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Latest Featured Reports | Tuesday, November 28, 2023
'Democracy on a Knife's Edge': 'BradCast' 11/28/2023
Warning from a top conservative federal judge; Far-right electoral victories in Argentina, Holland; Trump threatens use of Insurrection Act; Biden invokes DPA for climate, jobs...
'Green News Report' 11/28/23
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Pausing Our Thanksgiving Pause for This Special 'Live' (Video!) Presentation...
Brad and Desi on The Nicole Sandler Show. Not suitable for children or adults of any age...
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2024 to Kick Off with Long-Awaited, High Stakes Federal Voting System Trial in GA: 'BradCast' 11/16/23
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Guests: Matthew Lee, Rev. Dr. Jessica Moerman of Evangelical Enviro Network; Also: U.S. climate report details nationwide threats; U.S., China climate deal...
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Also: Sleepwalking towards climate disaster...
'Green News Report' 11/14/23
Australia's historic Tuvalu treaty; Miami GOP debate ignores climate change; 12 hottest months ever; 2023 election policy changes; Plus: Manchin exits...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
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Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Personal Information, Social Security Numbers, Birthdates of 1.5 Million Voters Exposed to Online Tampering, Downloading, Identification Theft!
Breach Discovered, Video-Taped by Illinois Election Integrity Organization...
By Brad Friedman on 10/23/2006 2:58pm PT  

Blogged from the road by Brad Friedman

Another stunning security breach has been exposed in our nation's electoral system, The BRAD BLOG has learned, as the online voter registration database --- containing the personal information of some 1.5 million voters in Chicago --- has been found to be vulnerable to both downloading and hacking.

The flawed electronic database which allowed the retrieval and modification of personal voter information --- including social security numbers and birthdates of Chicago voters --- was discovered recently by members of the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP), a non-partisan group of Election Integrity advocates.

IBIP members say they were not only able to get full editing access to the online database, they also found they could modify the records for registered voters, setting them to inactive and otherwise changing addresses and other key information fields.

The ability to gain access and hack the system, said by IBIP to be covered on the front page of tomorrow's Chicago Sun-Times, was documented by the group on video-tape. (UPDATE 10/24/06: As promised, the Sun-Times story is now here...)

An exclusive version of that video-taped hack has been made available to The BRAD BLOG.


-- Streaming Flash version...

Cook County elections officials are said to be scrambling to plug the hole in what has become an ever-increasingly unsecured system of voting in America in light of new regulations, encouraging the use of electronic voting systems, and state-wide registration databases, as set forth by Congress's Help America Vote Act (HAVA) after the 2000 Election Debacle.

In a news release sent to The BRAD BLOG earlier today (complete release posted at the end of this article), Bob Wilson, the Cook County chair of IBIP, says that the vulnerability would allow a malicous hacker to change voter registration status for thousands of Chicago voters.

"For example, you could change the status of all the voters in a precinct to inactive after the registration deadline so that when one of those voters checked their online status they might believe they were ineligible and wouldn't attempt to vote," Wilson says.

"Or, you could change their polling place information," he added, "so they would show up at the wrong precinct on election day . . . the possibilities are nearly endless and could cause election day havoc."

The problem was discovered by IBIP weeks ago, and the group immediately notified the appropriate authorities. "We had hoped that the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners would take quick action to plug this hole, but apparently that's not the case," IBIP member Peter Zelchenko is quoted as saying.

He estimates it would have taken little more than five minutes to fix the problem originally, but late last week IBIP and Zelchenko became aware that the security breach was significantly more severe than first thought. The Board was immediately notified again and finally began taking action over the weekend to install a new web interface for the system.

Zelchenko, an information technology expert who originally discovered the flaw, says the latest alarming discovery underscores the vulnerability of our new electronic system of voting in America. As reported by the news release:

Peter Zelchenko, 43rd Ward Alderman Candidate with more than 30 years of computer programming and database design and management experience, discovered the flaw during what he described as a "what if" session. Zelchenko said, "This situation shows how vulnerable the entire electronic voting system is. Identity theft is only one possible outcome. Election theft is another very real possibility." According to Zelchenko, "This was a very serious vulnerability. Here we have an online database that can be accessed by millions of PCs throughout the world. Clearly, this indicates that the whole system is inherently insecure."

Since the vulnerability reportedly affects only the online version of the voter registration database, as opposed to the master copy, it is hoped that the damage may be controlled and that any tampering might now be minimized. Such tampering --- either the collection of personal information for political, or more nefarious purposes, or legally registered voters having their online records deleted or otherwise set as inactive --- may have already occurred before the problem was discovered.

Whether the problem has been corrected by now or not, the remarkable security breach may have already given some voters incorrect or misleading information concerning the status of their registration or the correct location of their polling place when checking the online system for information.

We'll try to update this story when new information is available from the Sun-Times as we continue to be on the road and are unable to keep up and/or follow-up as much as usual.

The complete news release from the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project follows in full...

UPDATE, Posted by John Gideon 4:45pm PT: ABC News has now picked-up this story...

UPDATE by Brad, 8:09pm PT: Though we gave this story to ABC, having spoken to them earlier today, they didn't see fit to credit us. And yet, we always give them proper attribution for their stories. Sigh...Still always the bridesmaid I guess.

UPDATE 9:34pm PT: Chicago Tribune reports (and attempts to slightly downplay, as expected from the conservative Trib) "Voter information open to hackers". Associated Press reports "Group says data vulnerable, election officials investigating".

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Experts Begging Diebold to 'Come Back to Reality, Secure Nation's Voting'
Is that the Diebold Secret Source Code that Arrived in my Mail Today?
By Alan Breslauer on 10/22/2006 10:50pm PT  

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured," said cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore in the online print version of ABC World News' report on Sunday Night.

Spoonamore continued, "The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."

With the election only 16 days away, ABC World News worries "about another Florida style ballot fiasco" in tonight's e-voting segment. One major concern, it seems, is that e-voting machine maker Diebold's source code is turning up in random mail boxes, as The BRAD BLOG reported last Thursday. Yet, despite this latest revelation coming on the heels of a Princeton study evidencing the ease in which Diebold machines could be hacked, Diebold maintains everything is peachy.

-- ABC's Video report here...
-- ABC's printed report (with additional details) here...

UPDATE FROM BRAD 9:22pm PT:

We're delighted to see that ABC News has finally decided that there is a story here worth reporting. Wish they had come on board long ago. In any case, the print version of their story, written by Jake Tapper, Rebecca Abrahams and Eduardo Sunol, has several notable details above and beyond the video report. In addition to the comments from Spoonamore above, there's this...

Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords.

But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.

The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.

The report further states that one of the high risks to the system comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized parties --- precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source code is not that difficult to obtain.

"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she said.




News-Journal Says Curtis is 'Independent Thinker', 'Prepared Well' to Serve Florida's 24th Congressional District
Feeney's Record, Refusal to Discuss Issues 'Gives Voters Reason to Look for a Better Choice'
By Brad Friedman on 10/21/2006 10:30pm PT  

(Blogged on the road by Brad from the Bioneers Conf. in Marin, CA)

It was one thing when Daytona Beach News Journal endorsed computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis over his Democratic primary opponent (whom Curtis thumped in that race).

It's quite another thing --- a coup, in fact --- that now the News Journal has endorsed Curtis over the powerful sitting U.S. Congressman and former Florida Speaker of the House, the corrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), in their race for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th district.

Feeney, of course, is Jeb Bush's former gubernatorial running mate, the man who promised to deliver Florida's electoral vote to George W. during the 2000 fiasco no matter what the Supremes had to say, the only so-far unindicted Congressman to have gone with Jack Abramoff on a paid golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, and the man whom Curtis accused --- via affidavit, video-taped Congressional testimony, and lie-detector test --- of commissioning a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

Shamefully, Feeney has done little more than mount a disgraceful smear campaign against Curtis, attempting to paint him as "crazy" and not fit for office. The campaign seems only to have highlighted Feeney's own lack of seriousness as a legislator; one fit more for prison than the U.S. House of Representatives.

The News Journal's complete endorsement of Clint Curtis seems to bear that out, to Feeney's eternal disgrace. Here's a few snippets...

Curtis has prepared well to serve Dist. 24

Clint Curtis, a former Republican who switched parties to challenge U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, offers voters in the 24th congressional district a real --- and better --- choice.
...
Feeney is not really talking issues in this campaign, though, choosing to focus largely on denigrating his opponent. It would appear that Feeney assumes that being Republican is enough.
...
Curtis, however, has gone beyond the personal battle between Feeney and himself. He has defined his positions clearly: He supports energy independence and development of a constantly renewable energy supply. He favors a single no-fault universal health plan. He would like to see a renewal of the space race and stronger support for NASA.

Feeney's record gives voters reason to look for a better choice.
...
Curtis is a novice at politics, but he is an independent thinker who demonstrates his ability to serve the public by thoroughly studying issues and developing well-thought-out and imaginative stands.

· RECOMMENDATION: Clint Curtis for U.S. House, District 24.

...

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com



What the U.S. Media Didn't Tell You
By Alan Breslauer on 10/21/2006 10:35am PT  

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

mexico vote graph

With the US election looming, Kenneth Anderson revisits the recent Mexican presidential election for the November/December issue of The Humanist (go directly to PDF).




Whistleblower-Turned-Congressional Candidate's Story Told as Part of Film on Citizen Patriots Fighting to Save Democracy
'Crazy' Smear by Curtis' Opponent, Feeney --- the Man He Says Asked Him to Create Election Flipping Code in Florida --- Continues to Shame Corrupt Congressman...
By Brad Friedman on 10/17/2006 6:47pm PT  
"I grew up thinking you're supposed to do the right thing. And that's what I do. I'll do it until someone makes it so that I can't."

-- Clint Curtis, software programmer, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional Candidate (FL-24), in the new e-voting documentary Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System.

An enormous number of superb documentary films that cover the topic of our American electoral meltdown are being released. Last week, I quickly ran a preview item on HBO's Hacking Democracy --- premiering Nov. 2nd on HBO --- which gives a first-hand account of the detective story as it has unravelled over the last three years concerning the many lies of the Diebold corporation. I've now seen the final cut and will have more details on that extraordinary film soon.

In the meantime, I was thrilled recently to get a look at David Earnhardt's breathtaking Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System documentary, which tells the story of America's crumbling democracy and a few of the citizen patriots across the country who are attempting to save it.

Along with a focus on some of those folks, the film's emphasis is on the impossibilities which seem to have occurred in the tainted 2004 Presidential Election and the likes of which we may look forward to in the weeks and years ahead.

Earnhardt's film draws a great deal from a series of speeches and interviews filmed in April of 2005 during a National Election Reform Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

I participated as a speaker at several events during that conference, as did computer programmer, whistleblower, and former lifelong Republican Clint Curtis who had, at the time, yet to even dream of running against a very close friend of the Bush clan, the corrupt U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) --- the very man Curtis has alleged asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype when they both worked for the same Oviedo, Florida, software firm in 2000.

Curtis left the Republican party after being soured on them vis-a-vis his direct experiences with Feeney.

Earnhardt was kind enough to share with The BRAD BLOG the section of the film which introduces the basics of Curtis' vote-rigging claims about Feeney. It's a beautifully done segment --- and not just because it includes interviews with me as well, but it doesn't hurt! --- which should go a long way towards allowing folks to decide whether Curtis is "crazy" as Feeney's reprehensible smear campaign and website against him is hoping to trick voters into believing now that they've become Congressional opponents.

Here's the clip (about 8 mins) from Earnhardt's film which I found to be finally as uplifting and hopeful as it was maddening and heartbreaking. The entire film can be purchased on DVD at the website www.EternalVigilance.us where additional clips from the film are also available.


NOTE: There is yet another documentary, still in the works, wholly devoted to the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises, Inc., vote-rigging scandal and The BRAD BLOG's so-far two-year long investigation and reporting of it. That films goes into considerably more detail on the entire breadth of the allegations (including the Chinese spying, the mysterious death of the Florida Inspector General who was investigating Curtis' claims, etc.). We hope to have details and, perhaps a short preview from that film soon as well.

Please pass the permalink to this article far and wide to help counter the hundreds of thousands of corporate PAC and RNC dollars that Feeney is using in his shameless attempt to discredit Curtis.

While you're at it, if you'd like to help unseat Feeney, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, please donate to Curtis' citizen-funded campaign. We've spoken to him recently, and he continues to be upbeat about his chances, but while the national Dems have still failed to help his campaign (as with so many others across the country), it's up to the people to help someone who will fight for electoral integrity get into the U.S. Congress!

(Hat-tip Hotpotatomash for help with the video!)

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com

The publicity email sent to us this morning from filmmaker David Earnhardt follows in full...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




No Wonder Hearne's Phony GOP Front-Group, ACVR, Didn't Want to See the Report Released
They're Named Three Times as the Only Group Forwarding the 'Voter Fraud' Bullshit!
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 2:57pm PT  

Following up on our Wednesday coverage of the four- month-old report on "Voter Fraud," which the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) refused to release when they discovered the report points to just how little such fraud actually occurs. The facts don't lie, despite the loathesome high-level GOP/Team Bush operatives who call themselves the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights' (ACVR), and their ongoing disingenuous and well-funded efforts to establish that voter fraud is rampant, perpetrated almost exclusively by Democrats, and must be cured by disenfranchising and unconstitutional Photo ID requirement laws at the polls (although not for absentee or military balloting, of course).

We've now had a chance to review the unreleased report [PDF] in full. It's just twelve pages. But it slams the notion that there is any massive problem in America with "Voter Fraud", despite ACVR's continuing campaign to suggest the problem is an epidemic --- versus all of the many other forms of disenfranchisement that really do occur and really do threaten our democracy.

"There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud," the report explains, "or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, noncitizens voting and felon voters."

The report singles out ACVR as the only named proponent of the discredited notion that voter fraud is plaguing the country --- ACVR is ignominously named as dissenting three times in the report! --- so it is little wonder they didn't want this report to see the light of day.

ACVR's main perpetrator and Democracy-Hater-in-Chief, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne II, was actually a part of the "working group" assembled for this report. Notably, Hearne failed yet again to mention that he was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. in his bio at the end of the report.

Similarly, Hearne withheld that information in his testimony on behalf of ACVR during now-disgraced Rep. Bob Ney's U.S. House Adminstration Committee hearing in March of 2005. ACVR was the only "Voting Rights" group invited to discuss the travesties of Election 2004. He testified only that he was a "longtime advocate of voter rights" and must have just forgotten to mention his Bush/Cheney connections...or that the ACVR had been formed just three business days prior to the hearing!

The EAC's buried report points to problems not with voter fraud, but instead with minority voter intimidation, improper purging of registration rolls, dirty tricks, and all sorts of things that the loathesome ACVR con-men have spent enormous amounts of money trying to smoke-screen, via propaganda reports hoping to fool America into believing that double-voting, dead people voting, and non-citizens voting is the real threat to democracy.

It's not. But anti-American monsters like Thor Hearne definitely are.

The biggest problem, the EAC's unpublished report finds, is absentee ballot fraud; a problem that is decidedly not addressed in any way by the despicable Photo ID laws that Hearne and friends have been promoting in statehouses around the country. He and his evil compatriots were even able to convene a phony "blue-ribbon" panel last year on Election Reform, chaired by Bush Family crony James A. Baker, in order to endorse the call for a national Photo ID requirement at the polls. (Who better to lead an Election Reform panel than the man who went to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to keep voters from having their votes counted in Florida in 2000?!)

Apparently snake-oil salesman Hearne was unable to fool the rest of the folks working on the EAC report into believing he wasn't utterly full of shit (as previously reported in exacting detail by The BRAD BLOG.)

Consider this embarrassing ACVR moment from the EAC's buried report...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




'Candorville' Skewers 'Liebold' and the Mainstream Media...
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 12:25pm PT  

Kudos, btw, to Candorville cartoonist Darrin Bell, who has had his sharp eye on this issue for a while. His strip is widely syndicated (it's in our copy of LA Times for one), so his coverage of "Liebold" should be receiving quite a few eyeballs today.

He contacted us this morning to alert us to today's toon, along with the promise that "there will be more to this storyline as the election approaches."

He asks that we also point folks to the main Candorville website. We're happy to oblige!




Main Smear Website Remains, But Blog Featuring Unsubstantiated Attacks, Lies --- Initially Posted Without 'Paid for by Feeney' Disclaimer --- Now Removed, Redirected!
Hapless, Corrupt Congressman's Sad Attempt at Discrediting Whistleblower Curtis Continues to Backfire...
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 6:35am PT  

Poor, poor, corrupt, ethically-challenged, morally bankrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff). Can't even run a smear campaign without getting into trouble, screwing it up and seeing it backfire.

As we reported several weeks ago, the feckless Florida Republican launched a "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear website and blogsite, to attack his whistleblower-turned-congressional opponent with doctored photos and doctored facts.

The Tom Feeney for Congress Campaign's shameful tactics continue to fizzle, apparently, as they have been forced to remove their smear blogsite, which had been set up on blogger.com to attack Curtis. The removal of the site, and the link to it from the main smear-site, comes not a moment too soon: we had planned to run an item on Feeney's latest demonstrable lie, which we had noticed was recently posted on the smear blog. The blog, which had been at CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com is now redirected to an innocuous search page, with no trace left behind.

In a blog item Feeney posted on the site --- before he "disappeared" it --- he charged that an article published in Hustler about the mysterious 2003 death of Raymond Lemme "was based on the delusions of Clint Curtis's murder conspiracy theory," or some such nonsense.

As it was "we," Brad Friedman, who actually wrote the article in question [PDF], we can tell you that it was based on nothing of the sort. It was based on the mysterious and still unexplained circumstances surrounding Lemme's death, which the Valdosta, GA police had initially ruled a suicide, but then later reopened the investigation after The BRAD BLOG reported on an affidavit filed by Curtis. Curtis alleged that his former employer YEI had harbored Chinese illegal aliens spying for China (later confirmed), overbilled on state contracts (later confirmed), and that Feeney, who also worked for the firm as lobbyist and attorney --- while simultaneously serving as Speaker of the Florida House --- had requested Curtis to create a software vote-rigging prototype (not yet confirmed, but similarly not disproven.)

Lemme was an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looking into the charges Curtis originally filed with the state of Florida in early 2001. In his sworn affidavit, Curtis says that Lemme told him in June of 2003 that his final report was almost complete, and that he'd found the corruption "went all the way to the top." Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in Valdosta, Georgia.

Our story on Lemme's death detailed the many contradictions between the official police report and the unearthed photographs of the death scene --- photographs which the police report originally stated were taken at the scene but unavailable, due to a "failure in the camera's flash memory cards."

And now, Feeney has scrubbed the smear blogsite altogether, in what appears to be the latest misstep in the Congressman's bizarre and shameful campaign.

Previous follies in Feeney's smear campaign include (but are not limited to):

  • Using hit song "Crazy", by Gnarls Barkley, without permission on the smear website. Feeney removed it after complaints from the record publisher.
  • Linking to a "How to Make a Tinfoil Hat" website. This prompted the owner to redirect his page --- when clicked from Feeney's smearsite --- to an ethics watchdog webpage detailing Feeney's lobbyist- and foreign agent-funded vacations in violation of Congressional ethics rules. (Feeney is the only, as-yet-unindicted Congressman remaining in the House to have traveled with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to a posh golf resort in Scotland.) Feeney removed the link a day or two later.
  • Failing to include "Paid for by Tom Feeney" on the smear blogsite. He recently added the disclaimer after a complaint was filed with authorities.
  • Creating a wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theory concerning Curtis. Disproven by the very evidence Feeney used to make it.
  • A smear campaign mailing featuring doctored photos of Curtis and a Hustler magazine cover, sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters. A local mom was angered at having to explain the "smut" campaign literature to her 9 year old son, who picked up the mail. Local news stations covered the misstep.
  • All of this from a man who issued a news release in the early morning hours after Curtis's landslide victory in the Florida primary. Quoth Feeney: "Serious times demand serious leaders and Curtis is not even in the same solar system as the rest of us."

    Really? Which solar system are you in, Mr. Feeney? We're still waiting for your "serious" leadership, or at least a serious campaign on both the issues and allegations.

    For his part, Curtis recently issued a press release calling on Feeney to explain what he knew of Florida colleague Mark Foley's sexual predator issues and when he knew about them. As a GOP Deputy Whip in the U.S. House, Feeney is a part of the Leadership who had been reportedly made aware of Foley's predilections long before the information was publicly revealed.

    So far, Feeney has refused to comment on the record, to our knowledge, concerning the Foley matter.

    He has also refused to take a polygraph test concerning Curtis's allegations and has denied, but not answered to, them. Curtis, who gave an account of the remarkable story in video-taped sworn testimony to a Congressional panel in late 2004, successfully passed such a polygraph on his own in early 2005.

    For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
    The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
    - A Quick Summary of the story so far.
    - An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
    - Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
    To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com



    Website Guarantees Results at the Polls Through New Technology...
    But Only in E-Voting Jurisdictions...
    By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2006 11:35am PT  

    So what shall we make of this?...

    Among several of many interesting points on the website...

    Winning Elections
    The future of election management is today's reality. Election Consultants delivers results - guaranteed.
    ...
    Outdated Methods
    Ineffective strategists, costly marketing and unreliable polls have been a mainstay for centuries of election campaigning. Over hundreds of years, virtually no substantial improvements have been achieved in the reliability of election outcomes... until now.
    ...
    Guaranteed Results
    Election Consultants is so confident in our ability to secure a desirable outcome for your next election, that we guarantee complete satisfaction. If any individual precinct covered by our services fails to deliver promised results, then all service fees will be waived.

    EXCLUSION: Guarantee does not include precincts that use non-electronic voting equipment. Click on Technology for a list of supported electronic voting equipment

    ...And much more. Well, what will they think of next?




    Landmark Documentary Will Feature Exclusive Footage of First Known Hack of Diebold Optical-Scan Voting System!
    Investigative E-Voting Fraud Film --- Three Years in the Making --- to Debut on Cable Channel Nov. 2nd!
    By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2006 6:35am PT  

    Think things have gotten bad for Diebold and friends? Something tells us they're about to get a whole lot worse.

    HBO has just announced that they will be debuting Hacking Democracy, the long-awaited documentary film by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels, on November 2nd --- just days before millions of Americans will head to the polls to use all-new untested, inaccurate, hackable, electronic voting systems for the first time.

    The BRAD BLOG received the first press release issued by HBO on this film late yesterday; it's posted in full at the end of this item.

    We've yet to see the final version of the eagerly anticipated film (though we're told a screener is headed our way) but we've spent hours of time in conversation over the last year or two with both Michaels and Cohen as the pieces --- and the evidence --- were coming together.

    We're told there are some remarkably damaging revelations to be seen --- and heard --- in the film, which includes not just interviews with Elections Officials, Computer Scientists, Security Experts, and Diebold Spokesliars, but loads of on-the-scene, first-hand documentary footage of some of the most remarkable and stunning moments during the long road of discovery in the E-Voting Revolution Scam that's been perpetrated on American democracy before, during and since the 2004 Election.

    The investigative film, nearly three years in the making, is said to lay out a devasting case against E-voting in general, and Diebold in particular. The film, previously known as VoterGate, was released on the Internet in a very short, barebones "Presidential Election Special" just prior to the 2004 Election. At the time, that early, quickly compiled version --- which was jaw-dropping in and of itself --- followed the early stages of investigations into electronic voting machine fraud, vulnerabilities, and malfunction by Bev Harris and the late Andy Stephenson of BlackBoxVoting.org.

    The earlier clips were released for free on the Internet in 2004 when the filmmakers felt they had already acquired so much important footage that they felt a responsibility to do something with it before the Presidential Election.

    But as remarkable as the revelations of that short version were, that was then and this is now: some two years, miles of footage, and at least two or more actual demonstrated voting machine hacks later. The now-retitled film includes scores of fresh never-before-seen interviews, damning statements, and documents, and culminates in one of the most devasting moments in E-voting's short and sordid history: The Leon County Florida Hack, by computer security expert Harri Hursti, of a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in December of 2005.

    The filmmakers were there for that watershed moment when the legendary Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Ion Sancho, allowed independent computer security experts the opportunity to try and hack his paper-based Diebold optical scan voting system. The result was a flipped mock election, with no trace of the hack left behind, save for the paper ballots (which, in Florida, are now illegal to examine by hand after they have already been counted by a machine.)

    Diebold said it couldn't be done. Diebold, apparently, lied.

    That hack resulted in shockwaves across the national electoral landscape as it revealed the very real consequences of what had, up until then, been a largely theoretical fear about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines to malicious tampering.

    An election had now been flipped for the first time on an actual voting system, this one a paper-based Diebold model. The touch-screen systems, we would later learn, are even more vulnerable.

    The Leon County Hack will be seen, as it occured, for the first time when HBO premiers the film just days before this November's general election, when millions of Americans will be using those same new, hackable, optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and others for the first time.

    It's about to get much worse, indeed. We hope to have more on Hacking America in the coming days.

    UPDATE 10/15/06: Details now available on HBO's site here...

    HBO's complete first press release on the film, including a schedule of air-dates, follows in full...

    --- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




    AP Has New Details on the Apparently RNC-Funded Registration Fraud in Tennessee, Now Linked to Sproul & Associates
    Fraudulent, Shredded Voter Registrations In 2004 Linked To Same Shadowy RNC Operative, Recipient of Largesse...
    By Brad Friedman on 10/10/2006 9:35am PT  

    Last week we ran an item on fraudulent Voter Registration Forms submitted by a group reportedly tied to the RNC down in Tennessee where there's a tight U.S. Senate race in play to replace the outgoing Bill Frist.

    More information on those dirty tricks, and the ties to long-time Arizona-based GOP operative, Nathan Sproul & Associates, are now being reported by AP.

    Sproul & Associates, and their various shadowy front groups, were linked to the shredding of Democratic Voter Registration Forms in Nevada, West Virginia, Oregon and elsewhere in 2004 as reported by Max Blumenthal in October of 2004 and again recently in Bobby Kennedy's Rolling Stone exposé asking "Was The 2004 Election Stolen?" More details about Sproul and the millions of dollars he seems to have received from Team Bush '04, and their attempts to hide those costs, were reported by Mark Crispin Miller in June of 2005.

    Regular readers of The BRAD BLOG will recall that Sproul & Associates were given buckets of unreported RNC cash before, during and after the 2004 election. For some reason or another. Sproul is also reported to be an organizer for the Christian Coalition. Natch.

    And now, AP is reporting the RNC hired a group down in Tennessee calling themselves Liberty Consultants to register (Republican) voters. Even if they had to make them up to do so. And whaddaya know? Liberty Consultants are funded by our old friend Nathan Sproul...

    --- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




    By Brad Friedman on 10/6/2006 2:04pm PT  

    Some good reporting from The Tennessean today on what appears to be some voter registration fraud, possibly tied to the Republican National Committee.

    You'll note that Tennessee, a state which had previously been represented by outgoing Bill Frist and thought to have been a shoe-in for Republicans, is now an exceedingly tight race, with the Democratic candidate for that Senate seat, Rep. Harold Ford, beginning to pull ahead...but just barely...A few votes in a single state, at this point, could make the difference in control of the Senate this year.

    With that in mind, and what we know about GOP willingness to game elections every which way possible --- extra-legal or otherwise --- please note the following tea leaf from today's Tennessean today...

    Voter registrations faked in GOP drive

    At least five apparently bogus voter registration forms were submitted to the Metro Nashville election commission by a worker with ties to the Republican National Committee, and up to 150 other registrations have been called into question, The Tennessean has learned.
    ...
    The five Metro forms contain the names, addresses and phone numbers of bona fide citizens, but the birth dates, Social Security numbers, signatures and some other details are wrong. Four of the citizens told The Tennessean that they did not submit the forms.
    ...
    Metro staff said the registration forms bearing that signature were submitted in the name of Tennessee Victory 2006, a booster group advocating for GOP candidates in the state.
    ...
    Tennessee Victory 2006 is a joint effort between the state Republican Party and the Republican National Committee.

    State Republican Party Executive Director Chris Devaney said that the RNC was running the show at Tennessee Victory in August, when the registrations were apparently collected.
    ...
    Contacted by telephone Thursday evening, RNC spokesman Danny Diaz declined to answer questions about whether RNC officials worked in Tennessee at all.




    'Don't Send Smut to My Mailbox,' Says a Mother in Response to Smear Brochure Sent by Feeney in Attempt to Discredit Vote-Rigging Whistleblower, Congressional Challenger Clint Curtis!
    Republican Congressman's Ill-Timed, Embarrassing (and Expensive) Slime Efforts Continue to Blow Up on Him...
    By Brad Friedman on 10/5/2006 6:48pm PT  

    A campaign mailing received by a hundred thousand Florida voters today would seem to indicate that the corrupt, and apparently desperate U.S. Congressman from Oviedo, Florida, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), is willing to do everything within his power to lose his congressional race this year against challenger Clint Curtis.

    "Don't send smut to my mailbox," the New Smyrna Beach, Florida. mother says in a video report at Florida's WFTV Channel 9, "It's not really something I want my 9-year-old walking out to the mailbox and bringing to me and asking me questions about."

    The mailing, of dubious taste, is the latest chapter in Feeney's bizarre smear campaign against his former colleague, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional opponent Clint Curtis.

    We highly recommend the article at the WFTV Channel 9 website (which also includes a video of their coverage on tonight's evening news.)

    In the mailing --- sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters in Florida's 24th Congressional district and featuring a poorly-doctored photograph of Curtis dressed as Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner --- Feeney claims he's attempting to "alert" voters that Curtis has been endorsed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

    So far, Feeney's bizarre attempts to garner support have included a rudimentary smear website named "Crazy Clint Curtis," featuring doctored photos of Curtis and other dubious claims, and a blogsite repeating those claims citing "evidence" that actually seems to belie the strange assertions. (e.g., See our coverage of on Feeney's odd 9/11 conspiracy theory.) The smear blog, however, has no indication that it's paid for by the Feeney campaign.

    The disingenous references to Hustler in the mailing, including a doctored cover from the salacious magazine, are in reference to an article of ours [PDF - WARNING: Includes graphic photos from death scene!] on the mysterious death of Florida Inspector Raymond Lemme, which the magazine ran some months ago.

    Lemme, as we originally reported at BRAD BLOG, was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia hotel room during the course of investigating Curtis' whistleblower claims against Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, Florida, software firm with top-security state and NASA contracts.

    Curtis had worked as a programmer at YEI while Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist.

    Feeney was also the Speaker of the Florida House at the time when Curtis claims YEI had employeed illegal Chinese aliens (spying on America), overbilled the state on contracts, and had requested that Curtis create a vote-rigging software prototype at the behest of the Congressman. The charges of Chinese spies and state overbilling have since been confirmed, by both state and federal investigations and reports.

    Hustler ran a sidebar with our article written by someone named Mark Johnson. That sidebar, titled "Vote for Clint!" describes Curtis' early plans at the time to run for Congress and urges readers to support the effort at www.ClintCurtis.com.

    Feeney's new mailer, however, looks like it may have done little more than succeed in angering Florida families and voters who had never even heard of either Feeney or Curtis before. The mother in the report indicates that it has led her to not vote for Feeney this November.

    Adding to the poorly timed association of sex and politics --- in light of the recent revelations of sexual improprieties by Feeney's Florida GOP House colleague Mark Foley --- it looks like another triumphant disaster for Feeney.

    From WFTV's report:

    With references to sex, lies and politics, it took her a while to find the small print that said who sent mailer. It turned out it was Tom Feeney, the Republican incumbent Curtis is trying to beat.

    "Don't send smut to my mailbox," Dina said.

    "She needs to know Clint Curtis is endorsed by smut-king Larry Flynt," Feeney said [in reply to the mother named Dina.]
    ...
    "Voters in District 24 need to know," Feeney said.

    But it all left a bad taste in Dina's mouth. Not only had she never heard Curtis's claims, she also had no idea who her congressman even was. Now she does and she isn't impressed.

    "How about sending what a politician can do for someone and what you stand for, because now all I have is negative thoughts that stick in my head because of what I read," she said.

    The article and video (both of which we couldn't recommend more!) go on to say that Feeney claims our Hustler article about Lemme's death charges that "Feeney was involved in a suspicious death in Georgia."

    Since we actually wrote that article, we can tell you that no such allegation was made of involvement by Feeney in the death of Lemme. WFTV should correct that point for the record. (NOTE: We've contacted the WFTV reporter, Josh Einiger, who did an otherwise very good job on the story and he says he'll be attempting to correct the inaccuracy on their website shortly. Apparently, he was just repeating what Feeney, and the mailing, had incorrectly claimed.)

    Hey Tom, in the next mailing, why don't you include photos of yourself posing with a bunch of Congressional pages? Voters in the 24th need to know how much you care about our nation's youth!

    For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
    The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
    - A Quick Summary of the story so far.
    - An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
    - Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
    To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com



    UPDATE: Says He'd be Interested in Running for U.S. Senate Seat in NY if it Became Available!
    NOW INCLUDES FULL VIDEO!
    By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2006 1:08pm PT  

    Bobby will be on Your World w/ Cavuto on Fox "News" momentarily. We'll UPDATE this item with a video and/or transcript later today if we can catch it.

    We'll hope it's less of a hatchet job than Cavuto delivered the last time he interviewed Kennedy, after Kennedy's first Rolling Stone story on these matters.

    Have things changed? We'll see. But we wouldn't bet any money on it. Especially after Cavuto's shameful performance last time.

    UPDATE: Good thing we didn't bet money. Cavuto actually let him get out a complete sentence or two without cutting him off! What in the world has gotten into Fox?

    Kennedy discussed the Emergency Paper Ballot initiative proposed last week by House and Senate Dems (for which not a single Republican would sign on, reportedly amid threats to add disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws as retaliation for the bill - more on all of that soon), the ease of hacking these systems by both parties, and some news: He said he'd now be interested in running for the U.S. Senate seat from NY should it open up! The seat was once his father's, and to our knowledge it's the first time he's publicly stated he'd be interested in running!

    FURTHER UPDATE: Video now available below, with a huge hat-tip to the democracy-lovin' folks at Solar Bus!


    -- Windows Media Player version...




    By Brad Friedman on 10/1/2006 8:05am PT  

    From Mercury News Thursday (Sorry, been running behind for some reason)...

    Just weeks before the November election, the Pentagon is struggling to fix its system for handling the votes of soldiers overseas.

    Yet experts in computer security and election technology say the Pentagon's current attempt to keep those ballots from being rejected in large numbers, as they have been in past elections, has created a system that is ripe for fraud.

    During the next six weeks, thousands of service members are expected to fax or e-mail ballots over international communications networks that are susceptible to interception and tampering, putting those votes at risk.

    "I can't for the life of me figure out how the Defense Department decided this is the right thing to do," said Doug Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa.

    And here's more...

    [V]otes sent to the Pentagon will be forwarded to a private contractor whose top executives have made political contributions to Republican Party organizations.

    See the full story, for more...it gets even worse.




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