Guest blogged by Ellen Theisen, Co-Director of VotersUnite.Org

(This is the first of a two-part series. Tomorrow: An excerpt from the author's companion article, “Senator Feinstein’s Election Reform Bill: A Constitutional Heresy,” describing even graver concerns about S. 1487, a bill recently introduced in the Senate.)

In September of 2003, when I was working with VerifiedVoting, Greg Dinger, Keone Kealoha, and I coordinated the first national activist effort in the current grassroots election integrity movement. We had a calling campaign to get more co-sponsors for Representative Rush Holt’s (D-NJ) election reform bill, then called HR 2239. In two months, the number of co-sponsors more than doubled — from 29 to 61. After the disastrous November 2003 Fairfax, Virginia, election, we rejoiced when Republican Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) signed on and the bill became bipartisan. By the end of 2003, there were 94 co-sponsors.

But Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) was chairman of the House Administration Committee, and the bill never even got a hearing. Nor did Holt’s subsequent version of the bill in the 109th Congress, HR 550. But this year’s bill in the 110th, HR 811, has been marked up in committee and is expected to soon come to the House floor for a vote. This should be a time for celebration for me, but it’s not.

After more than three years of supporting election reform bills introduced by Representative Rush Holt, I am saddened to see the many severe flaws in the version of HR 811 as it was passed out of committee last month. This year’s bill had serious flaws when it was introduced in January. Primarily, it failed to accommodate a nearly unanimous agreement among citizen activists and computer scientists who have watched election disasters over the past three years — the agreement that electronic voting machines (DREs) should not be used in U.S. elections. I worked with many people to try to get an amendment requiring a paper ballot, one that was actually to be counted, for every vote cast. To my mind, that one significant improvement would have been worth tolerating the other flaws.

But the bill that was passed out of committee still allows for invisible, unverifiable, electronic ballots on DRE touch-screens as the official ballot for the all-important initial count where electronic voting systems are used. Adding a "paper trail" to those machines makes no real difference. Voters still can’t verify the electrical charges that make up the ballots that are counted on Election Night by the DRE.

In addition to other flaws that remained in the bill as it came out of committee, some changes removed valuable safeguards from the bill, and other changes introduced new problems. (Both versions of the bill can be viewed by inputting "HR 811" at the government's legislation search engine, Thomas.gov. The complete text of the current version is here. )

In my opinion, HR 811 will cause more problems than it will solve.

My primary objection is the extreme shift in the concept of “democracy” that the bill institutes legally. Specifically, it gives a federal stamp of approval to “ballots” that will never be counted, and it endorses secret vote-counting.

Let me explain seven of the bill's severe failures....

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

From this week's San Diego Reader...

If you don't understand the above, a) You need to visit The BRAD BLOG more often, b) See this, and then c) See this, and then d) Pray for the good voters of the People's Republic of San Diego.

Thanks to artist Neal Obermeyer for paying attention! More good stuff from his own official site.

*** Investigative Journalist Greg Palast replies to Internet commentary following his Exclusive Report filed here at The BRAD BLOG on Monica Goodling's testimony to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last week, including her admissions concerning "Vote Caging" by former Karl Rove aide, now Arkansas U.S. Attorney, Tim Griffin.

Saturday morning, when most sensible folks were unfurling flags or taking their setters and children for a Memorial Day frisbee toss on the beach, someone using the nom d’puter of “DRATIONAL” was in his big sister’s bedroom furiously typing, “Greg Palast is Dangerous!” on her iMac.

Drat is quite right: I am dangerous, though not for the reasons in Drat’s screed.

So while the twins are off with the dog, let me respond between bites of this bagel, beginning with this immutable distinction:

There’s two kinds of illiterates in this world: those who can’t read, for whom I’m entirely sympathetic — and those who CAN read but WON’T, for whom I have no sympathy whatsoever.

Drat is of the latter. He (she/them/it?) has mounted a full-scale assault on the seven-year-long effort of my BBC and Guardian team investigating systematic suppression of the minority vote by the Republican Party and our latest revelation: ‘caging voters.’ His “evidence” is 100% limited to snippets of my conversations on talk radio or phone interviews, second-hand reports on websites and some musings of one of my good researchers, Zach Roberts, posted to this site.

Nowhere does he suggest he’s bothered reading the one hundred-page description of the attack on voters, including caging, in the new edition of Armed Madhouse. Shame that. Law professor Robert F. Kennedy Jr., using the book as a source, verified by his own corroborative work, found the matter therein convincing enough to call for putting Rove’s right hand man, Tim Griffin, “in prison, not in office.”

Picking up a book won’t hurt you, Mr. Drat, at least until Patriot Act IV goes into effect...

In Maher's final show of the season (he'll return Aug. 24), he absolutely killed. This interview with Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul is one example, as were the final "New Rules" of the season which I'll also try post here soon (UPDATE: "New Rules" video now posted here)...

Post-script: Democrats may wish to pay very close attention to the reception Paul received from Maher's quite liberal studio audience.

Takin' it easy today (at least as far as you know) after a brutally exhausting and often dispiriting week. Whether or not that led to a different mood today during my weekly guest appearance on the Peter B. Collins Show I can't tell you.

Either way, as Guest Hosted today by our friend Tony Trupiano, we covered a few things I haven't gotten to speak much about lately, and also received an important good news update from caller "Chris in Salinas." Turns out action taken by Chris over the past week, after finding something troubling in a recent special election in Monterey County, CA, has led to a happy conclusion that will effect all voters in Monterey, and perhaps across this entire state.

That story --- and much else of what we chatted about on the show --- again, underscores the need for citizens to take control of their democracy because it will not be either the media or the government who restores our country. It will be you.

Enjoy...

-- Brad on PBC (Guest Host Tony Trupiano), 5/25/07 [MP3, appx 50 mins]

UPDATE: "Chris from Salinas" writes in to comments below with more details on precisely what happened in Monterey County, the action he took, and the changes that were made because of. Useful if you haven't been able to listen to the audio above (which I still recommend, in any case).

I thought Al Gore's appearance on last night's Daily Show (video here), ostensibly to promote his new book, The Assault on Reason, was interesting.

While it served, for me at least, as a reminder of his very good humor --- which I always found him to have, even when he was, in my opinion, tarred by opponents/media as being stiff, wooden, and humorless --- it also served to remind that he's still Al Gore. Meaning, he still describes everything as if he's speaking to first-graders, which, although also opportunistically used against him by opponents, is still an issue available to them should he decide to run again. As are most things such folks used against him in the past. Just to keep that in mind.

But with Democrats sure to take a well-deserved pummeling for their ill-considered capitulation to Bush over Iraq War funding, the choices currently available to Democrats for 2008 remain grim indeed, even if some consolation can be taken from a John Edwards statement yesterday in which he said, "After tonight, one thing is now perfectly clear: No one else is going to end this war for us. Bush will not listen. Congress will not fight. There's no one left to lead the country now but we the people."

Then again, those are just words in an email to supporters. So with that said, here's today's question:

If yes, what makes you think so? If not, tell us why not. If you don't know, you can also 'splain yourself in comments.

Un-believable. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has introduced an amendment to the proposed new Immigration Law that would require disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions on voters at the polling place, according to a press release just out from National League of Women Voters.

The provision tagged onto the immigration bill would amend the horrible Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 that McConnell co-sponsored and pushed through to passage along with his Republican counterpart and lead author in the House, the now-jailed Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

The key provision in the amendment is as follows:

Apparently, it's not enough for the Republican White House operatives to create phony "grass roots" groups to create propaganda solely for the purpose of forwarding the fraudulent notion of a massive "Democratic Voter Fraud" epidemic (which doesn't exist).

It's not enough to toss legitimate voters from the voter rolls through purges and "caging" lists to remove legal, minority voters (many serving overseas in Iraq, nonetheless) so they are not allowed to exercise their legal franchise.

It's not enough to remake our entire Department of Justice into nothing more than a branch of the Republican party for the specific purpose of bringing trumped up "voter fraud" indictments in hopes of shaving votes in close elections and otherwise gutting the beloved 40 year old Voting Rights Act for purely partisan gain.

No. Come hell or highwater, these democracy hating Republican thugs are going to find a way to keep you from voting --- even if they have to amend every piece of legislation that comes before them to try and do it --- because, otherwise, they can't win elections.

If McConnell's provision is not defeated, fillibustered, or whatever it takes by every goddamned Democrat in that body, well....good luck voting them out of office either. But they'll sure as hell deserve it. Every. Single. One of them. (As if those who pushed through the Iraq funding bill capitulation don't already deserve to be removed from office.)

These Republicans are absolutely beyond contempt and, clearly, despise the most basic American values at the very core of our once-great Republic. They hate everything about it. They are loathesome. And the Dems damned well better stop them dead in their tracks.

Rick Hasen has the complete amendment and additional details on the latest insipid GOP/McConnell scam.

UPDATE 5/31/07: Late breaking news on Griffin resignation from Palast interview with Conyers, now posted here...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast

This Monica revealed something hotter --- much hotter --- than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One....And the Committee members didn't even know it.

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Deputy AG, Paul McNulty, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: McNulty denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? "Caging"???

The perplexed committee members hadn't a clue --- and asked no substantive questions about it thereafter. Karl Rove is still smiling. If the members had gotten the clue, and asked the right questions, they would have found "the keys to the kingdom," they thought they were looking for. They dangled right in front of their perplexed faces.

The keys: the missing emails --- and missing link --- that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.

Kingdom enough for ya?

But what's 'caging' and why is it such a dreadful secret that lawyer McNulty put his license to practice and his freedom on the line to cover Tim Griffin's involvement in it? Because it's a felony. And a big one.

Here's how caging worked, and along with Griffin's thoughtful emails themselves you'll understand it all in no time.

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

How do I know? I have the caging lists...

It's getting really hard to keep up. But let's give it a quick shot...

Last night, McClatchy's Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor reported two more U.S. Attorneys were targeted for firing for failing to bring cases based on bogus GOP claims of "voter fraud." That brought the number of election swing-states where attorneys were targeted to 9. In 7 of them, as of now, the reasons for wanting to get rid of them are related to "alleged Democratic voter fraud."

All of which underscores our previous thesis and the one discussed in Greg Palast's BRAD BLOG exclusive posted a thousand years ago (yesterday), that it's all about the '08 Election.

Then comes WaPo today suggesting that a total of 26 U.S. Attorneys in all --- that's 1 in 4 of the 93 total USAs --- had been targeted for possible removal at one time or another:

And then today, McLatchy's Talev and Taylor followed up with more details on some of the latest "voter fraud" targeted prosecutors in Georgia, Virginia, and Florida...

If the reason isn't clear by now, you're living in a cave. Beyond that, you're all caught up. (Even if the night is still young.)

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG by Greg Palast

"The wheels have come off, the engine is on fire and no one is driving," Captain David Iglesias told me yesterday. I'd asked the Naval Reserve officer, heading off to duty in Norfolk, why he didn't want his old job back, United States Attorney for New Mexico.

The busted, burning, ghost-mobile he described is the Department of Justice, driven by Alberto Gonzales. Or is Karl Rove at the wheel? Or no one? Whomever, he didn't want to jump back into Bush's Justice Jalopy.

Today, Iglesias is in Washington to pull the junker off the road, meeting with the Office of Special Counsel where Obstruction of Justice may be swirling around in the old oil pan laying on the garage floor.

The ex-prosecutor and I, long, long ago, had both worked for the Attorney General of New Mexico, a state where the snakes have less venom than the politicians.

First, there's Senator Pete Domenici, whose hiss is as smooth as his bite is deadly.

Domenici, softball interviewer Chris Matthews notes, is a nice guy. On TV. However, the Republican Senator's call to Iglesias at his home, just before the 2006 midterm election, asking the prosecutor about filing charges against Democrats in the week before the vote, was downright rude. When the prosecutor replied in the negative, the Senator hung up.

And apparently, the Senator contacted one Monica Goodling who, scribbled on a notepad: "Iglesias - Domenici says he doesn't move cases." Oops. Goodling, a political stooge working for Gonzales, was listing the reasons for firing US attorneys. Now, rudeness was no longer the issue. Firing a prosecutor for failing to "move cases" --- handcuff citizens at the request of a Senator --- is Obstruction of Justice.

No wonder Monica took The Fifth.

Of course, the Rove dogsbodies at Justice couldn't tell Congress they fired Iglesias because he wouldn't jump at the Senator's rattle. They reached for another complaint on Monica's list: "absentee landlord." Deputy Assistant Attorney General Paul McNulty used absenteeism as the official reason for dismissal. McNulty's resigned.

He should have taken The Fifth....

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Willie Horton lives! At least in spirit. At least on Fox "News" anyway, where fears of rampant, uncontrollable black people running wild still rule the day! And they're even voting now! The "fear" of double-voting in next year's South Carolina Presidential primary is thoughtfully illustrated at left for us by the nice white men at Fox "News."

As Greg Sargent, who caught this item yesterday pointed out about this clip: "Notice anything missing? As in, non-black voters?"

Black people voting! Twice! Run for the hills!

The report ran yesterday, on Special Jim Crow Report with Brit Hume at the very least. It was probably repeated throughout the day, we're guessing. No mention of the actual recent indictment for double-voting by the white GOP aide of the white Republican Congressman from North Carolina, Rep. Patrick McHenry. Nor, of course, of the demonstrable felony voter fraud in Florida, by white GOP superstar Ann Coulter.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Part 1 (8:18)

Parts 2 and 3 follow below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

It has just been announced by San Diego County that they have hired Deborah Seiler as their new permanent Registrar of Voters. Ms. Seiler joins the county elections office from her job as the Assistant Registrar in Solano County, California.

"Seiler brings unique elections experience from the state, local and private sector that adds valuable perspective at a crucial time," according to a press release (posted in full at the bottom of this article) as issued today by San Diego County.

All of which sounds great, until one does a moment or two of Googling --- particularly on that "private sector" point mentioned --- and Seiler's troubling past is quickly revealed to be yet more bad news for the voters of San Diego, who continue to get the worst of what American democracy is supposed to look like.

Look what we found out about Seiler...