On today's BradCast: A look at what happened over the weekend in Nevada, and a look ahead at wait awaits in South Carolina on Saturday, Super Tuesday three days later, and yes, even beyond. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

So, the Caucuses in Nevada over the weekend went only slightly better when it came to reporting results than the Iowa Caucuses two weeks ago. But, because Bernie Sanders appears to have won in a rout there, the corporate media declared as much and didn't seem to be bothered, or even much notice, that it took another three days before all results were actually in. (Proving once again that corporate media is interested in headlines, not about making sure that voters see their votes counted accurately.)

We cover the reported results out of NV today, beginning with Sanders' landslide victory there, and the fight for runners-up, with Joe Biden coming in second over Pete Buttigieg, followed by Elizabeth Warren in fourth place. She was followed in turn by Tom Steyer and then Amy Klobuchar.

But the night belonged to Bernie. He received well over twice the number of votes than his nearest competitor (Biden) in NV. Buttigieg challenged the reported results from the Saturday caucuses and attacked Sanders during his post-caucus remarks to supporters in a way that Republicans should be very happy about (and in a way that Sanders would have been justifiably excoriated for, had he done anything similar in either 2016 or in this year's cycle.) We explain all of that on today's show.

We also look forward to this Saturday's important Primary in South Carolina and to Super Tuesday in 14 states just three days later on March 3rd. In SC, Biden's once seemingly-insurmountable lead in pre-election polling appears to be slipping, even as he retains a small edge over Sanders there, according to NBC/Marist, as of today.

At the same time, the national polls are seeing some movement as well, with Warren surging into second place behind Sanders and ahead of Biden in a new CBS/YouGov poll out today, reflecting what many regard as her strong debate performance last Wednesday. Their performance, however, was not reflected in the NV Caucuses given, that most caucus-goers had already voted before the debate in Early Voting (which was used for the first time there this year.)

So, with Sanders the front-runner at the moment, having won the popular vote in each of the first three primary/caucus states, members of the "Democratic Establishment" and their media supporters appear to be, well, freaking out a little bit. We play some of that freak out and discuss.

For the moment, however, all eyes are now on South Carolina, where voters across the entire state will be forced to vote on brand-new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs). The new systems, made by Election Systems and Software, Inc., replace the state's old 100% unverifiable touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems, also made by ES&S. Their systems have failed in election after election over the past decade in the Palmetto State and elsewhere. But, of course, even if they work as designed this Saturday in the SC Primary, it will still be 100% impossible to know after polls close if any ballot cast on the expensive devices actually reflect the intent of any voter.

That's just one of the problems --- though, one of the biggest --- with BMD voting systems. In Los Angeles County --- which has more registered voters in it than the entire state of South Carolina has people --- the Early Voting period for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary (which will be held in 14 states) began on Saturday. We've been covering L.A. County's brand-new, $300,000,000 touchscreen BMD voting system for some time (about a decade in fact), warning about many of its failures and potential failures.

So, how do you think the first day of Early Voting went in L.A.? According to this report, and some of our own reporting as well, it did not go well, with officials unable to start up the new e-voting systems at all for several hours in a number of locations, some locations where the equipment didn't even arrive in time for Saturday's Early Voting, and an absense of the paper write-in ballots that were supposed to be available at every polling site as the first "condition" in the CA Sec. of State's recent "conditional certification" [PDF] of L.A.'s new "Voting Solutions for All People" (VSAP) touchscreen system.

And now it's your last chance, if you live in L.A. County, to get a real, hand-marked paper ballot instead, by visiting LAVote.net to request a Vote-by-Mail ballot for the March 3rd election before Tuesday night, February 25th at midnight! (And please do the same if you live in ANY jurisdiction in the country where you will be forced to vote on a touchscreen voting systems at the polls!)

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Although I didn't reference Adam Schiff's remarks from just two weeks ago during the impeachment trial on the "the normalization of lawlessness," about which he presciently warned "that way madness lies". But, upon reflecting on today's BradCast, it seemed an appropriate headline. It was only one week ago that corrupt and cowardly Senate Republicans had the chance to remove Trump from office, but acquitted him instead with the message to continue breaking the law and shredding the Constitution.It was just one week before that when Schiff warned: "What we have seen over the last couple days is a descent into Constitutional madness." This week has made that madness seem like child's play. [Audio link to show follows below.]

These are dark times. Growing darker by the day. But we can't turn away, as much as we might like to right now. Now is the time to step forward and help ourselves --- help each other --- back into the light. It won't be easy. But we must. And we do what we can, once again, towards that end on today's program. Among the stories covered today...

• An vengeful, bitter, out-of-control Trump turns his ongoing Twitter attacks from federal Justice Department prosecutors working on the case against his friend and convicted felon Roger Stone onto the foreperson of the jury that convicted him;

• A witness in the trial who was threatened by Stone (who was convicted of witness tampering and lying to Congress, among his seven counts), has pleaded for no jail time for the longtime GOP dirty-trickster, but has also now stepped forward to call out Trump's attacks on the four prosecutors who quit the case in protest as a "vile smear job" by the President;

• Trump's former Chief-of-Staff, Marine Corps General John Kelly, calls out Trump for his wrathful firing of decorated Iraq War vet Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from his post on the National Security Counsel because Vindman dared answer a lawful subpoena to testify truthfully to Congress about Trump's unlawful bribery campaign against Ukraine. Kelly argues Vindman should be respected, not attacked, for refusing to follow "an illegal order" from the President. "We teach them," Kelly said, "‘Don’t follow an illegal order. And if you’re ever given one, you’ll raise it to whoever gives it to you that this is an illegal order, and then tell your boss.'" The legal defense by Nazi soldiers that they were just following orders, whether unlawful or not, failed at the Nuremburg Trials. But perhaps Trump disagrees with that verdict too. In response, Trump attacked Kelly, tweeting that he was "over his head" as CoS, couldn't be fired "fast enough", and that Kelly has a "military and legal obligation" to "keep his mouth shut." The Nazi's defense attorneys would be very proud of this President;

• But how do we get out of this dark mess and reverse the madness? There is only one way left that I'm aware of, which is why I have spent so many years fighting for the right to vote and for publicly overseeable voting systems. After about 10 lonely years warning specifically about the development of the new, 100% unverifiable "VSAP" touchscreen voting system set for first-time use in Los Angeles County in the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, I've finally received a bit of help in those warnings of late from the corporate media. Last week, it came from an investigative report by CBS-2 Los Angeles (in which I appear). This morning, it came from a new investigative report on L.A.'s dangerous new systems from Cynthia McFadden, as previewed on NBC's Today show. We share that report today, along with advice on how to overcome the dangers presented by the new, $300,000,000 boondoggle of a voting system coming to the nation's most populous jurisdiction, as well as how to do the same in other states and counties (including battlegrounds like Georgia, Philadelphia, parts of Texas and elsewhere) where voters will be forced to vote on similarly unverifiable touchscreen systems at the polls in this year's never-more-critical Presidential election;

• Oh, and we have a few more observations on the New Hampshire primary turnout which we couldn't get to yesterday, but which are still worth taking note of today, as we all move forward to the next primaries and caucuses;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report, with some seemingly genuinely good --- and very surprising --- news from a major fossil fuel company, that almost, if not entirely, helps us forget about the much-less-good news in the rest of today's GNR and, for that matter, today's BradCast!...

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Last week, it was the local CBS news affiliate here in Los Angeles which finally informed voters about the dangers of the new, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen voting system coming to the nation's largest voting jurisdiction, L.A. County, just in time for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary. (I was featured in their report, and my coverage of same includes just some of the many concerns about this new, $300,000,000 voting system. You can see both here.)

This morning, NBC's Today show ran their own investigative report by journalist Cynthia McFadden on L.A.'s new VSAP ("Voting Solutions for All People") system. The report features, among others, Georgia Tech's excellent computer professor and voting system expert Rich DeMillo, who was formerly Chief Technology Officer at Hewlett-Packard (and who, most proudly, no doubt, has been interviewed a number of times on The BradCast as well.)

Please watch McFadden's report here...

IMPORTANT NOTE!: If you are a Los Angeles voter, please go to LAVote.net, ASAP, and request a hand-marked paper Vote-by-Mail ballot this year (which I only recommend in voting jurisdictions where touchscreens are forced on voters at the polls!) and then deliver that ballot, in person, on Election Day, or as near to it as possible, to maximize the odds of your votes being counted as cast!

We are now celebrating 16 years of the 100% reader/listener supported BRAD BLOG (and BradCast and Green News Report, etc!) If you are able, PLEASE consider a DONATION (one time, or regular monthly support of any amount you like) to support our continuing efforts over the past 16 years, so that we can keep sounding these alarms at least through one more critical election this year! Thank you!!!

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A few days ago, I ran the :30 second preview for this report from David Goldstein of CBS-2 Los Angeles on the new,100% unverifiable touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems being deployed to all polling places in Los Angeles County (the nation's most populous) for the first time in the critical 2020 elections. I am seen in the preview responding bluntly to how much confidence voters should have in this new system, as paired with the response to the same question from Goldstein by L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan.

We now have Goldstein's full video report and it's posted below.

The first countywide use of the $300,000,000 system, ten years in development, will be for the upcoming Super Tuesday primary on March 3rd in California. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just ask Iowa.

But, beyond that, I've spent a great deal of time in recent weeks, months (and, yes, years) specifically detailing what could go wrong, from the fact that...

• these systems were recently "conditionally certified", by CA Sec. of State Alex Padilla, despite warnings from experts after they were found to have failed failing to meet more than 40 California Voting Systems Standards;
• that the computer-marked paper ballots it creates can be changed by the system without voters knowledge after they are supposedly verified by voters and then run back through the same printer path that printed them in the first place;
• that a recent study found that 93% of voters do not notice when a BMD system has flipped one of their votes;
• that Los Angeles County is being sued by Beverly Hills because the system only displays four candidates in any given race at a time, which means that voters could hit the NEXT button to go to the next race, without ever seeing all of the voters in the contest (something that is also not a problem when using a more reasonable, sensible, much less expensive hand-marked paper ballot system);
• that this system could result in voters not being able to vote at all, if there is a power or internet outage or ransomware attack;
• and that even if voters succeed overcoming all of these obstacles and manage to correctly verify the computer hasn't changed their vote, there is till no way for anybody to know after an election, whether any vote has been printed accurately as per any voter's intent!

That's just some of the concerns about these systems --- and they are true for the new system being deployed in L.A. called VSAP for "Voting Solutions for All People", as well as for other similar systems being deployed for the first time this year in critical battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas and elsewhere, for some insane reason.

Anyway, while I'll have more to say about this on today's BradCast later tonight, I'm happy that at least a few corporate media outlets are waking up to these concerns. Too few, if you ask me. Perhaps more will do so after what's happened in Iowa. But, for now, here's the full report now from CBS-2 Los Angeles' David Goldstein, as aired Tuesday evening on the 11 o'clock news.

WATCH...

On Monday night, the Democratic Iowa Caucuses melted down. Actually, they didn't melt down. They worked as well as expected. It was the reporting of the results from the caucuses that melted down, almost entirely due to a smartphone app that either didn't work as planned --- or because untrained precinct captains had trouble using it for its intended purpose: to send local, transparent, fully publicly overseen caucus site results to the the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters for release to the media. Of course, as we have warned for more than 15 years, it is always a terrible idea to use new, untested, secretly-developed, nontransparent, unnecessary computer technology for mission critical, cannot-fail elections.

On today's BradCast [Audio link posted below], we explain both the Iowa caucus process (which, itself, is actually among the most transparent --- if most complex --- of all the Presidential nominating contests); the known history of this app that failed so spectacularly after warnings by cybersecurity professionals (and by us on this program previously) against its use were ignored; how the app was supposed to work; and the problems from the 2016 caucuses (and even 2012 Republican Caucus in Iowa) that it was meant to solve.

(Relatedly, we also share a :30 second preview clip, featuring me, from CBS-2 Los Angeles, for an investigative report on Los Angeles County's new, untested, 100% unverifiable, $300,000,000 touchscreen voting systems that are being deployed for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary election here for the first time in the nation's most populous county, despite warnings from cybersecurity and, yes, us. That story, and the warnings I offer in the preview --- and, hopefully, in the full story set to air on CBS-LA this evening --- have suddenly become even more wildly relevant over the past 12 hours or so than they were previously.)

If you take nothing else from all of this, please let it be that even if tech like this works perfectly (it never does), if the public cannot know that it did, confidence in democracy itself is deeply endangered. Though we've been issuing that warning for years, it is more true today than ever, especially after years of tossing additional computer "solutions" at our elections, no matter how dangerous it will be once again in 2020. As one longtime Election Integrity advocate emailed me today, somewhat sarcastically: "Who would have ever thought that using computers for election administration could cause problems? Aren't they supposed to make processes go more easily, more smoothly, faster, more accurate? What a stunner that everything descended into chaos when Iowa Democrats changed from their manual counting/reporting methods to move into the 21st century with computers!"

Before we get to our guest today then, with whom we also discuss all of this, perhaps I can summarize the lessons learned for the moment from Iowa as...A) the madness of using untested, secretly-developed, nontransparent new tech in mission critical elections; B) the importance of publicly overseen results tabulated by humans at the polling place (which Iowa has, despite the app meltdown, so the correct results will EVENTUALLY be known!) and; C) the absurdly complex procedures of the Iowa Caucus itself (on the Dem side --- the GOP side is far simpler) is a nice example of the complications and dangers in store for those who persist in calling for a Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system. Given the complicated way the Iowa Democratic caucuses work (realignment of votes through several rounds of voting/counting after some candidates do not meet the viability threshold, etc.), it is very similar to RCV or Instant Runnoff Voting (IRV).

If you think the raw numbers, once they fully come out from Iowa, are impossible to understand and add up, just wait until RCV takes hold. As I almost always note on this topic: If you think we have enough trouble as is, transparently adding 1 + 1 + 1 in our elections in a way that can be publicly overseen and understood, just wait until we add the complicated, computer- and central-tabulation required algebra of Ranked Choice Voting to the matter!

Halfway through today's show, the Iowa Democratic Party finally released results from Monday night....well, just 62% of them, incredibly enough. They show Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders in a virtual tie, followed by Elizabeth Warren and then Joe Biden, with Amy Klobuchar not too far behind. But, again, those are only partial numbers, so we don't need to spend too much time on them for now.

We're joined today by the great JOHN NICHOLS of The Nation, just back from Iowa, for an explanation --- and a rant or two --- about all of the above and whether Democratic supporters of several different candidates should be furious...or just breathe...as all of this is ultimately sorted out. There is a lot to discuss with John, who explains why he believes "caucuses suck" and the "scorching, huge damage" this all will have done to the Democratic Party and democracy itself. We agree on some points and disagree on others. But there is just far too much to detail here. So I suggest you just buckle up and tune in today!

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us to let it go, with our latest Green News Report...

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Well, this should be fun. Particularly after what happened in Iowa last night.

Here's a :30 second preview for tonight's investigative report on CBS-2 Los Angeles, by journalist David Goldstein. You may recognize the first guy that speaks (me). The guy at the end is L.A. County Registrar Recorder County Clerk Dean Logan.

Given what happened last night in Iowa, where they used a never-before-used smartphone app to transmit results to Party HQ, I'm hoping folks like Logan are having second thoughts about using untested, never-before-used, secretly-developed tech for a no-room-for-failure, mission critical election. It sorta puts my "none!", as seen in this clip, in a fresh light, I'd say. At least it should.

WATCH:

Tuesday night at 11 we’re back on with a new investigation. LA County spent $300 Million dollars on new voting machines that critics warn won’t reliably count your vote. Is it money well spent? Watch and find out! @CBSLA pic.twitter.com/EXZhCcwEsI

— David Goldstein (@CBSLAdavid) February 4, 2020

Goldstein tells me the full report will air tonight (2/4/2020) on CBS-2 in L.A. during the 11pm News. I'll try to post an update here with the full video report after it's published online.

UPDATE: Video of full report is now posted here.

P.S. This week we are celebrating 16 years of the 100% reader/listener supported BRAD BLOG (and BradCast and Green News Report, etc!) But, given all that's gone on over this past week or two, I haven't even been able to post about it until now! If you're able, PLEASE consider donating to support our continuing efforts over the past 16 years, so that we can keep sounding these necessary alarms at least through one more critical election this year! Thank you!!!

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On today's BradCast: Following Friday's shameful vote in the U.S. Senate, where just two Republican Senators were able to muster up the courage to vote against completely blocking all witnesses and documents in the Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, we now have just one firewall left against our slide into full authoritarianism: This November's election. [Audio link to show follows below.]

If a President can't be indicted, as the Dept. of Justice falsely claims, and a Republican Senate is more than happy to blatantly rig an impeachment "trial" against a Republican President, the only American firewall left against the collapse of representative democracy as we've known it in this nation is your vote --- and those of every eligible citizen you know --- cast this year and counted as intended. That, as we have warned for many years, is now more difficult than ever in many jurisdictions. Nonetheless, that fight begins tonight in Iowa. (We'll have full coverage of Iowa results on Tuesday's BradCast.)

On today's program, related to all of the above, and before we open up the phones to callers on all of it...

• We are "flying blind" as we head into the Iowa Caucuses after the weekend cancellation of the final "gold standard" Des Moines Register poll, due to a procedural error. Though Bernie Sanders, according to other last-minute polling, is believed to be the front-runner on the Democratic side as caucusing begins. That said, the Iowa Caucuses are complicated and notoriously difficult to predict, for some of the reasons we explain on today's program;

• Millions of Vote-by-Mail ballots are, as of today, according to a media statement from the California Sec. of State, now on their way to Golden State voters for the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, when more than a dozen states will be voting in their 2020 primaries all at once. We, again today, endeavor to explain the complicated procedures that are (sadly) necessary in the Golden State to make sure you are able to vote in the party primary of your choosing, as well as the steps you need to take to make sure you do so on a hand-marked paper ballot in order to maximize the odds of your vote actually being counted as cast.

  To avoid having to cast a 100% unverifiable touchscreen vote if you live in Los Angeles County (where that will be forced upon you at our new "voting centers") or anywhere else where touchscreens are your only choice at the polling place, PLEASE contact your County and ask for a hand-marked paper Vote-by-Mail ballot. Then, PLEASE deliver it IN PERSON to your polling place or County headquarters on Election Day or as close to it as possible. (Check your local jurisdiction to make certain they will accept hand-delivered vote-by-mail ballots!) To check your voter status --- how and if you are registered, and whether you are signed up for Vote-by-Mail --- please see the CA Sec. of State website's Voter Status page here. To request a Vote-by-Mail ballot in L.A. or request a specific party's primary ballot, go to LAVote.net;

• Everyone must be on board and educated about all of this, this year. With the stakes we are now facing, there is ZERO room for error. Please share good information far and wide, and help your friends and neighbors to register, to vote, and to help spread the word to others about how to do the same thing;

• Yet another reason for voting on hand-marked paper: I am terrified, for good reason, about the possibility of a ransomware attack that could prevent voters in jurisdictions that now (foolishly and dangerously) rely on computers at the polls for voters to be able to vote at all. One of the latest such attacks/reminders is currently crippling services in Tillamook County, Oregon, where all County computer servers were shut down as of last week due to such an attack. Tillamook is just the latest of dozens of jurisdictions --- states, counties, large and small metropolitan areas --- to be hit by ransomware attacks over the past year. If one occurs on or before Election Day in a county (like L.A.) that now relies on computer pollbooks and voting systems, we will have a disaster on our hands in the upcoming elections;

• Of course, such a disaster is exactly what Donald Trump is hoping for, given his unpopularity and his repeated attempts to rig both the 2016 and now 2020 elections in his favor through any means necessary. He is now being aided in that effort not only by Republicans in the Senate, but by the Dept. of Justice itself, which is unlawfully withholding documents that prove, yet again, that Trump directed Administration officials to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine in a pressure campaign to force them to help him cheat in the 2020 election;

• All of this, as investigative journalist Kurt Eichenwald warned in a chilling Twitter thread on Friday after the vote to block all witnesses and documents in Trump's Impeachment Trial, is why "we are in an extremely terrifying moment in American history." Eichenwald cautions that, because Presidential "emergency powers" have never been defined ("because no one ever imagined a situation like this"), Trump could even attempt to cancel this year's election if he wanted and, like Hitler, could even imprison political opponents such as Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders "if he further advances his argument that he [has] absolute unquestionable control of government."

Far fetched? Please tune in to today's show and then let us know, as callers did in the second half of today's program...

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On today's BradCast: The President's defense team picked up on Monday where they left off on Saturday in their Opening (and potentially Closing) Argument in the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump. But that defense was hit with a major bombshell by the New York Times on Sunday which could (emphasis on "could") turn out to be a game-changer for the previously expected course of this trial. [Audio link to program is posted at the end of this summary.]

But first, and before we eventually open the phones today, a few updates on the tragic Sunday death of Los Angeles Lakers' legend and NBC icon Kobe Bryant, who was killed along with his 13-year old daughter and seven others during a helicopter ride on a very foggy day just outside of L.A. While the shocking death of the 41-year old Bryant has reverberated around the globe, the pain of his loss was particularly acute here in Los Angeles yesterday.

In other Los Angeles news with national implications, we've got a bit more information on Friday's "conditional certification" [PDF] by CA Sec. of State Alex Padilla of L.A. County's new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system set for first-time use in the upcoming March 3rd Super Tuesday Presidential primaries. Among the updates, we've got a bit more information on the so-called "hand-marked paper ballot" that Padiila has ordered be made available at Voting Centers "for any voter that requests to cast" one. It will, according to the Secretary's mandate, be a "write-in absentee ballot," modeled on the Federal Voting Assistance Program's federal write-in absentee ballot [PDF] --- meant as a ballot of last resort for overseas voters who do not receive a normal absentee ballot in time to cast a vote --- that requires voters to write in all of the names of the offices and candidates for which they would like to vote. As much confusion and chaos as L.A. County's new, $300,000,000 "Voting Solutions for All People" or VSAP voting system is likely to cause at the polls this year, the provision for a second-rate, hand-marked "write-in ballot" as the only means for casting a hand-marked ballot at the polling place, is likely to make things even more chaotic. We detail that, and a few other points related to the certification of the new system on Friday, despite a newly filed lawsuit and warnings from cybersecurity and voting systems experts after its failure to meet more than 40 California Voting System Standards, according to the independent testers hired to analyze the system during Padilla's certification process.

Next it's on to the President's lawyers' case being presented once again as we went to air today, in the U.S. Senate, where Ken Starr (yes, that Ken Starr, the Special Prosecutor who recommended impeachment against Bill Clinton for lying about an affair) argued hypocritically that Trump could not Constitutionally be impeached for Abuse of Power (Article 1 of the two Impeachment Articles against him), even though Starr's own recent book on impeachment explains that Abuse of Power was the capstone of Clinton's impeachment case in 1998. That, and his argument that impeachment was just too divisive to put the country through without a bi-partisan political consensus was a bit hard to stomach for those of us old enough to remember the Clinton impeachment.

But the most noteworthy Impeachment-related news today is John Bolton, Trump's former National Security Advisor, reportedly charging in a manuscript of his new book, according to the New York Times, that Trump was directly involved in the unlawful freeze of $391 million allocated to Ukrainian for military assistance, unless the Ukrainians agreed to turn over documents related to an investigation of Joe Biden meant to help Trump's 2020 reelection changes. That alleged Abuse of Power is at the heart of Trump's impeachment, and the manuscript of Bolton's forthcoming book reportedly charges that Attorney General Bill Barr, Sec. of State Mike Pompeo and Trump's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney were all directly aware of the scheme, according to the Times blockbuster report.

That explosive news on Sunday has, according to several different news outlets, led a number of key GOP Senators to rethink their previous votes against calling for new witnesses and documents in the Senate Trial. Will four or more Republican Senators now agree to vote in favor of subpoenaing Bolton and other related (and/or unrelated) witnesses? That appears to be the question of the moment in this matter as we go to air today, and one we open up to discuss with callers near the end of today's program...

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Our special coverage of Donald John's Trump Senate Impeachment trial continues on today's BradCast, but we interrupt that coverage briefly at the top of today's show with some breaking news out of California, on a story we've been covering closely. [Audio link to show follows summary below.]

After we revealed last week that Los Angeles County's new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems were found by the Secretary of State's independent testers to have failed to meet more than 40 requirements of the California Voting System Standards, we called on Sec. of State Alex Padilla to deny certification of these horrific systems and to require a verifiable HAND-MARKED paper ballot system instead for all voters in the nation's largest voting jurisdiction. We called on listeners to send Public Comment to the SoS before the Public Comment period for certification ended this past Monday for L.A.'s new $300,00,000 touchscreen "Voting Solutions for All People" or VSAP system.

I sent my own comment and, in doing so, cited a comment from the brainchild behind L.A. County's new voting system, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan. As we noted in that comment, Logan promised me a year ago, in January of 2019 via email, that "The equipment/system components [for VSAP] are/will be … in compliance with California's voting systems standards that exceed the federal voluntary system standards."

That vow from the County's top election official now turns out to have been untrue. Today, incredibly, Sec. Padilla "conditionally" certified [PDF] the VSAP system for first-time countywide use in the March 3rd Super Tuesday primaries, despite all of its many flaws.

He did, however, include a very curious --- and, for now, confusing --- condition, stating that "Los Angeles County shall make available in each vote center a sufficient number of blank write-in paper ballots for any voter that requests to cast a hand-marked paper ballot"...

What that means exactly, and whether this now means that every voter will be able to vote in any party's primary with a verifiable hand-marked paper ballot simply by requesting one at one of the 1,000 new Voting Centers (which replace the 5,000 community precincts we've always used in L.A. in previous years) remains to be seen. I have queries out to both the Secretary and Registrar and will report back whatever I can learn when I do.

In related news, the City of Beverly Hills announced Thursday they will sue the County, due to the fact that the VSAP system, as we explained last week, only shows four candidates in each race, before a voter is required to hit a "MORE" button if they wish to see additional candidates in the same contest. That "MORE" button, however, is very close to the "NEXT" button on the touchscreen, and takes voters to the next race without ever showing them all candidates in the previous one.

Padilla's conditional certification calls for mitigation to this enormous design flaw, but not until five months from now when "a plan" must be presented to the SoS regarding redesigned "functionality and usability". That means this flaw --- and the others --will be there for the critical March 3rd primaries and potentially changed before the crucial Presidential election in November. Whether that design change will actually be independently tested to ensure it has not introduced other problems also remains to be seen. But Beverly Hills, which has an upcoming election for City Council with five candidates on the ballot (one who will be hidden on Page 2 of the touchscreen for this race) has now filed a legal complaint, announcing they "are deeply troubled that voters will be disenfranchised by the new VSAP system."

Then, it's back to the ongoing mess on the East Coast in Trump's Impeachment Trial. We share the powerful and impassioned closing remarks from Thursday night's session from Rep. Adam Schiff. The lead Democratic House Manager spoke directly to Republican Senators about the internal dilemma that many are almost certainly facing in realizing the necessity of removing Trump before he cheats again on the 2020 election as he did in 2016 and, as Democrats have proven beyond a shadow of doubt, that he attempted to do in his unlawful pressure scheme with Ukraine to force them to announce an investigation seeking dirt on Joe Biden and an evidence-free claim about the 2016 election. Sadly, despite the power of those remarks, nobody who watches Fox "News" saw them because, as Media Matters found, the pretend "news" outlet showed live coverage of the actual, historic Senate trial "during its evening programming (between 7 p.m and 11 p.m. EST) for a total of just 22 seconds."

We're joined today by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo to help us make sense of the past week of the trial as Democrats wrap up their opening (and perhaps closing) argument; what we can expect from the President's attorneys who begin their own presentation in response on Saturday; our best analysis of what comes next; and why Parton predicts "jury nullification" and believes "shamelessness is their superpower"...

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"Can I get a witness?" That appears to be the big question, at the moment, for Democrats in the historic U.S. Senate Impeachment Trial of President Donald John Trump. On today's BradCast, we offer special coverage of the beginning of the trial, which, at least for today, is turning out to be a trial about whether there will be a real trial or not, with evidence, documents and witnesses, as Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus seem prepared to do everything in their power to ensure there will not be such an actual trial. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Before we get to today's action in the Senate, we bring you up to date on the holiday weekend's pre-trial briefs presented by the Democratic U.S. House Managers, who are serving as prosecutors for Trump's two Articles of Impeachment on Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress, and the brief responses filed by the White House defense team.

Newly added to to Trump's legal team is hypocritical TV attorney Alan Dershowitz, who spent his weekend arguing on the Sunday news shows that the Articles were invalid because they did not include a specific crime. "You need proof of an actual crime," he argued. That, by way of contrast with Alan Dershowitz in 1998 during the Bill Clinton impeachment when he argued, literally, "it certainly doesn't have to be a crime" that qualifies a President for impeachment.

Trump's 6-page response to the Impeachment Managers 111-page brief describes the Impeachment as a "brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election" (which is what he is actually accused of doing in the Articles for which he is being impeached), and as "nothing more than a dangerous attack on the American people themselves and their fundamental right to vote." That's right. Donald Trump is now pretending to be concerned with the "fundamental right to vote." That, in the middle of an impeachment trial where he is accused of attempting to cheat in his 2020 reelection contest by withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-allocated military aid for war-torn Ukraine in hopes of forcing them to create dirt he can use against Joe Biden and other Democrats.

Tuesday's opening agenda was on the adoption of McConnell's proposed rules for the trial that would postpone votes on whether to include witnesses and documents previously blocked by the White House during the House's initial impeachment inquiry (the basis of Article 2's Obstruction of Congress charges) and even evidence gathered during the House Inquiry itself. Under McConnell's resolution, both sides would spend days in opening statements, and then take as many as 16 hours of written questions from Senators before they even vote on whether to allow witnesses or not. Legal observers have noted that is the opposite of how actual trials are carried out.

We share audio from today's terse opening statement by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, followed by an extended excerpt from lead House Manager Adam Schiff on the unprecedented attempt to exclude all witnesses and documents from a Senate impeachment. No trial in the upper chamber of Congress has lacked witnesses since the founding of our nation.

As we went to air for today's BradCast (and as we write tonight), all Democratic amendments to McConnell's resolution, attempting to subpoena documents from the White House, the State Dept. and elsewhere, and for witness testimony, have been rejected along strict party line votes with all 53 Republicans voting to table the amendments, and all 47 Democrats voting to move forward with the subpoenas.

Also today, a few quick points of news elsewhere regarding the public fight to stop the controversial certification of new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems in Los Angeles County and the massive gun rights demonstration (over nothing) held on the Martin Luther King Day holiday in Virginia.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report, with exceedingly disturbing news about ocean warming, slightly more encouraging news about Wall Street beginning to wake up to worries about our climate crisis, and a big loss (for now) in the federal climate change lawsuit filed by a group of kids in California...

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Is Bernie "unelectable" as many well-paid pundits and columnists have argued? We take an evidence based approach to that question on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show is posted below.]

But first, with the end of the Public Comment period for certification of Los Angeles County's $300,000,000 boondoggle of a new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting system coming to a close next Monday, Jan 20th (Martin Luther King Day holiday!) at 5pm PT, it's great to see Libby Denkmann's comprehensive piece at LAist, on the potential nightmares for L.A. voters in the making. Her piece is headlined "LA's New Voting System Is Still Uncertified. Why Election Security Experts Are Worried". She picks up on many of the points we highlighted when we broke the story earlier in the week of more than 40 violations of California Voting System Standards discovered by the independent testing team hired by the CA Sec. of State during the certification process.

We also follow up on Denkmann's scoop from earlier in the week, regarding the Beverly Hills City Council's recent vote to explore a lawsuit against Los Angeles County because the new, unverifiable touchscreen voting system forces voters to notice a "MORE" button if they wish to see more than the first four candidates listed on the ballot in any particular race. That button is right next to the "NEXT" button that would take voters to the next race without seeing all of the candidates in the current race. A listener writes in with a couple of solutions to that huge design flaw on these incredibly expensive "electric pens" that L.A. is investing in, instead of a much cheaper, much more secure and reliable, overseeable HAND-MARKED paper ballot system.

Then, with many in the pundit class helpfully informing us that candidates like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are just too progressive to be elected in the 2020 general election (many of these same pundits also told us Donald Trump could never be elected, by the way), we take an evidence-based look at those claims.

The question, however, begins with dismantling the notion that pack journalism and "conventional wisdom" on such matters should be trusted. For example, conventional wisdom tells us that members of the active-duty military will be big supporters of Trump's again this year. Actual evidence, such as the annual opinion poll of active-duty subscribers to Military Times, reveals a very different set of data than that presented by much of the media. That poll, taken at the end of last year, finds that half of respondents view Trump unfavorably, with 45% viewing him "VERY unfavorably". His overall ratings have dropped dramatically since the military publication's first annual poll in 2016. Moreover a plurality back impeachment for their Commander-in-Chief! (And today's Washington Post story on Trump railing at his Generals as "a bunch of dopes and babies" probably won't help him much either.)

In fact, as we discuss with our guest, historian, author and election fraud investigator RICHARD HAYES PHILLIPS, nobody really knows anything. At least when it comes to the paid pundits substituting their opinions for actual facts. Phillips published a fact-based analysis of the questions regarding Sanders electability at The BRAD BLOG on Friday, based on known raw numbers from the 2016 primary (with a particular eye on the "Blue Wall" states of WI, MN, PA, MI, IA and OH) and what can be gleaned from opinion polls today.

While avoiding punditry and predictions, Phillips' findings --- at least based on what we know at this time --- suggest that Sanders is, indeed, electable. Whether he would still be by the time Republicans got finished with him, or whether he is more electable than someone like Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, remains unknown no matter what the TV talking heads tell you. "Take your pick," he tells me when I ask whether his analysis today will hold up even after Trump and the GOP media turn their fire on Sanders if we wins the Democratic nomination. "Which three words do you want to hear Donald Trump say over and over again in the same sentence 10,000 times? Do you want to hear 'Biden Ukraine corrupt'? Do you want to hear 'Bernie crazy socialist'? Do you want to hear 'Pocahontas crazy socialist'? I don't even want to think about what he would say about Pete Buttigieg. I'm not going to go there."

Noting that his work "is based upon numbers and not opinions," he suggests voters should vote for who they like in the primary and forget about "electability", before adding his key takeaway: "The lesson to this is that the most important thing that Democrats can do is to unite behind the winner and not split the opposition. Trump's best scenario is a 3rd party candidate on the Left siphoning enough votes from whoever wins the Democratic nomination to throw the election to Trump."

Phillips argues: "My advice is that Democrats should not be afraid of a spirited primary contest between two or more viable candidates. What they need to do, as recent polling data also reveal, is united behind the ultimate winner. You can't just take your ball and go home and mope because your candidate didn't get the nomination. That's what Trump wants you to do."

It is certainly true that Republicans will say anything, do anything, to win the general election against whichever Democratic candidate ends up winning the nomination. We close with one amazingly audacious recent clip from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Fox "News" that underscores precisely that point...

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Really just blockbusters and bombshells from top to bottom on today's BradCast. From historic impeachment proceedings to game-changing disclosures to potentially big legal trouble for L.A.'s imperiled new touchscreen voting system. [Link to complete show is posted below summary.]

First up, the historic Impeach Trial of Donald John Trump got officially under way in the U.S. Senate today, with a solemn oath-taking ceremony administered by Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court John Roberts who will preside over the trial that could determine whether Trump remains President of the United States.

But before we even got there on Thursday, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) came out with its finding that the Trump Administration did, indeed, violate federal law last year when it withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine as appropriated by a bipartisan vote of Congress. "Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law," the decision says, finding that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) "withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act." That matter is at the heart of Trump's impeachment.

But before the GAO findings were released on Thursday morning, or Senators could take their oath to do "impartial justice" as jurors on Thursday afternoon as the impeachment trial began, Rachel Maddow's Wednesday night blockbuster interview on MSNBC with Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born right-hand man to Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, shook up just about everything and everybody. Parnas, facing charges of campaign finance violations, sung --- and sung like crazy. On everybody. "Everybody was in the loop," he said.

He claimed Donald Trump knew from the jump about the scheme to strong-arm Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden to help his 2020 reelection bid. So did Vice President Mike Pence, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Congressman Devin Nunes and even Attorney General William Barr. We share a few clips from Maddow's jaw-dropping scoop of an interview --- with a recommendation that you go check out the whole thing (which is set to have a Part 2 on Thursday night), before we move on to a few blockbusters and bombshells closer to home out here on the west coast.

Earlier in the week, we broke exclusive details on the pending certification of a brand-new, $300,000,000 unverifiable touchscreen voting system set for first time use in Los Angeles County --- the nation's largest --- in this year's March 3rd Super Tuesday primary elections. As we reported, independent testers hired by the Sec. of State's office to carry out certification testing of the new systems discovered more than 40 violations of California Voting System Standards as the Public Comment period for certification of the County's "Voting Solutions for All People" or VSAP system ends this coming Monday. Given the enormous problems with the system set for use in the critical 2020 Presidential election, we have been urging voters to send public comments seeking a HAND-MARK paper ballot system instead of the failed, unverifiable new touchscreen systems, to the Sec. of State at VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov.

All the while, L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan has refused, for months, to respond to our serious questions about the systems or appear on the show. Well, we've got some new news today on all of that, including a potential lawsuit by the City of Beverly Hills, whose City Council, according to LAist's Libby Denkmann, has voted to approve a suit after discovering the effects of a serious design flaw in the system. The new VSAP tablets only display four candidates per race, before a voter must select a "MORE" button to be taken to a second page. That "MORE" button is right next to the "NEXT" button on the tablet voting system. And that "NEXT" button, takes voters to the next race on the ballot without voters ever even seeing the additional candidates in the race. This is a very serious flaw that is likely to cause havoc for candidates whose random positions on the ballot come as Number 5 or higher in any given race, including in the upcoming Presidential primaries. (If I'm Dean Logan today, I am praying that Bernie Sanders doesn't draw the fifth or later position on the March 3rd Democratic ballot!)

That matter is just one of several that Logan has either refused to speak to or has mislead on when I questioned him, or tried to, as I detail on today's program. But, given the noise we've caused over the past several days with this on The BradCast, Logan finally deigned to offer a Twittered response, excoriating our coverage of the certification testing failures. We share his misleading response in full on today's program, along with a number of the serious points that he either failed to respond to at all, or is attempting to mislead the public about in his tweeted answers. (For example, the fact that after a computer-marked ballot has been supposedly "verified" by the voter, it is sent back through the same printer path where it could be changed by the system with no way for the voter to ever know.)

Finally today, as if that's not enough blockbusters for you, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with our special coverage of Tuesday night's 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate in Des Moines, the last one before voting begins next month, and one in which our climate crisis, at long last, was front and center throughout much of the forum, happily enough...

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On today's BradCast, as we wait for the House to send Donald Trump's Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and we wait for the Senate to begin his impeachment trial, and we wait for Tuesday's night final Democratic Presidential debate before the Iowa Caucuses, and we wait for primary voting to begin in earnest next month, the fight for voting rights and for the way voters will cast their votes has been long underway, and it cannot wait any longer. [Audio link to complete show is posted below summary.]

We've got several major court victories today in the fight for voting rights, and a follow-up to yesterday's exclusive revelations of the massive failures discovered in the new, 100% unverifiable touchscreen voting systems set for first-time use in the critical 2020 Presidential election cycle in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest voting jurisdiction.

First up today, a Wisconsin state courts of appeals panel has stepped in to put a freeze on the massive voter purge of some 200,000 voters, as demanded by a rightwing legal outfit and a state court judge who was apparently willing to do their bidding. A three-judge panel on Wisconsin's District 4 Court of Appeals put the brakes on Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Paul Malloy's order to immediately remove the voters and on his $250/day fine against each of the three Democratic appointees to the state's Elections Commission who oppose the purge.

The voters who failed to respond to a verification postcard sent by the Commission were disproportionately found to be located in the state's most Democratic-leaning jurisdictions. They had been initially set for removal from the rolls in 2021, until Wisconsin's so-called Institute for Law and Liberty filed suit and found a very friendly judge in Malloy. He recently ordered the immediate removal of the voters, despite opposition from both the Democratic Commissioners and the state's Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul. The ruling by the appellate court to protect as many as 200,000 voters is key in a battleground state said to have been won by Trump by just 23,000 voters in 2016.

Today's decision in WI somewhat echoes a ruling by a federal judge in New York State late last week, who ordered that voters determined to be "inactive" due to a failure to respond to mailings or bad information from the U.S. Postal Service, must be listed in poll books on Election Day. A failure of so-called "inactive" voters to appear in poll books at state precincts led to chaos and disenfranchised voters during the 2016 election in New York.

During the course of last year's trial in this matter, it was revealed that both members of the State Board of Elections and New York City Board of Elections found that many voters on the "inactive" list should not have even been on the list in the first place. Federal District Court Judge Alison J. Nathan ruled that State Board of Elections' procedures were in violation of both the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

Then, we turn to some of the fall-out from the hornets nest we helped kick over on Monday's BradCast, when we detailed major security defects discovered by state certification testers in Los Angeles' new "Voting Solutions for All People" (or VSAP) voting system. The brand-new $300 million system, as we discussed in details on yesterday's program, is yet to be certified for use in California by Sec. of State Alex Padilla, but he is expected to sign off of it despite the massive failures discovered by the analysts that could put the 2020 elections in jeopardy in the nation's largest voting jurisdiction, thanks to the completely unverifiable and highly flawed new touchscreen voting systems.

Today, we share some of the responses we've received following yesterday's blockbuster show and some of the public comments sent by listeners to the Sec. of State seeking rejection of the new system in favor of hand-marked paper ballots for all voters. Letters must be sent to VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov before the Public Comment period for certification ends this Monday, January 20, at 5pm Pacific Time!

Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen for the latest Green News Report, with some news on a family feud and potential climate change shake-up at Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp in the wake of the devastating Australian bushfires that have ravaged the country for weeks; new details on the extraordinary costs of our climate crisis; and the weekly arrests of climate action champion Jane Fonda...

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On today's BradCast, after a necessarily quick news round-up today (on Cory Booker dropping out of the Democratic Presidential nominating contest and the Trump Administration's continuing attempt to lie about about Donald Trump's unlawful assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani), we get on to the most important business of the day --- at least for voters in the state of California, though all across the country as well.

Brand-new, 100% unverifiable computer touchscreen Ballot Marking Device (BMD) voting systems, which all voters at the polls will be forced to use for the first-time in the 2020 Presidential election in Los Angeles County, beginning with the March 3rd Super Tuesday primary, are currently undergoing the CA state certification process. The $300 million system is failing state security and certification testing miserably, according to documents buried at the CA Sec. of State website, and reported on today's program for the first time.

In addition to producing a computer-marked ballot that can never be verified as reflecting any voters' intent after an election, documentation of state certification tests of the new "Voting Solutions for All People" system (or VSAP), reveal a myriad of incredibly serious security failures and violations of state law, according to experts we've consulted.

As we detail on today's program, the testers have discovered, among other very serious concerns, more than 40 violations of California Voting System Standards, including findings that reveal:

• The VSAP system can be booted from a USB drive that would bypass all security and logging protections and that access to the master account is needed for too many things, meaning that "too many people have access to the root password," according to state testers. That means "The excessive root access and the ability to boot the system from a USB port give access to the system by unauthorized individuals. Either scenario can result in undetected changes to files and data...Both scenarios can allow functions to be executed in non-intended ways. The unrestricted access to, and the ability to boot from, the USB port allows access to voting data";
• Many problems were discovered with security regarding encryption and cryptography in the new system;
• The testers discovered "It is possible to insert or remove ballots from both the BMD and ballot transfer boxes without detection";
• "The printer cover allows access to the ballot box and can be opened without detection";
• "Seals, locks, labels and sensors can all be bypassed" without detection.

Those are just some of the many findings that led one national voting system and cybersecurity expert to wryly describe the results to us as "not good" and another to describe the system as "a security fail".

Nonetheless, CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla could still certify the systems for use in the 2020 primaries and general election anyway, following the passage of a law he championed in 2013 as a State Senator that gives the SoS the ability to approve the use of new voting systems, even if they fail both federal and state testing, for actual elections.

The very quiet Public Comment period regarding certification of the unverifiable, unsecure VSAP touchscreen computer voting system ends next Monday, Jan. 20, 2020 at 5pm Pacific Time. We are urging those concerned to contact the state at VotingSystems@sos.ca.gov immediately to ask them to not certify this dangerous, unverifiable system, and to require a HAND-MARKED paper ballot for all voters at the polling place in this year's crucial primary and general elections.

We offer much more frightening detail on all of this on today's program regarding the dangers of this type of voting system as they are proliferating not just in Los Angeles County, but also in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and many others before the critical 2020 elections begin in just weeks time!

We appear to be the only media outlet, to our knowledge, reporting this important information on the failed VSAP tests out of California, so please share widely! We cannot afford to wait until corporate media bother to notice (such as NBC News, which just noticed on Friday a very serious concern about modems in voting systems in several battleground states that we had covered on The BradCast more than six months ago!)...

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On today's BradCast: Don't say we didn't warn you. We'll keep trying. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the many stories covered on today's program...

• Montana's Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who won reelection on the same statewide 2016 ballot that Trump reportedly won by 20 points that year, announced he is dropping out of the Dem Presidential nominating contest on Monday. His campaign also claims he will --- sadly (shamefully?) --- not be running for U.S. Senate next year, despite his proven ability to flip a statewide seat from "red" to "blue" at a time his country needs him to do exactly that. Also, former Pennsylvania Rep. Joe Sestak dropped out of the 2020 race over the weekend as well, though odds are you're even less aware of his candidacy than you were of Bullock's;

• Wildly corrupt conspiracist and Trump supporter Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) agrees to plead guilty --- rather than face trial in January --- in his criminal campaign finance fraud case in which he and his wife lavishly spent some $250,000 of campaign funds on personal expenses, while claiming, in some cases, that their spending was for veterans' charities;

• The impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump moves forward, as the center of action will move from Rep. Adam Schiff's House Intelligence Committee to Rep. Jerry Nadler's House Judiciary Committee this week. The Trump White House continues to pretend they are not being allowed due process, as they informed Nadler on Sunday night that they refuse to participate in Judiciary's first hearing on the matter scheduled for Wednesday;

• We then step through the process for Congressional proceedings on the matter as they are currently scheduled to occur over the next month, with Articles of Impeachment likely approved by the full House before year's end, followed by a trial on the removal of Donald Trump in the U.S. Senate beginning in January and leading right up to (or even beyond) the first votes being cast in the 2020 elections. The Iowa Caucuses will be on February 3, followed by the New Hampshire primary just one week later.

  By March 3, more than a dozen states will be voting on Super Tuesday, including California. For the first time that day, here in Los Angeles County --- which, by itself, is larger than 41 states --- voters at the polls will be forced to vote on brand new 100% unverifiable touchscreen computer systems.

  The new computers in L.A. are similar to the new, similarly unverifiable touchscreen systems that failed disastrously on November 5 this year during sparsely attended municipal elections in battleground states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania. In both states, failures of the new systems forced some voters to wait for nearly an hour to cast their unverifiable vote. (Imagine how things will go in a large turnout election...say in 2020.)

  Over the holiday weekend, The New York Times finally noticed the disasters for voters in Philadelphia and Northampton County, PA nearly a month ago, where the new touchscreens registered an impossible zero votes for some candidates in certain precincts. The failures left voters and party officials alike wondering what went wrong, and if the numbers ultimately reported by the system actually reflected the intent of the voters. As we've been arguing for some time, it is impossible to know whether results accurately reflect any voter's intent on these systems, even as they are currently (insanely) proliferating in the U.S. ahead of the critical 2020 elections.

• Are you ready for the potential disasters? We offer a few helpful tips on how to try and avoid them. But, otherwise, we hope you'll have at least heard our warnings --- if few from anyone else --- if things go as catastrophically as they well could next year in jurisdictions where voters are not able to vote on hand-marked paper ballots at the polling place.

  (And, once again today, we are forced to detail some of the very simple questions that L.A. County's Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan refuses to answer about the new systems, either on the show in person or even via email.)

• Finally, we open up the phones to some great (and chilling) calls on all of the above...

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