Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Amy Goodman interviews former Marine spokesperson Josh Rushing on Democracy Now about his experiences serving at CENTCOM at the start of the Iraq war. In addition to sending over a Hollywood set designer to build a platform costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Washington sent political operative Jim Wilkinson, who ran the media operation like a political campaign. According to Rushing, Wilkinson is also "credited with coming up with the line about Gore having invented the Internet," had his hand in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" during the 2000 Florida election recount, and was the guy handing George W. the bullhorn at Ground Zero on September 14, 2001.

Sarasota's Herald-Tribune highlights why it's imperative to get election results right on Election Night...

The Congressional challenge is due to problems with touch-screen DRE voting systems in the district which resulted in 18,000 lost votes, in a race certified as having been "won" by the Republican Vern Buchanan over the Democrat Christine Jennings by a 369 vote margin. Even the machine vendor (ES&S)'s own expert in court admitted that Jennings would have most likely won were it not for problems with their touch-screen DRE voting machines during the race.

A recent study of DRE voting systems found that two-thirds of voters didn't bother to check their review screens at the end of the voting process on such systems, and that even if they check them, they do not notice votes that have been flipped by the system. The study concludes that paper trail records, printed out after the review screen on DREs, would similarly not be noticed or checked for accuracy. Those findings confirm earlier results from an MIT/Caltech study which looked at similar issues.

The embarrassments caused by the District 13 race in Florida helped lead the Republican-controlled House and Senate in Florida to finally legislate a ban on DRE touch-screen voting machines altogether.

Supporters of Rush Holt's HR811 Election Reform bill in the U.S. House, however, have said that it's impossible to get a similar ban in the Democratically-controlled House and Senate, so they've refused to add such a ban to their sweeping bill. Those who have made the claim that a DRE ban could never win passage in the Democratically-controlled House and Senate have yet to offer any evidence for that claim, or even offer a single name of a supporter of the bill who would vote against it if it included such a ban.

The bill currently has 216 co-sponsors, although ComputerWorld today confirmed our report from earlier this week that Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) plans to withdraw his co-sponsorship of the bill.

The FL-13 election, meanwhile, was held back in November of 2006. The earliest timetable detailed in the Herald-Trib article, quoted above, would result in a decision on the matter by October of 2007. The Republican Vern Buchanan, who most likely lost the race by nearly everyone's (but his and Sean Hannity's) estimation, continues to vote with the GOP caucus in the House while the Democratic candidate, whom Sarasota voters had tried to send to the U.S. House, bides her time in Florida.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Hapless Democratic strategist Bob Shrum's comments on this morning's Meet The Press are fascinating in their own right but have added resonance considering U.S. House candidate John Russell's Guest Post early today, concerning last November's Florida elections. Shrum believes (and allegedly Gore too) that Gore won Florida and the 2000 election. He also tells an interesting story about Gore joking about Bush getting caught cheating the day before the election. Cheating, elections, Florida, seems like an epidemic.

Guest blogged by John Russell, 2006 Democratic Candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Florida's 5th Congressional District

Just prior to the 1pm start of a recent U.S. House Administration Committee meeting, about which I had received third-hand notification that several contested Congressional elections from 2006 (including my own) were to be brought up and recommended for dismissal, I made several calls to House offices in the vain hope that I might be able to have our Constitutional rights protected and upheld.

Pragmatist that I am, I offered House Administration Committee Counsel, Tom Hicks, my thoughts, hoping that he would bring my concerns to the Committee’s attention. Understanding fully the genesis and context of this meeting --- held without notice to the contestants --- Mr. Hicks was apparently poised to enter one of those smoke-filled rooms we used to hear about.

Apparently, at that point, there was no citing of Constitutional rights convincing enough for this group of rascals to interfere with their plans to “slide our contests under the rug” and hopefully out the doors of Congress. I concluded my voice mail plea not to ignore our Constitutional right to due process by asking Mr. Hicks, “This is still America… is it not?”

The blatant disregard of the Federal Contested Elections Act and the U.S. Constitution by members of Congress exhibited in this meeting is beyond the pale. The Committee members’ audacity is only exceeded by the dearth of factual information regarding policy and political issues provided to the general public by the now defunct Fourth Estate, which has been replaced by the corporate media. As a candidate for federal office, I have now become completely acclimated to the ways and means of the liberally right-wing media in how candidates are at once dismembered, or accordingly contrived, by “The Establishment's” voice...

A number of mainstream news outlets (for a pleasant change) followed up on our report yesterday (full version here, quick summary here) on the SQL Slammer Worm virus which hit Sarasota County's database network on the first day of Early Voting last year, wreaking havoc which disallowed voting for two hours in the now-contest FL-13 U.S. House election between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R). No telling what got into the MSM'ers, but perhaps it's because we ran the story at Computerworld first instead of here at the "dreaded" and "unreliable" blog.

Either way, of the several outlets we found who picked up the story (with more on the way, we're told, and local TV news coverage which we haven't been able to find online), the Brandenton Herald's coverage led the pack in advancing the story which they said "caused a stir Wednesday".

Their report includes a quote from Jennings --- who was named the loser in the race by just 369 votes, despite 18,000 reported undervotes on the county's ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines --- saying "I read the story on the Internet and I was surprised...I need to know more about it. It does bring up some security issues that I think need to be looked at."

Her campaign spokesperson, David Kochman adds, "It makes you wonder what else is there that they haven't done to take care of the machines and protect them."

But Kochman does help answer one very important question we asked in our piece yesterday, about whether or not the county had notified the plaintiff's attorneys about this incident via the discovery process...

Some guy named Brad Friedman has a breaking exclusive over at ComputerWorld on the contested FL-13 election between Christine Jennings (D) and Vern Buchanan (R).

As Friedman's brilliant reportage reveals, previously unreleased documents show that Sarasota County's database network was hit by a viral worm attack on the first day of Early Voting last year. The attack, by a variant of the SQL Slammer Worm, wrought havoc on the system, bringing it to its knees for about two hours on that first afternoon of voting, leaving voters at precincts unable to cast their votes.

Details about further damage which may have occurred during, or in the wake of, the successful hack remain unclear. Whether or not the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines --- which failed to record the selections of some 18,000 voters in the election decided by just 369 votes --- or the central tabulator used in that FL-13 race were directly affected is unknown for certain. The security specialist who filed the incident report, interviewed by Friedman, acknowledges that "it's a possibility," though he believes the damage was contained and didn't spread to the Elections Supervisor's network infrastructure.

Also unclear is whether or not the viral attack and the report which documented it were disclosed in the discovery process to the plaintiff's attorneys who are challenging the election in state court and in the U.S. House. It doesn't seem so.

See more in Friedman's compelling exclusive over there, which includes a PDF of the previously undisclosed incident report describing what happened as the worm slammed an unprotected county server (which had been five years behind in security patch updates), spread throughout the system, breached the firewall, rewrote administrative passwords, and brought voting to a halt in Sarasota on October 23, 2006, the first day of Early Voting. An interestingly timed attack to say the least.

As CW only links to a PDF version of the two-page incident report, we'll be kind enough to include a graphic version of both pages below.

The previously undisclosed two-page incident report, as filed by the Sarasota County network security team, housed in the county's Suncoast Technology Center, follows in full...

The Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections is dubious about the explanation by the apparent vote fraudster, Ann Coulter, that she used her realtor's address on her voter registration application for fear of stalkers, The BRAD BLOG has learned. Further, when the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office closed their investigation into the documented allegations in April, following an unusual call from an FBI agent, the election chief who had brought the complaint to the PBSO was never notified.

"The whole claim of stalkers was very strange to me," Dr. Arthur Anderson, Supervisor of Elections in Palm Beach, told us in a phone call today. He wondered why the claim hadn't come up before now.

"I found it to be rather ironic that no action was ever taken to conceal her location, her home address, etc., until now that this issue has come up," in relation to allegations that she committed a third-degree felony by knowingly using the wrong address on her registration form, and then voting at the wrong precinct as she did in 2006.

Anderson's comments echoed those of Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Gregg P. Miller who told us yesterday that the "stalker" claim sound like "a load of bull." He told us via email that if Coulter "were trying to avoid a stalker, she would not have purchased her house in her own name," and added that she would have used "a trust or an LLC " to avoid exposure for her home address on public records.

On Friday, Palm Beach Post's Jose Lambiet reported that Anderson's requested investigation had been shut down --- failing to even interview Coulter --- after an agent from the FBI Academy's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, VA, contacted the local detective working on the case to instruct her that Coulter's use of a phony address was somehow related to an investigation of his, in which no charges have ever been brought, concerning a "stalker."

Later that day, The BRAD BLOG revealed that the "Special Supervisory Agent" in question, Jim Fitzgerald, seems to have been an ex-boyfriend of Coulter's who may have intervened on her behalf on a number of occassions. His questionable involvement in Coulter's voter fraud case in Palm Beach has spurred an internal investigation, according to the Post.

Anderson also told us that, though the PBSO investigation which began at his request in January had been shut down on April 12, he has never been notified and still has not been sent a copy of their final report.

"Had it not been for someone from the press contacting me, I'd not have known about it," he told us. "I had not heard anything back from the detective that took the case, which is funny since I was told initially that I'd hear back within a few weeks, even for a progress report or something as things moved forward."

"I've still never heard back from them. So to hear they closed the case from someone else is very troubling," he said, adding that he was planning to send the PBSO a letter "to inquire about the reasons for that."

He confirmed comments given to AP on Friday, that, after going through three different law enforcement agencies, and with new election laws recently passed in Florida, it was difficult for him to pursue the case much further. He had previously suggested that his next stop would be the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement if PBSO declined to take on the case.

"Given the new election reform matters that we have to deal with, I'm not inclined to spend much more time on Ms. Coulter," he told us, though he added he was not previously aware of the "FBI boyfriend" angle we reported yesterday and that current issues in the news concerning GOP claims of "voter fraud" could change his thinking.

When we told him about the allegations that the FBI man had been a former lover of Coulter's, Anderson laughed and said, "that figures."...

[Ed Note: Story updated with additional details. Brian Skoloff, of AP's Florida bureau was later revealed as the writer of the article in question. See end of this item for details.]

OATH: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that...All information on this form is true. I understand that if it is not true, I can be convicted of a felony of the third degree and fined up to $5,000 and/or imprisoned for up to five years.
-- Oath signed by Ann Coulter when she fraudulently lied about her address on her Florida Voter Registration Form

AP never fails to fail. Incredible.

Their unbylined report, out this afternoon, is surely good news for Ann Coulter! And we'll bet their headline is currently scrolling by on the Fox "News" and CNN crawls, it's certainly everywhere else. Here's the headline:

We guess the fact that an FBI agent --- who, as we reported earlier today, is apparently her former boyfriend --- interceded inappropriately in the case to claim she was being "stalked" (without evidence apparently) isn't noteworthy enough to include in AP's report.

Neither is the fact that the FBI has begun an internal investigation into the matter, according to the Palm Beach Post this morning.

No, instead, the AP reports --- in an unbylined article! --- Coulter's wet dream headline that she's been "cleared."

And despite the fact that her Loyal Bushie attorney didn't even bother to respond to AP's request for comment, AP passed on his wet dream by reporting completely unsubstantiated horseshit to the effect of: "Her attorney, Marcos Daniel Jimenez, told the detective Coulter may have not changed a previous address because of a stalking incident."

That's a bald-faced lie. Coulter didn't "not change" anything....

The Ann Coulter Voter Fraud case, which we've been covering for more than a year (see our Special Coverage Page here, including her fraudulent Voter Registration Form, the complaint that started it all, and much more) has taken several bizarre twists this morning as Palm Beach Post columnist Jose Lambiet once again steps up with several fresh scoops in the matter, and The BRAD BLOG, who, as of today's article, has now become a corollary in the story, has an exclusive detail or two of our own to offer on the heels of this morning's Post report.

First, Lambiet reports that the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office, which had been investigating the matter, has closed the case after an FBI agent interceded on Coulter's behalf. The PBSO had been investigating Coulter's fraudulent, knowing use of the wrong address on her voter registration form, a third-degree felony, and the fact that she subsequently, knowingly voted at the wrong precinct.

Second, the reason offered by the FBI man for Coulter's use of a phony address on her form --- actually that of her Palm Beach County real estate agent --- was because of claims that she was being "stalked" by a conservative BRAD BLOG guest blogger!

After the FBI intercession, as Lambiet reports, the PBSO investigator shut down the probe "without interviewing Coulter; a Realtor, whose Indian Road address Coulter used [on her fraudulent voter registration form]; or neighbors of Coulter's Seabreeze homestead."

The BRAD BLOG has previously shown that, in fact, Coulter had knowingly lied on her voter registration form, signing next to an "oath" swearing that "All information on this form is true" and that she understood "if it is not true, I can be convicted of a felony of the third degree and fined up to $5,000 and/or imprisoned for up to five years."

Once the issue was reported originally by Lambiet, Coulter went about lying about it to the media and at public appearances, claiming she didn't even live in Florida, as Michelle Pilecki, who picked up on Lambiet's item today, had previously reported at Huffington Post. Nonetheless, property records and other evidence we've published at The BRAD BLOG, including an affidavit from Republican poll worker James Whited, show conclusively that Coulter lied on her voter registration form, and then knowingly committed voter fraud when she voted at the wrong precinct in 2006.

"We stand by our detective's work," a PBSO spokesman told Lambiet in today's report. "Based on the nature of the allegations, she did as much as she could."

But this gets a lot more bizarre, so keep reading...

The BRAD BLOG spoke this morning with the "stalker" in question, as named by Lambiet, longtime Coulter critic, and founder of Citizens for Principled Conservatism, Dan Borchers, who tells us that "Ann Coulter used a false allegation as a 'get out of jail free card'" on her voter fraud charges.

He also tells us something that Lambiet didn't mention in his report: The FBI man in question, Supervisory Special Agent Jim Fitzgerald, was Coulter's former boyfriend!

Lambiet, who spoke with Borchers for his piece, didn't report that allegation, but hinted that something wasn't adding up in Fitzgerald's intercession in the matter. He wonders why an FBI profiler from the FBI Academy's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, VA, "who went after the Unabomber [would] take time from his busy day to even think about a municipal election snafu?"

Fitzgerald wouldn't reply to Lambiet, but he reports that after the Post contacted the bureau for comment on the matter, the FBI "immediately launched an internal review of the agent's involvement."

Anderson and Lambiet aren't the only ones dubious about the FBI's intervention on behalf of Coulter or the excuse that a "stalker" led her to use her realtor's address on her voter registration form....

Rush Holt's Election Reform Bill (HR811) was successfully voted out of the U.S. House Administration Committee today after a four hour mark-up session. We'll have analysis of the bill in the coming days as we are able to review a copy of the final version which is now headed to the House floor. We have been told that electronic balloting on Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen systems will continue to be allowed in the bill.

Apparently, a paper ballot --- one that is actually counted --- for every vote cast in America is of little interest to either the Democratic and Republican members of the committee.

See our Holt Bill Special Coverage Page at https://BradBlog.com/Holt for much more information and action points concerning the bill.

First out of the box to trumpet today's "triumph", naturally, was the bill's top supporter, the public advocacy group, People for the American Way (PFAW). They had a press release good to go before the ink even dried on the dangerous new version of the bill (which, we should add, does include both some improvements to the initial version, along with several watered down provisions as we've been told...but we'll wait until we actually read it before commenting further on any of that.)

For now, however, we have little choice but to characterize the tactics used by PFAW in their press release as despicable, while they continue to knowingly mislead the American people about what the Holt bill will and won't do. (Their press release is posted in full at the end of this article.) This group knows better, and yet, they are doing it anyway.

We can do little else at this point other than to recommend any donors to their organization cease supporting them immediately, and otherwise let them know exactly why. Their dangerous, disingenuous support for this dangerous and disingenuous bill is counter to the best interests of Election Reform and Integrity in America. Worse still, PFAW --- who has openly lobbied in favor of the use of dangerous, disenfranchising, hackable touch-screen DRE systems, claiming they are preferable to paper-based optical-scan systems --- is willing to lie about facts in order to see the bill move forward...

UPDATE 5/8/07 5:45pm PT: The U.S. House Administration Committee voted unanimously to dismiss all of the U.S. House election contests other than the FL-13 Jennings/Buchanan race. More details now here...

The campaign of Clint Curtis (D), the vote-rigging/Tom Feeney whistleblower who challenged Feeney (R-Abramoff) for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24h Congressional district last November, has told The BRAD BLOG that the U.S. House Administrative Committee is set to dismiss Curtis' Congressional contest of the race --- filed under the Federal Contested Elections Act --- when the committee meets on Tuesday morning.

Though they've yet to examine the "hard evidence" the Curtis campaign says they've collected in the matter, the reason for the dismissal, as given to campaign manager, Marty Ward by a Capitol Hill staffer, was "insufficient evidence". Ward says that two different offices have informed the campaign of the committee's plan to dismiss the case tomorrow.

Ward told us tonight, however, that Congress hasn't even seen, much less investigated, the "hard evidence" in the form of sworn affidavits from voters that the campaign's volunteers have collected over the past several months via door-to-door canvassing in the district. The results of that canvass, the campaign says, reveal that Curtis' votes, as tallied on Florida's paperless touch-screen voting systems, were under-reported by anywhere from 12% to 24% per precinct so far canvassed.

Curtis was declared the loser by some 16 points after the election, despite an "Election Eve" Zogby Poll which declared he and Feeney to be in a "statistical dead heat". An 8 point or better misreporting of the true results in the race, they maintain, would have swung the election in Feeney's favor as they believe likely happened.

Ward sent us these thoughts in response to the Democrats plans earlier this evening...

Will the Democrats in the U.S. Congress finally begin to realize their mistake in allowing for DRE touch-screen voting machines now that the Republican Governor of Florida has led the Republican-majority Florida legislature (along with every Democrat in it as well) to do the right thing and move to all paper ballots? Or will U.S. Congressional Dems continue to allow themselves to lose yet another issue that they should be owning?

We'll leave it to the Election Integrity advocates on the ground --- the coalition of GoAllTheWayFlorida.com --- who have worked so long and hard, to give you the great news...

The rest of the News Release is posted here [PDF]...

In still more very good FL news, a U.S. House panel has asked the non-partisan GAO to investigate the contested FL-13 election between Christine Jennings and Vern Buchanan where 18,000 votes disappeared on the DRE touch-screen voting systems in Sarasota.

John Gideon has links to media coverage of both of those events in his Daily Voting News today.

Congratulations, Florida voters! And especially to the tireless patriots down there who have been fighting so hard, for so long! There are still many fights ahead down there before true Election Integrity returns to Florida, but there is no denying that this is an enormous victory. Let's hope it rubs off on the other 49 states...and the U.S. Congress!

In today's Orlando Sentinel, Florida still-unindicted Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) pens an op/ed --- titled "Let me clarify facts about trip" --- in which he speaks about some mysterious trip to Scotland with some unnamed lobbyist.

Since the omissions in the op/ed may not help to fully clarify the facts about his trip as Feeney has intended --- and as a public service to America and those Googling for more information on one of the House's most corrupt GOP congressmen concerning his business relationship with one of the GOP's most corrupt lobbyists --- The BRAD BLOG is happy to reprint Mr. Feeney's op/ed in full below, along with a few words he must have accidentally left out from his attempted clarification; Words such as "Jack Abramoff" and "golf".

So here is Mr. Feeney's complete Sentinel op/ed, as supplemented by our hopefully clarifying additions (in bold)...

50 seconds well spent...Click play on the video at left.

That terrific video is just out from CountAllVotes.com.

The FL House is currently in the throes of either adding poison pills to, or otherwise trying to fend off Gov. Charlie Crist's long-overdue and responsible plan to bring paper ballots to the beleaguered voters of the Sunshine State. His courageous plan would do away with all of the state's horrible, disenfranchising, touch-screen DRE voting machines in time for 2008, something which even Democrats in the U.S. House, so far, have been shamefully afraid to do.

Please go visit the site and take action --- whether you're from Florida or not, you can help their campaign...which will help us all.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Yesterday the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) announced that "Special Circumstances" would require them to hold a public hearing next Tuesday, 1 May in Washington DC. The "Special Circumstances"?

It seems that the state of Florida asked the EAC if they could use funds provided under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to replace their present paperless touch-screen DRE voting systems and someone at the EAC told the state that they didn't think it would be alright for the state to spend their HAVA funds for anything like going to a paper based voting system. But, the EAC representative said that the Commissioners would have to get together and vote on the issue.

So, yesterday the commission announced when that vote would take place; May 1. That's three working days from now. That's three days for the state and the state's very active Election Integrity community to prepare their statements in favor of spending the states own funds for their own voting system.

And, this public meeting that is very important to the state of Florida --- will be convened in Washington DC to ensure that the commissioners make it as hard as possible for anyone to attend and voice their opinions.

The EACs "Sunshine Notice" announcement is for a meeting that is murky and as closed as the EAC can possibly make it without directly violating federal law.