Editor & Publisher, the nation's oldest journal covering the newspaper industry, founded in 1884 has today published a version of my "Why Attribution Matters" piece (originally published at BRAD BLOG a few days ago here).

E&P has done a bit of editing and given it the new title, "Give Credit Where Credit is Due". The E&P version is published here. We'll hope we don't soil their excellent 100+ year reputation.

The piece --- which was spurred originally by AP lifting a story from RAW STORY without giving them credit for their original reporting --- covers the emerging case of Mainstream Media outlets finally picking up on so much of what Internet-based news sites such as this one, RAW, and others have been reporting for many months and sometimes years. It's nice to see them finally recognizing the newsworthiness of such reports, but disappointing to find them failing to give the appropriate credit to those of us who broke such stories in the first place. Stories that the MSM outlets might not otherwise have known about at all. See the editorial for reasons why it matters more than you might think.

In the intervening days between my writing the original piece and giving it to E&P to run, I received an Email from Jason Leopold (previously of RAW, now of Truthout.org) concerning virtually the exact same problem. In this case, a helluva story he broke for RAW in January of this year on how Michael Scanlon's former fiancee kicked off the Jack Abramoff scandals was run as an front page "exclusive" in Wall Street Journal (subscription required) on Friday this week.

I believe we'll be seeing much more of this as we move forward, and I can only hope the MSM reviews their attribution policies since "we don't give credit to blogs" as the AP reportedly said while refusing to recognize RAW for their original work, ain't gonna cut it.

Since the final line of my original piece was removed from the version of the Braditorial which ran today on E&P, I believe it bears repeating here. Paraphrasing Stephen Colbert (See? Attribution! Is that so hard!?) my piece concluded: "MSM, you're on notice."

And you still are.

UPDATE: Jeralynn has more on this at Talk Left...

FURTHER UPDATE: Now Josh Marshall is pissed off about the same thing, since the MSM lifted some four stories alone last last week from reports at his TPMCafe! His piece begins "Okay, enough is enough." Agreed! What the hell is going on here?! (Hat tip to Jeralynn for pointing Josh's piece out to me. See? Attribution again! Wasn't that simple?!)

Meanwhile meanwhile... The Wingnuts have discovered they too should be concerned about hackable Electronic Voting Machines, as we find in this article posted yesterday over at RedState blog --- the site co-founded by serial plagiarist and disgraced former Washington Post blogger (for three days anyway) Ben Domenech --- concerning new ownership of Sequoia by Venezuelan firm Smartmatic.

Apparently, the writer is concerned about Electronic Voting Machines only now that he's realized Smartmatic may be owned or controlled or unduly influenced by one Hugo Chavez. He goes so far as to quote these words by another blogger in his article:

While we're glad to see the Wingnuts suddenly giving a damn about Electronic Voting --- now that they're concerned about their own ox being gored by a company which may have left-leaning ownership --- we're hardly surprised that the anonymous blogger who calls him or herself "AcademicElephant" (we'll presume it's a "he") didn't seem to have such concerns about another Voting Machine Company with "connections to the George W. Bush regime [being] selected to run elections" all over our country in 2004 during one of the most contentious elections in our country's history.

But of more concern for the moment, now that Mr. Elephant has suddenly decided to be worried about such important matters as a transparent and accountable democracy, he sadly exhibits the all-too-familiar Wingnut tendency of having a problem with that whole pesky "fact thing".

By way of example, Mr. Elephant decides right off the bat to use some of the same tired old misleading propaganda in one of his early grafs...

Meanwhile...in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, where plans to use Diebold's hackable Electronic Voting Equipment have recently been nixed, Plan B seems to be failing too. The machines they'd hope to use instead, as made by Sequoia Voting Systems, have now been shown to be hackable as well.

Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette picked up on the story yesterday, and followed up today on the testing being run in Allegheny County by Dr. Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, on the "new" Sequoia Voting Machines. The county had hoped to use these systems --- ten-year old Sequoia "Advantage" machines as purchased from Clark County, Nevada who is moving to a different Sequoia system --- in their upcoming Primary Elections in May. That plan, now may be in grave doubt.

The testing of the machines has found so many problems --- including Shamos' findings during "tampering tests" that he was able to instantly "transform a handful of votes into thousands" --- that he has now simply shut down the entire process described as "pointless" due to all of the errors in the software.

According to today's report...

As you may recall, it was machines made by Sequoia which failed so miserably across the state in Illinois just last week during the Primary Elections there. Just a handful of the many mainstream reports covering the meltdown are here, here and here.

Now pay attention...because this can be confusing...

Illinois' Cook County (Chicago) had used new Sequoia "Edge" machines in the recent primary that had been purchased by Clark County, Nevada. Since Illinois' primaries were first, and Sequoia didn't have time or inventory to fill both orders, Cook used Clark's machines for last week's contest only.

Those "Edge" machines, which failed so disastrously in Cook County, IL, are now to be shipped to Clark County, NV who is selling their own ten-year old Sequoia "Advantage" machines to Allegheny County, PA. It is those ten-year old machines which are now being tested in Allegheny and failing so horrendously.

All of which begs the questions: How well were those "Advantage" machines tested in Nevada in the last ten years? How much is Nevada now looking forward to using the new and failed "Edge" machines that they had loaned for a single use to Cook County, IL? And finally, will Clark County, NV bother to test them to find out if they too are hackable like the ones --- modified a bit by Sequoia on the way, apparently --- that they've just unloaded on Allegheny County, PA?

But back to the halted tests in Allegheny...and the claims by Sequoia officials that the problems found were "no big deal". Shamos doesn't see them as "no big deal" and is concerned that a malicious hacker could do precisely what he was able to do in these tests...

State Sen. Debra Bowen released a statement moments ago about yesterday's report that the new computerized California Voter Registration Database is summarily rejecting some 26% of all new or re-registering voters across the statewide. The LA Times reported yesterday that some 43% of voters in Los Angeles County alone have been dumped by the new system.

We'll have more on all of this soon. Working on a number of items at once, as well as being in full catch--up mode after being on the road for a week. So for now, here's Bowen's release in full...

You'll recall that in February the Palm Beach Post reported that "conservative" extremist Ann Coulter may have committed a vote fraud felony by signing someone else's address to her registration form in Florida and then voting in the wrong precinct --- a crime which, if convicted, could earn her three years behind bars.

(It's been pointed out to us that such bars would have to be very close together to keep her from simply slithering through them to escape...Though even at that, we're not sure there is steel strong enough to keep her from being able to chew her way to freedom. But we digress.)

A few days after the story originally broke, Coulter claimed publicly she didn't even live in Palm Beach where she reportedly committed the crime. The Post reporter who broke the story, Jose Lambiet, quickly replied that he had hard evidence that she does, in fact, live in Palm Beach (next door to town councilman Bill Brooks on Seabreeze Ave.) and he characterized Coulter's denial as "absolutely a bold-faced lie."

Yesterday the Palm Beach Post offered still more "skinny" on the latest in the Ann Coulter Voter Fraud Felony Scandal. Her denials about being a Palm Beach resident is about to be tested --- first by the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Arthur Anderson, and then perhaps by the Florida State Attorney to whom the entire matter may be referred.

Coulter's now got 30 days to 'splain herself, according to Lambiet in the Post. Please read on...

Just out from AP, the Florida state Attorney General has subpoenaed the three Electronic Voting Machine companies who have all refused to do business with Leon County, FL Election Supervisor Ion Sancho since he discovered that Diebold's optical-scan voting system was vulnerable to hackers.

Sancho's discovery, revealed via a mock election test last December, showed in no uncertain terms that Diebold's systems could be hacked, the results of an election flipped, without a trace being left behind.

Since then, as The BRAD BLOG has previously reported, all three Voting Machine Vendors certified to do business in the state have all refused to sign contracts with the heroic elected official (even though sales reps from both ES&S and Sequoia had initially promised to do so).

According to AP...

At this time, it's still unknown whether the companies refusal to do business with Sancho is due to collusion on their part, or simply because ES&S and Sequoia are concerned that Sancho may actually examine their machines with the same rigor previously applied to Diebold's machines. Sancho, though we've asked him on several occassions (one of those occasions was live on The Young Turks radio show, the MP3 of that interview is here) refuses to speculate.

The now infamous "hack test" has had repurcussions around the nation, including in California where it caused the Sec. of State to momentarily pause, commission a panel of experts to analyze situation and independently confirm the gaping security hole along with finding at least 16 others, before going ahead and certifying the hackable machines in the state anyway. A group of 25 state voters recently filed a lawsuit to prevent the purchase and use of Diebold machines in the state.

In Maryland, one of Diebold's original "showcase states", the Republican Governor has called for a ban of Diebold's machines and the State House of Reps recently voted 137 to 0 to do exactly that.

For its part, the state of Florida's Sec. of State --- while recognizing the problem exposed by Sancho and warning all state Elections Officials about the matter --- has nonetheless attacked and threatened the elected Sancho with removal from office if he's unable to strike a deal with one of the vendors certified to do business in the state. That, despite wide support from around the country, and in his own county of Leon which is home to the state's capitol of Tallahassee --- otherwise known as JebVille.

UPDATE 8:09pm PT: Looks like the heat from the AG, coupled with Sancho's previous threat of legal action for breach of contract against Diebold are causing some movement. According to Tallahassee Democrat tonight:

Whether that's a good or bad thing, we'll leave to someone else to determine. But, never a dull moment.

UPDATE 3/30/06: Jim March of BBV posts the actual subpoenas and interrogatory questions sent to all three companies by the AG. Looks like he means business and seems to be building a case for collusion and anti-trust violations amongst the companies. (Hat-tip to commenter "Catherine A")

We've been dreading this. And you're not gonna like it either.

It's an entirely new can of worms in the Electronic Rape of American Electoral Democracy. The next wave --- beyond the electronic voting machines, and perhaps even more alarming --- in the arsenal of those out to game the system for partisan advantage.

No matter what we do, no matter how many successes, the Bad Guys --- those who hate Democracy and American Values --- are always one step ahead of us, it seems.

The horrifically written and, of course, ironically named "Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002" requires, as of January 1, 2006, each state to implement "a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list."

And guess who's writing the software for it, in California, Ohio and elsewhere? That's right...our old friends at Diebold, Inc.

While we've put off reporting on much of this until now --- as prompted by story out today (in the MSM of all places!) --- we've been working on an extremely disturbing part of this story for some time relating directly to all of this out in, you guessed it, Ohio. We've yet to run the story for a number of reasons. But we hope to have much more on it, in all its troubling detail, in the not-too-distant future.

For today, however, we'll stick to the report coming out of California in this morning's Los Angeles Times which says that, since the first of year, when California's new computerized Voter Registration Database has gone state-wide, Los Angeles County has "rejected 14,629 people --- 43% of those who registered from Jan. 1 to March 15."

The rejections occur, amongst other reasons, due to failures of exact matching between voter applications and the state's motor vehicle registration (DMV) database to which they are now auto-magically compared. So, if a voter registers (or re-registers after moving to a new location) as "Brad Friedman" but has "Bradley Friedman" on his driver's license, he'll be auto-kicked out of the voter registration system and may not find out until he shows up at the polls on Election Day! That is, if he even knows where to show up since he may no longer receive sample ballots and poll location information etc. in the mail!...

In case you missed it, AP recently lifted an article as researched and written by RAW STORY and published a version of it as their own. Along the way, they seem to have forgotten to give RAW the attribution they deserved for the many hours of research and work they put into the story in order to file the piece in the first place.

RAW's Larisa Alexandrovna originally discovered the gem after plowing through a bunch of Bush Administration policy statements on National Security Clearance policies and comparing the most recent version to previous versions of that same policy side-by-side. One of the RAW researchers confirmed her work and the subtle, but important changes she found, and then Larisa, along with RAW's Executive Editor John Byrne finally filed the piece at RawStory.com.

After all of that hard work, a human rights group shared RAW's story with AP who eventually filed their own very familiar story using the work as originally unearthed by RAW. They've since admitted to being given RAW's article and using it as the starting point for their own work, which walks a dangerously close line towards plagarism.

But even as they now admit that their story originated with RAW's reporting, they still refuse to give credit where credit's due. They've now given several lame and still-changing reasons for failing to acknowledge the "oversight" including "we do not credit blogs" and later, "we only credit blogs we know."

Larisa writes about the matter at Huff Po here and here, and John Byrne wrote an article covering AP's comments and comparing both articles directly for RAW here.

Setting aside the fact that RAW STORY is NOT EVEN A BLOG --- apparently any independent news source which originates on the Internet is now considered a "blog" by some in the MSM...all the easier to dismiss them by, we suppose --- The BRAD BLOG is a blog and yet we find the practice of failing to give us due credit equally objectionable for the many stories we have broken which were later picked up by the MSM as well.

Though most "blogs" do not do the sort of original reporting that we do here, it's certainly harder to argue that we're not one --- what with the word "BLOG" in our name and all. And yet, I'm forced to ask: What the hell does the word "blog" have to do with anything anyway?

Journalism is journalism is journalism. The quality of the reporting and the journalism therein is what matters no matter the name given to the media originating the work.

The reason that all of this matters is not so that Larisa or RAW or even myself or The BRAD BLOG receives some form of personal adulation or ego stroke for our hard work.

So if not for the good of our own personal self-esteem, why does proper credit to such sources really matter?...

Blogged by Brad on the road...

As The BRAD BLOG reported last week, a Conservative Republican former Texas Supreme Court Justice had been considering an Election Contest after electronic voting machine problems and inexplicable tallies plagued the first-in-the-nation March 7th primary in the Lone Star State.

Steve Smith --- who ran for election to the state Supreme Court, Place 2, in the Republican primary against an opponent backed by both Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and the Bush family --- will be filing an official Election Contest this afternoon in Travis County District Court, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

Since our previous report, the Smith for Supreme Court campaign has been examining election tallies around the state and report that they continue to find anomolies in virtually every county they look into.

"The more research we do, the more irregularities we find," campaign manager David Rogers told The BRAD BLOG this morning.

The problems are being found on machines made by both Hart InterCivic and Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) --- the two major Electronic Voting Machine vendors supplying the state of Texas.

Rogers says the campaign plans to file the Contest before 5pm (CT) today. The Contest (to be posted in full here when available) will outline some of the many problems they have found so far including counties "where there were more votes than voters."

They hope the Election Contest may allow, for the first time, a closer examination of both the Hart InterCivic and ES&S electronic voting machines used in Texas elections, as well as elsewhere around the country.

An earlier statement from the campaign had detailed a number of the campaign's initial findings including several mysterious totals in Smith's home county of Tarrant where officials admit some 100,000 votes were incorrectly added to the reported results on Election Night.

Smith had outperformed his statewide average in Tarrant County during the 2004 Election by 13%, but this year, his campaign reports, he underperformed the statewide results by 23%. One other such puzzling number reported previously by Smith's campaign:

Says Rogers, "We are contesting the state as a whole, but looking at specific larger counties where there are problems and a few of the smaller counties where the mistakes were absolutely egregious."

The BRAD BLOG has also previously reported on whistleblower William Singer who had worked at both Hart InterCivic and then as an "Election Programmer" in Tarrant County. Singer had attempted to alert the Texas and Ohio Secretaries of State and Attornies General about concerns, including possible criminal fraud by Hart, ES&S and Tarrant County, as long ago as July of 2004. His letters were all virtually ignored by officials in both states. The Texas Secretary of State was recently forced to shutdown a mandated recount in Tom Green County when it was discovered that recount numbers from the machines differed by some 20% from results reported on Election Night.

Up until now, many critics who have doubted or ignored the many concerns about the hackable hardware and secret software used in Electronic Voting, as expressed for some time by Election Integrity Advocates, have said that it is only Democrats who seem to be concerned about results as tallied on such machines which are now blanketing the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

That flawed law was written and sponsored in large part by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and passed in 2002 along with heavy lobbying by Voting Machine Vendor Diebold, Inc. of North Canton, OH and their top lobbyist, Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano. HAVA's full impact kicks in by statute for the first time this year. Ney recently stepped down from his chairmanship of the U.S. House Administration Committee after being named in one of the plea bargains by disgraced former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Smith's election challenge, by a conservative Republican Supreme Court Justice from Texas, may well help to change the tenor of the debate over Electronic Voting, as is becoming apparent in several national mainstream publications of late including USA TODAY who published a front page story finally touching on these matters today.

We are on the road for the bulk of today and this evening, but if one of our friendly Guest Bloggers can update this item with a copy of the full Election Contest as filed by Steve Smith later today --- once we receive it --- we will do so.

UPDATE 3:50pm PT: Campaign managaer David Rogers has contacted us to let us know the campaign has found additional information that they wish to investigate before filing their contest. Due to this new information they will be delaying the filing by 24 hours.

UPDATE 4/1/06: The complete Election Contest filing is now attached here. [PDF] We hope to have a new report on the details/specifics later.

Blogged by Brad on the road...

"Primary voting-machine troubles raise concerns for '06" is the headline on the front page of today's USA Today. The article even quotes regular BRAD BLOG Guest blogger John Gideon of VotersUnite.org.

Here's their lede...

The article is mostly stuff that regular BRAD BLOG readers are likely familiar with while the MSM is still busy playing catch-up on these matters. (Who could have forseen such troubles, after all?)

The Voting Machine Industry and Elections Officials, are, in general, still in denial mode --- blaming "human error" for the "glitches". That too will change over time as the MSM realizes they're being sold a bill of good when they report such things within that phony framework.

The story covers briefly, USA Today-style, the many troubles in the IL primaries (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), including the 400+ missing Sequoia Memory Cards in IL (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), the 100,000 extra votes added by Hart InterCivic and ES&S machines in Tarrant County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here and here), the TX Sec. of State's shutdown of a recount in Tom Green County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here) and the former Conservative Republican (they don't mention that part) Supreme Court Justice preparing to challenge the election in TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here --- with more to come very shortly on this, btw!)

From the 2 states to have disastrous primaries so far, USA Today also looks forward to the 48 more still ahead of us, noting that "10 states hold primaries in May, including Pennsylvania, which is scrambling to train voters and poll workers."

And our man Gideon, ever the eternal pessimist (can't image why) is then quoted as follows:

No worries. Plenty of Election Officials and Voting Machine Vendor spokesfolks are quoted in more detail to let us know that everything is perfectly under control.

Blogged by Brad from the Road...

Yup, still on the road, and largely "off the grid" for another day or so (with much going on, sorry, I'll catch up soon, I hope! Not even able to check email!) --- but caught this in the carbon-based version of the NY Times this morning. No time for context other than to mention our previous report on Maryland's Republican Governor who wants to see Diebold's paperless touch-screens banned in the state along with the Democratic-majority House which voted a bi-partisan 137 to 0 to ban them recently, along with the Democratic Board of Elections Director, Linda Lamone, who has been fighting for them since Day 1, and still is. Search BRAD BLOG for the links to all of those stories.

Point is, as we've always said, this ain't an issue of Right and Left, it's an issues of Right and Wrong. That said, here's the letter printed in this morning's NY Times (who has been horrendously delinquent in reporting on any of these matters, and still buys into the Voting Machine Company's "it's just glitches" meme)...

Letters to the Editor --- especially from Elections Officials, but regular old Voters are just as good --- make a difference. Especially to papers like the Times who refuse to properly investigate and report on this stuff! Please write one today!

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

Still on the road and unable to cover anything as usual. So I'll leave it to you guys to comment on the notable details. Had an interesting day/night yesterday at the California Democratic Council Annual Convention, and hope to share some thoughts and perhaps pics with you as time allows in the not-too-distant future. But until then...

Both Washington Post today, and AP yesterday, cover the Ion Sancho story is a fair bit of detail with some interesting responses, as well, from both Diebold and Sequoia (ES&S seems to have refused comment for either story).

WaPo's story in today's A section (page A7) --- headlined "Election Whistle-Blower Stymied by Vendors: After Official's Criticism About Security, Three Firms Reject Bid for Voting Machines" --- focuses on all three companies certified to do business in Florida all now refusing to do business with Sancho.

That story reads nearly identically, to BRAD BLOG's March 8 story on same. Hey, better two-and-a-half-weeks late than never, we suppose. And no, not a nod nor hat tip to BRAD BLOG's coverage. And as our friend Larisa Alexandrovna from RAW STORY points out in her dead-on piece over at HuffPo yesterday, the Mainstream Media is far too good too recognize any lowly "bloggers" in their reporting.

On Saturday, AP covered the Sancho story in great detail as well. Though there's a few more details here, I think I prefer the WaPo story today. Both are worth a read however, particularly since I have no time to cover the deets.

Finally, today's WaPo story in the Sunday paper included a Tom Toles cartoon which, so far, I haven't been able to find online. A kind reader scanned it and sent it to me. It's posted below.

We continue to win this fight...despite the slow and seemingly endless struggle against some forces of evil with a lot of money to back their fight. We may be naive here, but with the truth on our side, we believe we believe David will eventually defeat Goliath.

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram picks up on our previous report about Hart InterCivic / Tarrant County, TX election software whistleblower William Singer.

Does the "Startlegram" give any love to The BRAD BLOG in their article? Despite an hour or two on the phone with them after they called for deets and a hook-up with our source last week? Not a jot.

But we're not in it for the love. We're in it for the big bucks.

Blogged by Brad on the Road...

I know I'm supposed to be taking a few hours off (how's that going, Brad?)...But I couldn't help sharing with you a quick piece of audio from my regular Friday guest appearance on KRXA 540am's Peter B. Collins Show today (broadcast out of Monterey, CA).

I was pleased that Carolyn Wilson Crnich, Elections Registrar of Humboldt County, CA was able to join us on air for one of the segments (posted below.)

Crnich is one of the officials named as a defendant in the recent lawsuit against CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson and other county elections officials around the state. The suit calls for the ban of use and purchase of Diebold touch-screen voting systems in the state since (amongst other reasons) they have proven to be hackable and their recent certification was in violation of state law requiring all certified voting systems to conform to Federal Voting System Standards. Diebold's machines do not conform to such standards because they contain "interpreted code" --- which is specifically banned by the Federal standards. Diebold has now admitted to the existence of such code on their systems. The forbidden code went unexamined and untested by Federal authorities when the machines received Federal certification.

Nonetheless, Crnich (we believe) is one of the good guys. She's proven willing to dump her previous plan to use Diebold AccuVote TSx (touch-screen) machines, which she was going to use in order to meet the disabled-accessible voting device requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). She is now hoping to use the paper-ballot based Vote-PAD system in Humboldt County this year instead.

However, as our on-air conversation revealed, there are still very serious concerns with Humboldt County's optical-scan system since they use the very system, made by Diebold, which was shown to be hackable last December in Leon County, FL.

Of note in our conversation, Crnich admits that optical-scan systems are sent home with poll workers the night before elections where --- even if the hackable memory cards are wired into the machine so they can't be removed --- they can still be accessed by other means. If so, a malicious poll worker could modify the code on the memory cards, allowing an election to be hacked without a trace left behind during that breakdown in chain of custody for such home-stored voting machines.

Give the interview and discussion between Crnich, myself and Peter B. a listen. See what you think. It's good to have such an admission on the public record, and the fact that she admits to not knowing what could happen when these machines are stored at poll workers' houses.

Again, I'm glad she was willing (unlike many other Elections Officials around the country) to come on air and face some of these tough questions. Happy to hear your thoughts.

-- Carolyn Wilson Crnich, with Brad on the Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 13 mins]
-- Complete Brad appearance on Peter B. Collins Show, 3/24/06 [MP3, about 35 mins, and quite a bit funnier, IMHO]

(Thanks to Joe at the Peter B. show for sending the audio!)

Heading up to Santa Clara to speak this weekend (see "Media Appearances" section at top of front page, and come on by if you can!) Don't know if I'll be on or offline over the next week. Please assume I'll be off, and don't hold it against me. Need a break anyway. Though knowing me, I won't be gone long. Although I'm happy to leave the messes in TX, IL, CA and elsewhere to John Gideon anyway

He and David Edwards will be holding down the fort here. Treat them kindly. If anyone needs me, contact John or David and they'll know how to track me down!

And stay outta the liquor cabinet while I'm gone! Seriously, I marked the bottles, and I will be checking them when I get back.

P.S. Don't forget to VOTE FOR US!