Blogged by John Gideon

UPDATE: See the update at the end of this article describing the injunction now received from a New Mexico judge enjoining the Republican party in the state from making phone calls to non-Republican voters in the wake of what appears to be wide-spread dirty tricks in the state, aimed at Hispanic voters by the GOP.

The following email has been sent to various listservs by the party who received these phone calls. It is only one complaint from one party but it is probably indicative of phone calls made to hundreds of voters in the state of New Mexico. Everyone needs to be wary of any phone calls alerting them to last minute changes of polling places. Call your county to find out if there are any changes and then call 1-866-OUR-VOTE and report the incident:

Follow-up: The aggrieved party contacted DNC attorneys who got an injunction against the state Republican party to stop them from giving polling location information to non-Republican voters. There is thought that voters with Hispanic surnames were targeted.

The judge who issued the injunction via cell-phone while she was at a basketball game, has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow. The Dems need to have more voters who will step forward and join in the lawsuit.

NOTE: We will follow-up with contact information for the attorneys just as soon as we can get it.

UPDATE BY John Gideon 5:25PM: Any aggrieved New Mexico voter is encouraged to contact attorney John Boyd at 505-842-9960.

UPDATE BY John Gideon 8:45AM: We have just been contacted about the Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) that we reported was issued last evening. In fact that TRO was withdrawn by the judge after the Republican Party of New Mexico called and claimed that the phone calls were just "innocent mistakes". There is no injunction or any other decision at this time. It is being reported that a judge will hold a hearing at 10:30 local time this morning. It is also being reported that the "innocent mistake" was also made with at least six people who have stepped forward.

In an article on this issue from the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Associated Press the following is reported:

What Ms. Kramer fails to explain is who made the two phone calls from the GOP offices that followed the incident she reports. An "innocent mistake" once, but three times it is no longer "innocent" or a "mistake".

Heading over to KTLK am1150, Los Angeles' Progressive Talk, Air America affiliate to co-host today on the Bree Walker Show from 2p-4p PT (5p-7p ET).

We've got a huge guest line-up for the two hour show, including SPENCER OVERTON of Stealing Democracy, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and STEPHEN SPOONAMORE on the secret MD Diebold SAIC Report, TOM COURBAT and RON WATT on Sequoia's "Vote As Much as You Want" Yellow Button, John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and much much more!

Listen up online here!...

We'll be the media on Election Night, reporting the meltdowns with the same kind of attention everyone else will devote to the "horse race" (which we'll cover as well). From 3pm PT to 1am or as events warrant. To be carried on multiple air affiliates and Internet streams. All invited to carry broadcast for free! More details to come as I can keep up. Please spread the word and ask your local station to carry the historic broadcast! Details for now right here...

UPDATE: Some of our air affiliates on board so far (we welcome all who are interested to carry all or any part of the broadcast, see link above for details) include: KRXA in Monterey, KSAC in Sacramento, KGOE in Eureka, KUDO in Anchorage with more hopefully coming soon!

FURTHER UPDATE: Brad and Peter preview the broadcast on last Friday's Peter B. Collins Show! Listen here... [5 minutes, MP3].

And speaking of Velvet Revolution's Election Protection Strike Force, we've just upped the bounty for E-Vote fraudsters to $500k. Pass that around too. Along with the 888-VOTE-TIP hotline to support it.

Gosh...maybe there's a pattern here or something. Is there something to be concerned about here?...Here are just a few of the headlines from the National section (much more in the state-by-states) of today-only's 'Daily Voting News' from John Gideon...

This list is also notable because it contains the very first story ever on e-voting concerns (at least that I could find in a quick search) from the completely useless Los Angeles Times! Waytago, guys! Just in time! You win the BRAD BLOG's "Most Useless and Irresponsible Big City Newspaper in the Country" Award!

Their very first article comes today despite a mountain of problems for years, not to mention the last few months, across California, including the myriad disasters ("sleepovers" and everything else) just down the road in San Diego; a hapless Sec. of State who has approved one hackable, malfunctioning electronic voting machine after another (offering an ersatz blessing for the rest of the states from "the country's largest voting market," as Diebold calls us); and one of the most important Sec. of State races ever, with a real democracy champion, Debra Bowen, running against the inveterate liar and democracyhater, SoS Bruce McPherson.

Add to that list of reasons why the LA Times should be utterly ashamed of themselves is this comment in their own article today from one of the top scientists on McPherson's own team of voting systems advisors:

Of course, Jefferson's been saying that for months. But has the LA Times bothered to report any of it? Little wonder they haven't devoted a single article to this issue until just three days before the election. Nothing to see here at all. Move along. Don't read those headlines above. Everything's still just fine.

Meanwhile...As reported long ago, the GOP is planning to declare fraud after next Tuesday's election. As initially linked by DRUDGE (which should tell you almost all you need to know) earlier today, the GOP is laying the groundwork:

The situation is not "lack of oversight and control" of these smart cards. It's lack of oversight and control of our electoral system such that we've come to a place where there are so many access points to the system, it's virtually impossible, with this equipment, to have any kind of security that could ensure a legitimate vote.

You'll also note this unsubstantiated allegation from the AP coverage of the claims in TN:

Looks like the GOP is in good shape in Tennesse at this point. If they lose, they can make whatever claims they like: Fraud by Electronic Voting, or Voter Fraud by those nasty double-voting Dems.

Take your pick. And where is the DNC? Asleep at the wheel, apparently, as we've been trying to point out for months.

Carter Evans, of GoTVNetworks.com, a cell phone video content provider, has put together a very good and incisive series of news reports on America's E-Voting Meltdown. You'll see some familiar faces --- ours included --- in his four part series of short reports. In Part I, posted below, you'll also see Diebold whistleblower Chris Hood (a long time source of The BRAD BLOG's) for the first time on camera. He's tremendous.

Evans promises an interesting run-in with voting officials down in Florida in upcoming reports. Here's Part I of his report (about 3.5 minutes)...

-- Streaming Flash version...

UPDATE: GoTV now has all 4 parts up. Good, quick, easily digestible stuff. All segments now viewable right here.

"Just push the yellow button and you can vote as many times as you want," Tom Courbat, an Election Integrity advocate from Riverside County, California informed The BRAD BLOG tonight. Not that we're in any mood to report more such stories, but this seems to be a big one. A very big one.

It seems there's a little yellow button on the back of every touch-screen computer made by Sequoia Voting Systems, that allows any voter, or poll worker, or precinct inspector to set the system into "Manual Mode" allowing them to cast as many votes as they want.

Concerns about the flaw were first reported some thirty days ago to California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson's office by Ron Watt, a Tehama County, CA precinct inspector who has been a poll worker in the county for the last fifteen years. And yet, as recently as a radio interview last Tuesday, McPherson --- who has been crowing about having the country's most stringent security process for voting systems --- denied he was aware of any security issues with Sequoia systems.

"They didn't care about it," Watt told us tonight about his "late September or early October" discussion with McPherson's voting systems chief Bruce McDannold. "He said he didn't think it was an important issue. He said I don't believe this is really a vulnerability."

Watt and Courbat disagreed and placed another phone call to the SoS' office on Friday after Watt received a copy of Sequoia's "Poll Workers Guide, Booklet #5: Troubleshooting" via a public records request in Tehama. On pages 19 through 22 of the booklet --- which is marked as "Confidential and Proprietary" --- he confirmed the simple manual override to the system. He'd learned about it years earlier and the new manuals confirmed that button was still in place. Even in the latest models of the Sequoia Edge voting systems (both models 1 and 2).

The complete sequence to override the system and enter manual voting mode, along with the Sequoia booklet received via Watt's public records request, is now posted here at BlackBoxVoting.org.

Watt had been taught to be a poll worker trainer by De La Rue, the former parent company of Sequoia, years ago when the systems were first brought into the county. The two men placed a conference call with McDannold last Friday after receiving the booklet. McDannold again reportedly downplayed the concerns, but said "he'd look into it," according to Courbat.

He called Courbat back on Monday afternoon to say Sequoia technicians had been in the SoS office and had confirmed the vulnerability. (A complete transcript of McDannold's Monday phone message left on Courbat's cell phone, confirming the security issue and describing the actions --- or lack thereof --- being taken, is at end of this article.)

Sequoia's voting machines are perhaps the most widely used in California, in some 19 different counties, including both Tehama and Riverside, which is known as the "Home of E-Voting" as it was the first county in the nation to deploy such systems. But identical Sequoia machines are also used in dozens of other states around the country including Florida, Illinois and elsewhere.

Thanks to the diligence of Watt and Courbat, it is now confirmed that all such systems are completely vulnerable to virtually anyone who wishes to cast as many votes as they please.

"I can do it in 18 seconds," says Watt. "I can train you to do it in 3 minutes. Just push the yellow button, wait 3 seconds and it chimes. Push the yellow button again, wait 3 seconds and it chimes again. Then it's all on the screen prompts. You're asked 'Do you want to enter manual mode?' and you push 'Yes'...And then you're on your way."

"You can then vote as many times as you want. You won't ever have to stop until someone physically restrains you from voting," he explained.

"But wouldn't someone hear the chime?" we asked...

We've had some documents from Coulter's attorney concerning the below for some time, but we haven't been able to find a second to run them. Just too much going on. So for now, I'll let AP pick up the ball for the moment. Besides, it's embarrassing for them that I keep beating them to so many stories!

A search for "Ann Coulter Voter Fraud" (yes, voter fraud, the kind the Republicans say is rampant, despite evidence suggesting that it's election fraud that's the real problem) here at The BRAD BLOG will yield loads of previous coverage on this story, including an actual copy of Coulter's fraudulent felonious voter registration forms, the original complaint from the polling place where she illegally tried to vote, attorney letters, and much more more...

From AP...

A lawsuit naming San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas as defendant has been filed in the California Court of Appeals seeking to compel Haas --- whom we've previously described as one of the nation's worst Elections Administrators --- to follow the orders of the California Sec. of State and supply Paper Ballots to all voters who request one. Further, the suit demands that Haas actually count those ballots on Election Night, in accordance with the State order, rather than create an "unequal class of voters" by reporting only touch-screen voting results that night.

As The BRAD BLOG reported yesterday, Haas has announced that he plans to defy the SoS order to count such paper ballots as "normal ballots" by refusing to count them at all until the Thursday after the election. He has also instructed poll workers not to inform voters of their right to vote on paper if they so choose and, according to the lawsuit, has failed to ensure that an adequate supply of paper ballots will be available for voters who wish or need them.

As well, the lawsuit --- funded by the VelvetRevolution.us Election Protection Strike Force --- seeks in its third action a peremptory writ regarding the current "sleepovers" of Diebold electronic voting machines, now underway in San Diego where poll workers will have kept the pre-programmed, election-ready touch-screen systems in their homes and cars for a full three weeks prior to the November 7th election.

-- Download the full complaint here [PDF]...
(Link fixed! The complaint is very very good, btw, and charges, correctly in our opinion, that Haas has failed in and abused his role as Registrar of Voters.)

Carlsbad attorney Ken Simpkins's suit, filed on behalf of San Diego County voter Kathy Peterson, seeks appropriate security logs and precautions to be instituted, since Haas has failed to do so via his "sleepovers," which lack apppropriate security measures. A recent blog item at Velvet Revolution (VR) has described Haas as "apparently preferring plausible deniability of scattering the voting machines to innumerable volunteers" over actual accountability.

The "sleepovers" are also in violation of both state and federal laws and security requirements, effectively decertifying them for use before the election even begins. San Diegans should have no basis, at this time, for confidence in any results reported from San Diego's election on November 7th, due to Haas's failures.

Haas, in an article on the lawsuit in the North County Times, says that complying with the SoS order to count paper ballot votes as "normal ballots" would be impractical.

"We can't count these ballots on election night," he told the NC Times. "They will be counted during the canvas period, which allows us 28 days. We can't count two things at the same time. We'll have our hands full just uploading the results from the precincts where people will be voting on touch screens."

By refusing to count paper ballots on Election Night, "Mr. Haas risks skewing the early visibility of San Diego election results, which could impact public perceptions and lead to premature concessions by candidates," according to a statement by Ken Simpkins.

The NC Times quotes Haas as saying there is no reason for candidates to concede prematurely. "It isn't over until I certify the election, and that's usually around 28 days after an Election Day," he said. "What any candidate does within those days is their business."

Haas' claim that "it isn't over until I certify the election" is in direct contradiction to the facts on the ground, revealed by last June's U.S. House Special Election to replace disgraced Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in San Diego. In that matter, a contest was filed after certification of the election, as per state law, but was thrown out by a San Diego judge who ruled the U.S. House, not the courts or voters of California, had jurisdiction over any election challenges or recounts once the "winner" in the race, Brian Bilbray, had been sworn in by the House just seven days after the election. At the time of the swearing-in --- a full two weeks prior to Haas's certification --- thousands of ballots remained wholly uncounted.

By law, no contest or recount could be filed until after Haas's certification. And yet, Superior Court Judge Judge Yuri Hoffman found the plaintiffs no longer had the right to challenge or recount the election results in any way.

Simpkins was one of the attorneys who filed the Busby/Bilbray lawsuit last summer along with attorney Paul Lehto. In that case --- as The BRAD BLOG originally broke on June 7th, followed with extensive special coverage thereafter --- Haas had also sent home both optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold on poll worker "sleepovers," despite new emergency security mitigation requirements made by both State and Federal oversight bodies after it had been discovered that Diebold voting systems contained a type of programming code making them particularly susceptible to tampering. That type of programming code, known as "interpeted code," is also in violation of both state and federal law.

During the June contest it was discovered that Haas's chain of custody security logs were virtually non-existent. The dismissal of that case is currently being appealed.

As we reported on Tuesday, the Democratic Sec. of State candidate, Debra Bowen, released a short video ad on her campaign website revealing the extraordinary dangers and, indeed, the serious national security threat presented by such "sleepovers."

A request has been made for an expedited decision from the court in the latest case due to the pending election. Hopefully decisions on these matters will be forthcoming.

Your help in fighting for accountability in such cases around the country is paramount. Please donate to the VR Strike Force effort so we can help hold the bad guys accountable and fight for clean elections! Our work is funded entirely by "we the people" so your support is crucial!

The VR Election Protection Strike Force website can be found at: http://VelvetRevolution.us/ElectionStrikeForce. Please pass that address around!

As well, the VR Strike Force is offering a $250,000 reward for tips concerning Election Fraud (details here, tip-line here: 888-VOTE-TIP)

The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VelvetRevolution.us. We hope to announce news concerning a special VR Strike Force Radio broadcast on Election Night, in conjunction with a number of other individuals and organizations. More details on that, hopefully, very soon...

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, blogs today on Electronic Voting. Here's just one of the money quotes...

Democratic Secretary of State candidate, Debra Bowen has released a new video ad on her campaign website showing how easy it would be for hackers to break into a garage where pre-programmed, election-ready Diebold touch-screen systems are now being "stored securely" by poll workers around the state.

Such a break-in could allow them to easily manipulate a single Diebold touch-screen machine to implant a virus on it would could then pass itself from machine to machine, resulting in an entirely flipped election. Nobody would ever know.

We have long since been critical of CA Sec. of State Bruce McPherson's re-certification of Diebold voting systems after his own technical advisory board at UC Berkley had advised him the machines could be tampered with in dozens of ways.

His further lack of enforcement of security requirements for the use of the systems --- he has sat by and allowed them to be sent home for weeks ahead of the election with poll workers on so-called "sleepovers" --- is both an outrage and a violation of his own state requirements and federal law.

Yesterday, we detailed (with photographs) how San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas has been handing thousands of such hackable voting machines to poll workers in his county since October 16th of this year. Those irresponsible "sleepovers" now allow those poll workers --- or anyone who may wish to access the machines in their garage --- a full 3 weeks prior to the election to find the 60 seconds needed to flip every race in San Diego County.

Bowen's Diebold "sleepover" break-in ad can be viewed at her campaign website. It's also posted in full below...

More than 10,000 pre-programmed election-ready Diebold touch-screen voting machines, to be used for the first time across the entirety of San Diego County this November 7th, are now in the cars, garages, homes, and hands of poll workers and lord knows who else across one of Southern California's largest voting regions.

As reported in several first-hand accounts from San Diego poll workers just after recent training sessions (see end of article for one of those first-hand accounts), the voting machines were sent home on so-called overnight "sleepovers" with temporary poll workers beginning on October 16th, allowing for a full three weeks prior to the election for poll workers to find the 60 seconds they might need to hack a single machine. One tampered machine could affect the results on every single voting machine, in every race in the county.

San Diego Registrar Mikel Haas --- easily one of the country's worst and most irresponsible election administrators --- is unconcerned. He's also instructing poll workers not to give out paper ballots despite a recent order from the California Secretary of State.

The ability to easily insert malicious viral code onto Diebold's touch-screen systems has been proven, and video-taped by Princeton University and others. A single person could hack an entire election, flipping votes undetectably, and no trace would be left behind after the election.

But it's not just tampering that should be of concern to the voters of San Diego. It's the fact that these particular systems are amongst the most unreliable in the country. They simply do not work.

Diebold touch-screen voting systems are innacurate. Their screens freeze. Their printers jam and fail to create reliable "paper trails" and frequently they simply fail to start up at all. All of which occurred during Primary Elections in states across the country earlier this year, resulting in thousands of legally registered voters being disenfranchised, or turned away without being able to cast a ballot.

Incredibly, Haas has ordered these systems to be used for the first time in this November's general election, without even a test run during the June 6th Primary & Special Election, when a blended system of both Diebold optical-scan (paper-based) and touch-screens was used.

The few touch-screen systems in place during the June election (one per polling location) went almost completely unused. And yet Haas has ordered them for use across the entire county this November, despite notorious failures by these same unreliable systems in states like Georgia and Maryland and --- perhaps most notably --- Cuyahoga County, OH, where the systems in first-time use failed monumentally during the Buckeye State's Primary Election.

USA TODAY wrote Friday about the aftermath of Cuyahoga's Primary Elections and the extraordinary measures now being taken to turn the county's temporary poll workers into rocket scientists able to trouble-shoot the many expected problems with the systems. After some 300+ recommendations were made by an independent audit of that particular train wreck, elections officials are scrambling and bracing for the worst.

Haas, however, has taken no such measures and, indeed, his poll worker training has reportedly consisted of instructing folks to sing the praises of electronic machines and avoid handing out paper ballots to voters despite the recently unearthed memo from the California Secretary of State's office instructing all Registrar's that all California voters may vote on paper if they wish.

An account of one such training class by Ken Simpkins, the Carlsbad attorney who filed an election contest to challenge the results of the Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray Special Election sleepover fiasco last June, reports that workers are being told not to give paper ballots to voters even if machines are unavailable when voters show up to vote.

"If the machines were not ready at the opening of the polls and voters were there," Simpkins writes about instructions given at a training class he attended, "voters should be asked to wait until the machines are ready." His full description of that and other stunning moments from Haas's training is at the end of this item.

In an accidental fit of reporting, the far-right San Diego Union Tribune yesterday asked Haas about the ongoing "sleepovers" in an article on concerns about the county's upcoming beta test election. As usual, his obnoxious answer was just another "fuck you" to the voters of San Diego:

Never mind that we've previously reported first-hand accounts from poll workers who took voting machines home with them during the June 6th election, where they admitted that family members, and any number of neighbors, may well have had easy access to the machines in the "secure storage space" known as their garage or their car. But Haas knows "where they live." So rest easy, San Diegans!

Also, never mind that such sleepovers are in violation of state and federal law. But, hey, it's San Diego! Mikel Haas territory! He makes the rules and can do whatever he wants!

I only have a second as I've got to hit the road to get up to Santa Barbara to speak at tonight's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner (along w/ Wes Clark), so I'll try to be quick about it...

The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a complete and utter failure. The current commissioner, Paul DeGregorio, has done nothing to instill confidence in elections or provide a lick of oversight in the deployment and use of these voting systems across the nation in the Midterm Election. In his latest interviews and editorials, he is reprehensibly doing nothing but echoing Voting Machine Company propaganda and Election Officials who choose to be apologists for them.

See DeGregorio's latest editorial here from the Tallahassee Democrat, in which he posts completely unfounded and unsupported "opinion" in contradiction of virtually all scientific evidence.

Contrast DeGregorio's nonsense with the comments of his predecessor, the honest, Bush-appointed, non-crony, Rev. DeForest Soaries, from this unaired network interview, in which he flatly states there are no standards for electronic voting systems in place and that 'elections in America are ripe for stealing.'

The EAC, under the "leadership" of DeGregorio, has become hopelessly compromised as he's allowed even the disinformation experts, such as "Thor" Hearne from the phony GOP front-group "American Center for Voting Rights," to set the agenda for the commission. Note that DeGregorio and Hearne are old St. Louis GOP colleagues. What a scam.

Below are a few choice pieces of information unsubstantiated horse excrement, from DeGregorio's editorial yesterday.

On this one point only, I can actually agree with DeGregorio: "Americans should be confident that their vote will be counted, whether they touch a screen or fill in an oval."

Yes, they should be confident, but they have absolutely no basis for that at this time, thanks to folks like you, Paul. Your words do not give such confidence. Transparency gives confidence. We've had quite enough "faith-based elections" in this country. Anyway, read on for some of DeGregorio's most shamelessly misleading garbage... (You can contact the EAC here.)

In a cover story interview in the Crawford, Texas Lone Star Iconoclast, Clint Curtis has a few no holds barred thoughts on his race in Florida's 24th Congressional district, on his opponent, the corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), and on his plans to fight back at the retaliation Feeney has levelled against him for blowing the whistle on Feeney's vote-rigging attempts and other alleged malfeasance...

If you don't know who the fearless Curtis is, what cave have you been living in? We originally reported on his remarkable story in December of 2004 and have been doing so ever since. The rest, as they say, may well be history in the making.

Last month we reported on the Defense Department's newly announced scheme to allow military and overseas ballots to be cast via the Internet. It was pointed out, among other concerns, that in many cases troop and overseas citizen votes would be subject to conversion from unsecured email voting into faxed documents by a private company who, in turn, would then forward the vote to the appropriate county jurisdiction.

The San Jose Mercury News quoted experts at the time who charged the system was "ripe for fraud" as military voters would apparently not be warned that their ballots might be seen by others and transferred into faxes, etc. by "a private contractor whose top executives have made political contributions to Republican Party organizations."

Underscoring those initial reports today, a group of independent computer scientists and E-Voting experts including David Jefferson of Livermore National Laboratories, Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins, David Wagner of UC Berkeley, and Barbara Simons, a former researcher for IBM, have released an alarming short paper warning of "significant risks" found in the newly announced plan from the DoD's "Federal Voting Assistance Program" (FVAP).

The group had been members of a scientific peer review panel for a previous DoD Military and Overseas Internet voting scheme in 2004. At the time, they found the plan featured "a large number of security risks and vulnerabilities, including denial of service attacks, insider attacks, viral attacks on voters' PCs." That experimental program was subsequently cancelled after the findings.

But now, in September of this year --- just over one month ago --- the DoD announced and implemented their new scheme for military and overseas citizen voting via the Internet, to be used this November 7th without any public testing or peer review whatsoever.

According to today's report, the new DoD voting scheme --- known as the "Interim Voting Assistance System" (IVAS) --- has been put in place without any "publicly available external security examination" and has "never been used in a public election before (not even in a primary)."

The scientists say that security concerns about the new, untested system include loss of privacy and identify theft for the military and overseas voters and, even more troubling, they found the system to be vulnerable to hackers and tampering by governments both foreign and domestic.

The six page report is now available here [PDF].

From the report's troubling introduction:

In an email received by The BRAD BLOG this morning, Simons summarizes the report's three main findings, characterized as "serious concerns about the security issues posed by this new system."

Her succint, yet alarming, email is posted in full below....