in any case --- don't offer much confidence that you yet understand the necessities, nuances, or negotiation skills required to either pull off the job of President, or even lead Americans as a sitting Senator during a time of war as waged by a madman.

We hope you'll figure this out --- and quickly --- before undermining your supporters and your caucus again in the future.

UPDATE 11:13pm PT: In comments here, "Truth" posts a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer as proof that Obama never said what AP has charged him with saying. As mentioned above, I wouldn't put anything past AP these days. That said, it seems that was not the interview AP was quoting from with Obama. Over at dKos, Markos was similarly outraged about Obama's comments this morning, apparently, saying that "Obama just surrendered to Bush" and excoriating his negotiation skills as we did. Kos has now followed up the original post with another pointing out that there are two different interviews in question. One with CNN and one with AP. I'll refer you to Kos's newer post, for now, on the difference between the two and the Obama campaign's apparent lack of effort to correct the AP story if, in fact, it was wrong.

UPDATE 3/2/07 7:25pm PT: Looks like Republican propagandist Brit Hume of the Republican propaganda outlet, Fox "News", quoted our report here tonight for the "Political Grapevine" section of their anti-Democratic propaganda "news" show Special Report with Brit Hume. Needless to say, he didn't bother to include the questions we've raised about the AP report. Here's their propagandistic website's version of the report (which doesn't bother to link to us, natch) and is naturally headlined: "Liberal Bloggers Turn on Barack Obama":

Setting aside whether we're "Liberal" or "Left-wing" as Fox "News" would like to have it, can one "turn their back" on someone that they never actually turned their front to in the first place? Just curious. (Video now posted here...).

FEATURING: Our One-on-One Debriefing with the Finnish Computer Security Expert on American Elections, Rush Holt's Reform Bill, Debra Bowen, 'Black Hats,' and Why Elections Matter...Pre-details back here...

UPDATE: Story now posted here...