It's been an exhausting day, as a few folks in the world are finally beginning to open their eyes, and realize that not counting ballots, and trusting instead, in error-prone, hackable machines for "faith-based results" doesn't make a lot of sense. Particularly in an election for which nobody --- and I mean nobody --- has come up with a legitimate explanation for the surprising results. Oh, there's been plenty of speculation, but no actual facts. So why it's so difficult for folks to realize that the biggest unknown here --- what the ballots actually said on them --- has gone wholly unexamined in 80% of NH, continues to elude me.

That point eludes Tribune Media Services columnist Bob Koehler too. So I hope you read his eye-opening take on that for Thursday's corporate mainstream papers.

As promised, in my long, and much-updated original piece from last night, first expressing concerns and asking questions about the NH results, folks today have been looking at the precinct numbers to compare the difference between those which "counted" ballots on Diebold op-scan systems (for about 80% of NH's voters), versus those that still hand-count ballots in the Granite State (about 20% of the votes).

Ben Moseley of The Contrarian, most succinctly covers what other folks have found as well today. Namely, a 7 point overall bump for Clinton over Obama where the machines were used instead of hand-counts...

Moseley responsibly notes, however, that there could well be other reasons for Clinton's popularity in areas where Diebold's machines are used, in lieu of actually counting ballots. For example, hand-counting in NH is generally done in the more rural areas and smaller precincts. Perhaps Obama is more popular, or Clinton less, in such areas for any number of reasons.

The comparisons are only anecdotally useful for that reason. However, had the hand-counted results matched up similarly to those in Diebold areas, it might well have been a sign that there was little to worry about. (Even if I personally think not counting ballots is always something to worry about. But that's just me, one of those whacky pro-Democracy fellers, I guess.)

Moseley a blogger and political science student from American University, writes about Clinton's Diebold bump: "Does this show election fraud? Right now I'm not sure, but the possibility definitely remains and must not be taken off the table."

Then, in two updates, he offers a coupla more eye-brow raisers...

Does the Secretary of State of New Hampshire have any idea that a key executive in the private firm that programs and "counts" 80% of the state's ballots on hackable, error-prone Diebold voting machines is a convicted narcotics trafficker?

In 1990, Ken Hajjar, the Director of Sales and Marketing for LHS Associates, and childhood friend of company owner John Silvestro, was arrested and pled guilty to charges of "Sale/CND" (Sale of Controlled Narcotics/Drugs) which earned him a 12 month sentence, according to documents received via a public records request and posted this evening at BlackBoxVoting.org.

LHS Associates, as BBV's Bev Harris points out, programs "every single voting machine in New Hampshire, Connecticut, almost all of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine."

Hajjar himself is also the the guy who showed up in BRAD BLOG comments, at one point last summer, to let us know we are "totally full of shit" and "deluded...paranoid...looney idealogues" to boot. Well, maybe. But at least we don't have a secret felony conviction, even while owning almost complete control over every vote cast and "counted" in New England.

The newly-revealed felon's impolitic rant here earned him the boot from the Secretary of State of Connecticut, where he is now barred from working, as guest blogger Dori Smith pointed out in another BRAD BLOG story last November, detailing the horrors that are LHS Associates, Silvestro and Hajjar.

When Smith asked Hajjar about his admission that he and his company regularly replace voting machine memory cards (the keys to the kingdom!) at will, in the middle of elections, he told her, "I mean, I don't pay attention to every little law."

We'll say!

Go check out Harris' new article tonight, which includes more details and the arrest record --- along with the note that "until recently, LHS employees were listed on the company Web site. Now the pages identifying who programs New England voting machines have been taken down."

Now ya know why.

Even if you still don't know who actually won the New Hampshire Primary.

(What say we actually count the ballots and put the questions to rest? Just sayin'...)

For good measure, we'll also post again below the rare video footage of Silvestro, along with the first-hand BBV footage of the infamous and stunning Leon County, FL hack of a Diebold optical-scan machine --- the very same ones used across NH on Tuesday --- and the one originally seen in HBO's Emmy-nominated Hacking Democracy...

Syndicated Tribune Media Services columnist Bob Koehler bumps up our serious concerns about last night's wholly untransparent, and still-uncounted (by anything but a hackable Diebold computer, and a company with an executive criminal past, to say the least) New Hampshire Primary election results, from "blogger conspiracy theory" to mainstream media concern.

Here are the first few grafs of his column, set to run in tomorrow's editions of subscribing mainstream media papers...

The rest of the column is just as good, in which he discusses the MSM's "inability to incorporate news of ongoing voting-machine insecurity into actual election coverage."

Full column now posted here...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Neil Cavuto wonders why "we put a lot of stock" into exit polls when pollsters "get it wrong a lot." Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway agrees that we put "too much stock" in exit polls. Conway goes on to blame the media, "who are running their own polls" and reminds viewers that, "these are the same media who ran polls in 2000 on election night declaring Al Gore the winner, 2004 declaring John Kerry the winner according to exit polls and here we are again." And even though she claims to be a pollster, Conway strangely adds that, "exit polling is not scientific. It's illustrative. It's fun."

Finally the conversation turns to the question of race in exit polling where, according to Conway, "people use pollster to lie to themselves". The reason for this is that people like to "make themselves sound more progressive".

[UPDATED several times at end of article, and still developing with new updates...]

I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight.

What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.

Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy. See the previous report, as I recommend, which also includes a video of that hack, and footage of the guy who runs LHS Associates.

That said, the the pre-election pollster's numbers (NOTE: that's not Exit Polls, but Pre-Election Polls!) were dead-on, for the most part, on the Republican side, as well as on the Democratic side. Except in the do-or-die (for Hillary) Clinton v. Obama race. I'm watching MSNBC right now, and they all seem to agree that the results, for the moment, defy explanation.

I concur.

Here's a screenshot of a round up of all of the latest polls from RealClearPolitics.com tonight, and more, to get an idea of the serious concerns here...

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

Our Spidey-sense started tingling before going to bed last night and hearing reports, on MSNBC, that there were 17 paper ballots cast in Dixville Notch, NH, in its midnight, first-in-the-country voting. The report said that there were only 16 registered voters in the tiny voting precinct, yet 17 votes had been cast --- suggesting that somehow, paper ballot "voter fraud" skullduggery was afoot.

Following on that, reports throughout the day appeared that NH precincts were out of paper ballots, and voters were unable to vote.

Trouble is, both reports are either completely untrue, or wholly misleading, or both, as The BRAD BLOG was able to confirm with two simple phone calls.

Each of those reports, however, would seem to go a long way towards giving the impression that paper ballots are a bad idea, and that "voter fraud" is easy to commit when using them. Given that one of those reports seems to have begun on The DRUDGE REPORT earlier today, we're not particularly surprised that the MSM kept repeating the easily-debunked stories running all day.

That, even while there are reasons to be concerned about how the paper ballots used in the New Hampshire Primary will actually be counted by the hackable Diebold optical-scan systems used in the state, as controlled and programmed by an outrageously bad private contractor there...

Ron Paul says his exclusion from last night's debate on Fox "News" is an "awful embarrassment" for the Republican propaganda outlet.

The Republican Presidential candidate points out, during an interview this morning on CNN, that he received 10% of the vote in Iowa, where he finished well ahead of Rudy Giuliani --- who was allowed to participate in the Fox debate --- and that he's beating him "2 to 1" currently in New Hampshire. As well, Paul points out that his campaign has "raised more money than any other Republican candidate in the last quarter."

He also notes both the impossible and the obvious in a single sentence when he charges: "I think they're making a mockery of the whole situation...because they've lost all credibility."

Fox claims their criteria on deciding who would participate in the New Hampshire debate was based on who was receiving at least 10% in the national polls. RAW STORY has the story and video.

Paul supporters are seen in this video, chasing Fox "News" and ABC radio propagandist Sean Hannity down the street last night in New Hampshire, chanting "Fox News sucks" and yelling reminders to the Republican party mouthpiece that he is not, in fact, as his fans would otherwise claim, "a great American."

Similarly, Democratic candidate Dennis Kucinich was not allowed to participate in Sunday's (capital "D") Democratic debate on ABC. The Ohio Congressman is filing a complaint with the FCC, which points out, among other things, that the Disney-owned network is "violating its obligation to operate in the public interest," and that he "is the only Democratic presidential candidate who has qualified for Federal matching funds who is being excluded by ABC."

Meanwhile American democracy (small "d") gently weeps.

BushWorld "Reality", meet Tipping Point.

As we head into the holidays (just past O'Reilly's "nine days of Hanukkah"), the wheels continue to come off, if still maddeningly slower than they should, in one case of White House/RNC corruption and/or fraud after another. We used to be able to keep up with the bulk of it. But no more. We throw in the towel, as developments and new cases are now coming faster than Executive Branch officials can declare a suddenly-discovered need to 'spend more time with their families'.

In matters of Election Fraud, a particular specialty of The BRAD BLOG, the under-reported pickings, from which we previously had to choose, were mighty, but slim enough that we could at least touch (if not a great deal more) on most of them.

But no more. And thankfully, of course. Even if it's a bit frustrating not to be able to bring you every step, in every case, as they are now coming fast and furious across the nation.

Several such cases, of what clearly are of enormous import, of late, have received some good coverage elsewhere --- for a welcome change. So we take some solace in that, at least, even if we don't have the resources to keep up with all of them, much less advance them a few steps ourselves, as we always prefer.

But we should at least touch on a couple of them, a bit, for the historical record, here at America's Election Fraud Authority, The BRAD BLOG. Please read on for some pointers to two emerging and mind-blowing stories of apparently rigged elections, that you may, or may not, have read about yet.

Seriously, read on...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In the latest CNN/WMUR poll of likely voters in the New Hampshire primary, Fred Thompson has dropped to sixth place behind both Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee.

Thompson has lagged behind the frontrunners since he entered the race in September. But in this latest poll, his support in New Hampshire dropped from 13 percent in the September poll to 4 percent now.

Ron Paul has doubled his support from 4 percent to 8 percent since September. Mike Huckabee has 5 percent.

Mitt Romney, who was governor of next-door Massachusetts, is in the lead with 33 percent, up from 25 percent in September. John McCain's 18 percent support is unchanged. Rudolph Giuliani is in third place with 16 percent --- an eight percentage point drop since September.

Blogged by Brad from the road...

New Hampshire Election Integrity advocates bird-dogged the prospective Presidential Candidate and co-author of the disastrous Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT), a couple of weeks ago concerning the failures of that bill. The short video follows.

We hope other folks will do same with Presidential Candidates from any and all parties and share their video tapes of responses. One of the things we learned in Arizona from Ted Downing, the chair of the Election Integrity Committee of the state's Democratic Party (the only state party in the union to have such a committee!), is that he plans to ask each and every Presidential Candidate to appoint an Election Integrity "Cabinet Member" to their campaign staff. We'll try to report back if and when any of those candidates take him up on that.

(Links to my radio interview with Downing and others in Arizona while Guest Hosting Mike Malloy and Peter B. Collin's shows are right here.)

We'll just add one comment in reply to the below video for the moment: Mr. Dodd, the system has not been "improved since 2000." It is far far worse.

(Hat-tip Nancy Tobi and the folks at Democracy for New Hampshire)

John Aravosis over at AMERICAblog reports the dirty tricks are spreading. Note: The fake robo-calls reported here are distinct from the GOP phone-calls reported here by John Gideon, in New Mexico attempting to disinform Hispanic voters that their polling place had "changed"...

More on the Phone-Jamming charges against (so-far) Republican officials. The matter now seems to be reaching into the White House as reported by AP:

Read the full story for many more details, but it should be noted that the White House hired Tobin to work their North-Eastern regional campaign in 2004 even after they already knew he was under investigation for the 2002 charges. He was only asked to leave his '04 post once the reports of the '02 investigation became public knowledge.

(Hat tip to RAW STORY.)