Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

In an article this morning from the St Petersburgh (FL) Times the reporters report that Diebold/Premier voting systems failed to work properly in Hillsborough County.

They report:

However, Florida Today reports that Brevard County had problems with their Diebold voting machines and this problem is recurring...

Guest Blogged by Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us...

Velvet Revolution - co-founded by Brad Friedman - today launched its newest campaign at StandingForVoters.org, calling on candidates across the country to pledge to challenge elections when necessary.

"This election, let's make democracy the winner!" the Standing For Voters site proclaims. Readers of The BRAD BLOG know that's quite a stretch, that we're a long way from having a true democracy in this country. Yet challenges by candidates --- before, during and after the elections --- could be an important step in the right direction. In many situations, only candidates have standing to challenge elections.

StandingForVoters.org is primarily directed towards candidates themselves and serves to educate them about election integrity issues, types of election challenges, and recent history of candidates who challenged elections. Voters are encouraged to participate by finding candidates who will pledge; tips about how to do this are provided on the site, including:

The first two candidates to sign the site's more robust pledge, "The Super Pledge," are no strangers to election integrity issues. Ellen Brodsky, candidate for Supervisor of Elections in notorious Broward County, Florida is a long-time election integrity advocate, founding Broward Election Reform Coalition. Brodsky was thrilled to pledge, saying, "You can count on me to speak about fair, accurate and transparent elections in every breath I take."...

Blogged quickly from the road by Brad Friedman...

If folks in Florida's 24th Congressional district don't dump this sleaze bucket (presuming he's not tossed in jail first for his involvement with Jack Abramoff, for which he's under FBI investigation), I can't even imagine what they'd be thinking,

Orlando Sentinel details the robocalls the slimy Rep. Tom Feeney is now making in favor of Democrat Clint Curtis, the software programmer who has sworn on video to a congressional panel, via affidavit, and polygraph test, that Feeney asked him to create vote-rigging software in 2000. Curtis is running against the Democratic party's hand-picked wealthy millionaire Suzanne Kosmas --- whom Curtis regards as "Republican light" --- in next week's primary in Florida.

Here's most of the 30-second robocall, as posted by the Sentinel, in which a Feeney volunteer endorses Curtis on behalf of Feeney's filthy campaign...

Just when you think he's hit rock-bottom, it turns out there is no dirty trick too unseemly for Feeney. Can there be any more question about Curtis' claims about him? What wouldn't Feeney do to try and gain an advantage in an election? Gaming the system again. As ever. (As he also did when Curtis ran against him in '06). What an appalling little --- very little --- figure of a man.

Apropos of our article on Friday describing the "Rovian dirty tricks" that FL-24 Congressional candidate, Clint Curtis, alleges his primary opponent, former State Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, has been using to mislead local voters an article in today's DeLand-Deltona Beacon highlights again Curtis' criticism of his opponent as no more than a Democrat In Name Only (DINO).

"Running as a Democrat." A telling phrase, that.

While Kosmas claims to be against the war, it turns out she co-sponsored a resolution, adopted on March 21, 2003, while in the Florida legislature that pledged "support of President Bush in his stand against Saddam Hussein".

Unfortunately, Kosmas isn't the only hand-picked Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) candidate being put up this year almost solely on the basis of the DCCC's short-sighted conjecture that they can win in a previously "red" district because the candidate either has lots of their own money, or is damned-near a Republican.

Curtis, the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA)-endorsed candidate, has been courageously opposing head-on the hopelessly corrupt Republican incumbent Tom Feeney for years. (See this clip from Uncounted to get an idea, or this BRAD BLOG Special Coverage page.) Yet, he's been fighting an uphill battle trying to raise money to defeat the DCCC's candidate, the wealthy real estate developer, Kosmas, ever since he told them he'd vote with his constituents who put him in office, rather than as per the directives of Nancy Pelosi.

Yesterday, our buddy Howie Klein - who knows more about on-the-ground politics and the real positions of Congressional candidates than anyone we know --- decimated the DCCC for their drive to put "Democrats" in office, at any cost. The "Stalinist" effort, as he describes it, to put such candidates as Kosmas in office (whether or not they end up voting with Republicans more often than Democrats!) has been the basis of the DCCC's "Red to Blue" program launched under the previous DCCC chair Rep. Rahm Emanuel and still in play under its new chair, Chris Van Hollen....

[UPDATED: Florida Democratic Party responds to this report. See bottom of article for details.]

A Democratic candidate running in a contested primary for the U.S. House seat representing Florida's 24th Congressional District has filed an official complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), alleging that his opponent has been making illegal and deceptive campaign calls from within the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) offices, on party phone lines.

In a statement sent to The BRAD BLOG blasting his opponent, Clint Curtis described the tactics being used by the Suzanne Kosmas campaign as "the worst example of Rovian dirty tricks."

Curtis, a Florida computer programmer turned well-known vote-rigging/anti-corruption whistleblower (see BRAD BLOG's years-long coverage of Curtis here) has filed a complaint charging that paid campaign staffers for his opponent in the August 26th Democratic Primary, former state Rep. Kosmas, "have been contacting Democratic primary election voters and fraudulently identifying themselves as calling on behalf of the Florida Democratic Party," according to the campaign's press release.

"The callers then go on to solicit votes for Kosmas in the Aug. 26 Democratic primary," the Curtis camp alleges.

The press release is posted in full at the end of this article, with a link to download the complete FEC complaint. Also at the end of the article is the full text of an email sent to Curtis and campaign manager Jerry Halberg, from a Curtis campaign staffer who also serves as a local Florida precinct captain. The precinct captain claims to have received one of the deceptive phone calls.

The email notes that the Caller ID recorded showed the call as having come from "KOSMAS FOR CONG" with the phone number 407-365-7808. A call made by The BRAD BLOG to that number this afternoon, was answered by someone identifying the number as belonging to "The Campaign for Florida of the Florida Democratic Party."

The Curtis campaign press release, issued yesterday, details the main points of Curtis' complaint to the FEC:

"The unlawful calls continued even after the Kosmas campaign was notified of the problem," the release continues, with Curtis adding, "Her campaign was given the opportunity to rectify the violations prior to the submission of FEC charges but apparently chose not to."

The Curtis campaign says photos taken of the Democratic Party offices in Oviedo reveal how the evidence of FDP support for Kosmas was "scrubbed" after they complained. Photos said to have been taken on July 31, before Curtis complained to both the FDP and the Kosmas camp, show campaign signs for Kosmas plastered throughout the local Democratic Party facility. After the initial complaints on Aug 3rd, as the following photos purport to show, the signs were removed...

-- Brad Friedman

I had the opportunity to ask an important question of both the legendary Leon County (Tallahassee), FL, Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho, and Los Angeles County's no-longer-interim Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, last week here in Los Angeles.

Readers of The BRAD BLOG will remember Logan from his poor showing, as acting Registrar, in the handling of L.A.'s Super Tuesday "Double Bubble" ballot debacle, in which at least 12,000 mostly-perfectly-countable votes from the Democratic Primary went completely uncounted, as well as his handling of the failure I encountered myself, in the more recent state primary in June, when four of my own votes were printed incorrectly by the county's ES&S electronic voting system.

Sancho was in town for press avails, in advance of the opening of Dorothy Fadiman's new documentary Stealing America: Vote-by-Vote (opening for week-long runs in NYC on Aug 1st, and in L.A. on Aug 15th - DISCLOSURE: I appear briefly in the film). Logan, to his credit, was kind enough to show up, with his deputy Peter McNamara, for a screening of the film held by PDA last Thursday.

After the screening, Sancho, a compelling presence in Fadiman's film, as he was in HBO's landmark 2006 documentary, Hacking Democracy, answered questions, and the activists in the crowd managed to shoehorn Logan onto the stage to speak to a number of local concerns as well.

I took the opportunity to ask a few questions of both men, as captured by Alan Breslauer, with answers, on the video posted at the end of this article.

Of most important note, I wanted to know if either of them would commit to a hand-count of ballots in a handful of precincts this November, on an experimental basis, on Election Night. The count, in such a "pilot program" as I described it, needn't be the official count, but could later be compared to the results as reported by both counties' optical-scanners, since both L.A. and Leon County use paper ballots for their non-disabled voters.

As I've advocated to a few other election officials in the past, hand-counting in this small, experimental way would help us all to begin to compile data about the effectiveness --- or even, lack thereof --- of transparent, polling-place based HCPB (Hand-Counted Paper Ballots) on Election Night, as many Election Integrity advocates have called for...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The McCain campaign's Alabama chairman, Attorney General Troy King, the virulent homophobe who is the subject of rumors that his wife discovered him having sex with another man, was a client of Strategum USA, the consulting firm of Ralph Gonzalez, a closeted gay GOP political operative who was killed last summer in a double murder-suicide in his home in Orlando.

Gonzalez was also the one-time campaign manager/consultant for Florida's hard-right, scandal-plagued 24th Congressional District U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney whose close ties to disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and involvement in an alleged electronic vote-rigging conspiracy have been reported extensively for years by The BRAD BLOG.

Last Friday, the McCain campaign quickly scrubbed all references to King from its website without offering a public reason.

The August 27, 2007 Birmingham News report of the murder-suicide which took Gonzalez' life, discussed the consultant's work for King in Alabama...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.
Drilling off the coast of California, Florida and elsewhere would increase domestic oil production by 7 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration. But “because oil prices are determined on the international market…any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.” There is no short-term benefit to drilling, says the EIA, because it would take at least five years for oil production to begin. (Source: Center for American Progress.)

On the other hand, in a single step tomorrow --- closing the Enron Loophole --- Congress and George Bush could create an overnight drop in oil prices of between 25 and 50 percent. This is according to testimony before a Senate Committee two weeks ago by Michael Greenberger, the former director of Trading & Markets for the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC), the government board that oversees commodities markets.

"Yes," Greenberger testified, "overnight [closing the Enron Loophole] will bring down the price of crude oil to get at least a 25 percent drop in the cost of oil and a corresponding drop in the cost of gasoline. Some people estimate 50 percent."

Greenberger's testimony was brought to light by an investigation into the Enron Loophole by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown" last week. (A transcript of Olbermann's report follows.)

The Enron Loophole is the nickname for a provision written into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 that was drafted by lobbyists for Enron and inserted in the bill by then Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) that deregulated an aspect of the market Enron sought to exploit with its "Enron On-Line" trading program, the first Internet-based commodities transaction system. Phil Gramm is now a key economic adviser for the John McCain campaign.

While it was a technical success, Enron On-Line was based on a flawed business model that drained corporate revenues --- even while the company was manipulating the rates consumers paid for electricity in California. Enron On-Line eventually drove the company into bankruptcy, and the cooking of the books to hide its losses led to charges of conspiracy and fraud against Enron executives.

The Republicans' sudden rollout of the campaign to lift the ban on offshore drilling is really meant to shift the blame from Bush and the GOP to the Democrats and their opposition to offshore drilling. To their credit, they have done a masterful job --- and all it has cost them is the credibility of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who broke tradition in the state and came out in favor of lifting the ban. (It has also cost whatever meager credibility Crist's predecessor, Jeb Bush, had left. Bush opposed lifting the ban when he was in office but came out wholeheartedly in favor of it this weekend.)

*

Here's the transcript of the video of the report on the June 18 edition of "Countdown":

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

There is good news for the campaign of Barack Obama in polls from states that are traditionally keys to winning the general election. However, it is too soon to tell if the upticks are indicators of a trend toward Obama or simply "bumps" resulting from his finally clinching the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton.

Quinnipiac Polls in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania released Wednesday indicate that Barack Obama leads John McCain in all three battleground states...

While the conspiracy theorists at Fox "News" ramp up their "special investigation" into the exceedingly rare crime of voter fraud, misleading their viewers before the upcoming election with breathless reports of "illegal immigrants" and "people who are not even citizens voting for whomever they want" in order to "sway an election," I thought it might be useful to publish the complete cover-story, detailing Ann Coulter's no-uncertain-terms felony voter fraud, as it was published in the recent exposé I wrote for Hustler magazine.

Up until now, the story --- along with complete documentation, such as the voter registration form on which she purposely lied and the evidence proving she knowingly voted in the wrong location --- has been told piece-meal in smaller stories as the scandal unfolded over the last two years (all indexed in full here.)

But, with Fox "News" requesting tips via their special VoterFraud@foxnews.com address, I thought it might be nice to help them out by publishing, for the first time online, the entire story of Coulter's purposeful voter fraud: What she did, how she publicly used Fox and other media to lie about it, and how she's gotten away with her several felonies and at least one misdemeanor...so far.

Hopefully the crime fighters at Fox will help enforce the rule of law, and bring this documented fugitive to justice once and for all! Especially since, as you'll see in the following story, she used the network's own airwaves to lie to Alan Colmes and others. Please do your civic duty and let them know!

Download the PDF version, as published in the magazine, or read the full story, with helpful links added, online below...

From the St. Petersburg Times...

And yet, we're often told by voting machine companies that viruses can't get into these systems. Then there are the election officials who have bought into these systems, yet know nothing about them, who respond to the public and the media as if they do, regularly making ridiculous claims that such problems can't happen because "at no time are our systems connected to the Internet."

Whether they are or aren't, it's an absurd response. Malicious software can get into the system any number of ways, via non-Internet networking, USB thumb drives, etc. It can then undedectably affect an election without detection.

In the Summer of 2006, after my organization, VelvetRevolution.us, was given a Diebold touch-screen system from an insider source, we loaned it to Prinecton for testing and they were able to insert a vote-flipping virus via the memory card which could pass itself from machine to machine and flip an entire election without detection.

And, of course, on the first day of Early Voting in the now-infamous FL-13 Congressional race in 2006 where 18,000 votes mysteriously and still-inexplicably disappeared, a malicious viral worm took down a key part of the network infrastructure on which the registration system ran, grinding voting to a halt that day.

Similarly, exclusively reported thereafter, the scientists who studied the ES&S voting machines used in that FL-13 election discovered that the ES&S touchscreen systems --- used in some 16 different states --- were also vulnerable to the same type of virus that Prinecton was able to insert into the Diebold machines. To this day, despite being told about it by the scientists who discovered the problem, the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) refuses to warn jurisdictions that use the same machine model about its vulnerability, even though it was described as potentially even more serious than the one discovered in the Diebold systems.

Other than that, everything's fine. Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

How easy is it to enter any election results you want into the Diebold central tabulator? When you use Diebold's "Manual Override" option, it's exactly this easy...

The video above was shot on the night of the recent Primary at the election headquarters in Florida's Sarasota County, home of the infamous 2006 13th Congressional District where 18,000 votes disappeared on ES&S iVotronic touch-screens in an election decided by a 369 vote margin. The county now uses Diebold's paper-based optical-scan system, which failed to work as it was supposed to on Election Night. So, as seen in the above, the county election staff used Diebold's "Manual Override" to enter voting results into the tabulator with none of the party observers or board of election commissioners bothering to watch.

Kudos to one of Florida's Election Integrity citizen activist/video heroes, Jeannie Dean, for shooting and compiling the above.

Please note her advice tips, at the end of the video, instructing how you can similarly help out big time this November!

Our friends at GoLeft.TV and RAW STORY have picked up on our call from late last week to help the folks out at Fox "News" by letting them know about Ann Coulter's voter fraud. Last week, Fox asked viewers for help in their "voter fraud special investigation."

Be sure to let them know about Coulter's several felony acts down in Palm Beach County, Florida, (well-documented at the link above) by writing to them at their super-special tipster address: VoterFraud@FoxNews.com.

GoLeft's coverage of the story follows (1:45 mins), with a kind nod to The BRAD BLOG, as they join our call to action...

From their coverage:

Last week's entire "RAW REPLAY" can be seen in full, with transcript, right here...

I should say first off I don't have a dog in the hunt. I support neither Obama nor Clinton in this nomination race and couldn't tell you now whether I'd vote for either of them next November. I've stated long ago that both of those candidates have plenty of supporters, so I'll be supporting the voters this year, since they don't have nearly enough support.

With that said, this morning's meeting in the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee (RBC) has been an interesting one to watch. All sides in the unfortunate matters of fighting over how to seat (or not) the delegations from Florida and Michigan at this year's national convention have argued smartly for their various cases.

But where the DNC's RBC is concerned --- no matter which candidate the various members of the committee may already be on record as supporting in general --- there should be only one consideration in their ultimate decision: what will be best for the party itself and whichever candidate ends up being their nominee.

Everyone at today's meeting spoke in general consensus that party unity is key. If that's truly their belief, then every side in the dispute needs to place unification first as the top priority for any final rulings on whether and how to seat the MI and FL delegations at the Democratic Convention.

To that end, the version for those with short attention spans: The party must agree to the Florida compromise which nets a 19 delegate advantage for Clinton while giving delegates at the convention a 50% vote. They must also agree to the Michigan state party's compromise of awarding the Michigan delegates 69/59 in Clinton's favor with a 50% vote at the convention.

And while it's not necessarily germane to the decisions being made by the DNC RBC today, Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida should be made Barack Obama's Vice Presidential nominee.

For the longer explanation of the above, please read on...

What's a Grand Ol' Party to do when they wish to disenfranchise Democratic voters via the specious specter of "voter fraud" when they can't actually find any evidence to make their case? Why, call their media wing at Fox "News" of course!

Fox picks up today where the DoJ and Republican Party have had no luck so far, but not for lack of trying. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, publicize 'em, and make it sound like you're beating 'em, at least.

David Edwards and Muriel Kane report at RAW STORY today that Fox is running a "special investigation" into non-citizens throwing elections:

RAW has the amusing video from this morning as well.

Well, you heard 'em, kids. Fox is looking for voter fraud! Feel free to email them this link: https://bradblog.com/CoulterFraud documenting the no-uncertain-terms case of Ann Coulter having committed voter fraud in Palm Beach County, Florida!

Fox would love to hear from you at: voterfraud@foxnews.com. Feel free to let 'em know I sent you, in case they have any further questions. I'll be happy to speak to them, and help 'em root out those voter fraud criminals!

BTW, Fox & Friends, at least, already knows about Coulter's voter fraud, since they called me last year to ask me to appear on their morning show to talk about it after Liz Smith ran an item on the matter in Murdoch's NY Post pointing to BRAD BLOG's coverage...