Apparently, they never learn. Or they just don't care.

It's Primary Election day in Alaska today, with voters heading to the polls to cast mostly paper ballots for U.S. House of Representative candidates, state House and Senate candidates and two ballot measures (one concerning property taxes and another concerning new Alaska Coastal Management Program standards for the review of projects in coastal areas.)

While turnout is expected to be low, at least the Diebold optical-scan machines are fully rested and ready to go after their lengthy "sleepovers" at poll workers' houses in the days prior to today's elections! Yes, the state of Alaska still sends their incredibly vulnerable Diebold optical-scan systems home with poll workers days before the election, where they can do whatever they like with them, so they can bring them to the polls on the morning of Election Day.

For example, here's a photo of one of those machines that will be in use today, as obtained from an Alaskan source over the weekend by The BRAD BLOG. The machine appears as if it has received a full going over at the workshop of one of the poll workers who enjoyed the time spent with their machine during the several days of "sleepover" over the past week...

Alaska, like some 24 states across the country, still uses the exact same system which was used to flip an entire mock election in Leon County, FL in such a way that only a manual hand-count of the paper ballots would have revealed that the results had been reversed after the machine's memory card was accessed and manipulated by a computer security expert. The haunting event was revealed in the climactic final scene of HBO's Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy. [The full scene is also embedded below.]

The photo above from an Alaskan poll worker is the same system seen being hacked in Leon County, FL in the HBO film. The only difference is that Diebold removed their name from many machines afterward, given the hit their company took when their then CEO promised to deliver the state of Ohio to George W. Bush in a Republican fund raising letter before the 2004 election.

Of course, there are "tamper-evident" security seals placed over some of the most vulnerable parts of the optical-scan systems, and those could never be defeated without leaving visual clues behind, right?

Well, funny thing. In Alaska, when a security seal is discovered broken on their tabulation computers --- if they are discovered broken --- poll workers are instructed to simply replace it with another one and start the voting, as both several poll workers, as well as an Alaska election official (who has now been fired) confirmed with The BRAD BLOG. Several seals, the now former Alaska election official told us when she still had a job, are provided to poll workers to make replacing broken seals very simple, as seen in this next photo...

Late last week, Scott Keyes at ThinkProgess reported on a "Majority Victory for Voting Rights Advocates as California Legislature Approves Election Day Registration".

The new EDR law, which is, as Keyes reports, "on the cusp of passing", is expected to be signed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and would, indeed, be a victory for voters in the Golden State.

According to the NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, "Election Day registration boosts turnout by approximately 5–7 points in those states that allow eligible citizens to register on Election Day --- with a decreased dependence on provisional ballots and without any reported increase in voter fraud."

If passed and signed as expected, however, the law --- a welcome expansion to the franchise amidst recent draconian Republican efforts to restrict voting rights --- would not take effect until 2015 or later, according to Dean Logan, the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk for Los Angeles County, the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation.

"The bill's implementation is tied to completion of the Vote Cal statewide voter registration database; which is a ways off," he told The BRAD BLOG on Friday. Logan says he is "Generally...supportive of the bill and to expanding access and options for voters," though he notes that "L.A. County has not taken a formal position on it."

While the new law will, no doubt, be a net plus for voters here in California, and for the pro-democracy movement across the country over all, there are a few other issues with the way the law has been written which might make it slightly less of a plus for voters than apparent at first blush, as Logan helped us to understand...

Welcome to our newest affiliate partners, The Shannyn Moore Show --as heard on Fox News Talk Radio(!) KOAN am1020 and 95.5 FM in Anchorage, Alaska and on We Act Radio, WPWC 1480am in Washington D.C.!

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: It's official: Worst. Fire Season. Ever.; Rep. Todd Akin is not the only anti-science Republican in the US House; More industrial farming animal abuse; China ventures into the unfrozen Arctic; PLUS: Brain-eating amoebas thriving in Oklahoma ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Record radiation found in Fukushima fish; US court strikes down new EPA pollution rules; Chevron refinery fire was 'a close call'; India blackout and the costs of air conditioning; Agriculture is a major water pollution culprit; Shell inks $1b deal to frack in China ... PLUS: Keystone XL construction begins: 'When This Oil Spills, It's 'A Whole New Monster' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

California’s Proposition 32 --- the so-called "Paycheck Protection" Initiative --- is nothing less than a cynical attempt by "the one percent" to manipulate the revulsion now felt by "the 99 percent" towards the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United ruling in order to solidify the ability of corporate wealth and power to destroy any semblance of government of, for or by the people.

The text of the initiative, set for this November's ballot in the Golden State, reads as follows:

In a video decrying the ballot measure, the "No on 32: Stop the Special Exemptions Act" campaign, describe it as "Miracle-Grow for...billionaires and their super PACs"...

The initiative was drafted by the Lincoln Club of Orange County --- the same group of right-wing mega millionaires and billionaires whose political hit piece, Hillary: The Movie became the centerpiece of the Citizens United ruling and the ensuing, democracy-destroying flood of dark money into our political system. Its top "$50,000 and over" donors represent a list of the state's wealthiest corporatist Republicans.

Although corporations enjoy a 15-to-1 advantage in political donations over organized labor, according to Open Secrets.org, CA's Prop 32 lumps these two very different forms of organizations under the same "special interest" umbrella.

Under the guise of ending the corrupting influence of "special interest" monies, Proposition 32's wealthy backers seek to eliminate the ability of organized labor to fund campaign ads for political candidates that would otherwise compete with the dominant corporate message, while providing loopholes that are large enough for "the one percent" to haul a trainload of politically corrupting gold bullion from Ft. Knox to Sacramento...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Romney's Veep Ryan no friend of clean energy; Obama announces emergency assistance for drought-stricken farmers; New drilling plans for Alaska's Nat'l Petroleum Reserve - now with Improved Environmental Protection!; PLUS: Shell Oil crashes into the Iceberg of Irony in the Arctic... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate change will bring more severe US droughts; Methane leaks from fracking worse than thought; As coal sinks, renewables soar; CA gov smacks down climate deniers with new website; Drought looms in India ... PLUS: Mutant butterflies found in Fukushima ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Given disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction laws Republicans have enacted in nearly a dozen states over the past year, you'd think there was an epidemic of Democratic "voter fraud" in this nation. That's certainly the way the GOP has framed it, fooled the corporate mainstream media into reporting it, and even scammed the White House and Congressional Democrats into going along with it when they signed legislation that defunded ACORN, a four-decade old community organization never found to have committed voter fraud, or even helped to see a single fraudulent vote cast in any election anywhere.

As it turns out, not only is there no such epidemic of Democratic voter fraud, but the opposite is true. Over the past year, very high profile Republicans --- including this year's presumed standard bearer, Mitt Romney; the Sec. of State of Indiana (the first state to institute polling place Photo ID restrictions) Charlie White; one time GOP front-runner Newt Gingrich; MO's new GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate Todd Akin; and the group hired by the Sacramento, CA Republican Party to collect voter registrations this year for Rep. Dan Lungren; among others (all detailed below) --- have each been revealed as having committed or participated in election fraud --- both voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud --- in state after state.

One might even call it "an epidemic". Or, if you prefer, "one of the greatest frauds in voter history, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy," as then GOP Presidential nominee John McCain described what Republicans pretended ACORN was doing back in 2008 (just before it was revealed he had previously been the group's keynote speaker where he told ACORN's members they were "what makes America special.")

So really, should we be surprised to learn that four aides to former long-shot GOP Presidential candidate and U.S. House Rep. Thaddeus McCotter --- Representative of the state's 11th and one of its most Republican districts --- were indicted yesterday on dozens of criminal felony and misdemeanor election fraud charges for having turned in over 1,500 forged and falsified signatures in a "blatant" and "disgraceful" attempt, as the state's Republican AG described it, to qualify the Congressman for this year's ballot?...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

“We’re very disappointed that this happened," Chevron spokesman Walt Gill said (audio available in yesterday's Green News Report), after a fire at the company's Richmond, CA refinery, just outside of San Francisco, spewed toxic smoke that sent more than 900 people to hospital emergency rooms due to respiratory distress.

"We're sorry for the inconvenience," Gill added.

An environmental disaster that Gill sees as merely "inconvenient" for local citizens, could also provide a golden opportunity for the oil cartel, whose five largest companies are raking in $14.4 million in profits/hour along with $270,000/hour in tax breaks. As Gill was apologizing for the "inconvenience," Bloomberg not only noted a sharp gas price increase in the Bay area but predicted significant increases as far north as Seattle. This was followed by a Los Angeles Times prediction that "California gasoline prices could surge at least 35 cents a gallon this week."

If those predictions come to fruition, they would follow a pattern which occurred earlier this year when the entire West Coast experienced a sharp spike in gas prices after the shutdown of BP's Cherry Point refinery in Washington State. As reported by McClatchy, the spike prompted Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to call upon "the Federal Trade Commission to investigate refinery operators Alon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Tesoro and BP."

In that case, Cantwell cited a McCulloch Research report which claimed that prices were about 68 cents per gallon higher than they should have been, based on available supply. According to that report, the "sudden price shift...provided a significant windfall for refineries and retailers on the West Coast. At a differential of $.68 a gallon, this translates into a windfall profit of $43 million a day."

Looks like recent history is about to repeat itself.

All the while, we, the people, continue to give these monster corporations, the most profitable in world history, $270,000 in tax breaks every hour, while leaving the renewable, clean energy industry to beg for whatever scraps they can get. All of that, even though, "When there's a huge solar energy spill," as the Greenpeace billboard banned by oil-friendly Canada notes, "it's just called a nice day."

Democracy Now!'s 8/8/12 segment, dealing with the local impact of Chevron's Richmond, CA refinery fire follows below. (Note the map reflecting the number of additional refineries in the immediate area which were not shut down by the fire.)...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Fire at Chevron's residential refinery near SF; Extreme heat fuels deadly wildfires in OK; Extreme storms shut down Lollapalooza; Score one for endangered species: Gibson Guitars pays up; PLUS: Extreme weather and historic heat waves said directly linked to global warming ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Ocean acidification could disrupt marine food chains; Keystone XL threatens aquifer that irrigates central US; Proposed NV water pipeline raises fears of new 'Dust Bowl'; Roosevelt's Badlands Ranch faces oil industry threat; Obama Admin abandons 2C commitment; The Devil's Rig: how wind energy powered 17th century empire; NREL: Solar has most renewable energy potential; Baltimore pays $3.7m for lead paint poisoning ... PLUS: IEA Bombshell: Global Warming May Lead To ‘Miami Beach In Boston’ ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Food v. Fuel in fight over corn ethanol, as the nation's record drought continues; Massive power blackouts in India; Germany breaks another world solar record (we don't); PLUS: CLIMATE SCIENCE BOMBSHELL: Prominent, Koch Brothers-funded skeptic discovers global warming is real...and man-made ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Breaking: judge tosses new EPA mining rules; WV: Mountaintop removal coal mining has harmed 22% of streams; WI: New Enbridge pipeline spill complicates proposed pipeline; Drought woes impacting oil & gas industry; Romney wants wind energy tax credits to expire (but not oil subsidies!); Pacific Coral Triangle at risk; Study: US storms are bigger; Make way for more 'grolar' and 'pizzly' bears ... PLUS: Is this your new electric car?: GE announces electric motor breakthrough ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Last Thursday, in Cudahy, CA, a small city near Los Angeles, top city officials, including former Mayor David Silva and former City Manager and Code Enforcement Director Angel Perales, agree to plead guilty to federal charges of bribery and extortion.

But as Kevin Roderick of "LA Observed" notes, the filing also includes details on "tampering with city elections" which he describes as "really chilling".

How did the Cudahy officials tamper with the elections? Via absentee ballots, according to the explanation of the plea agreement offered by federal officials:

We've said it before, we'll say it again: Voting by mail is a terrible idea. Political parties love it, for a whole bunch of reasons (this story underscores just one of those reasons), but we're not concerned with political parties. We're concerned with democracy and whether your vote will be counted and counted accurately, no matter which party you may happen to associate with (or not.)

(Note to Oregon voters who love their all Vote-by-Mail system: Yes, we're familiar with what happens in your state, and we still stand by our long-held assessment of the perils of Absentee/Vote-by-Mail. Please read this article and, as importantly, the link in the paragraph just above, before sending us your hate mail. Thanks!)

Unless you have no other reasonable option --- eg. you're going to be out of town on Election Day and can't vote on a paper ballot during Early Voting, or you live in one of the few places in the nation where you are otherwise forced to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems on Election Day --- voting on hand-marked paper ballots, at the polling place on Election Day, increases exponentially the chance of your ballot actually being counted, and counted accurately.

We've also discussed, many times, the rarity of voter fraud --- that is, fraud by individual voters, versus the concerns of systematic election fraud perpetrated, most frequently, by election insiders who have easy access to flip results of entire elections with little possibility of detection, via manipulation of results on electronic tabulators or by gaming the voting rolls themselves.

While voter fraud is exceedingly rare --- and virtually non-existent at the polling place, particularly by those impersonating other voters (the only type of fraud which can even possibly be deterred by the polling place Photo ID restrictions Republicans are cynically attempting to put in place across the country, solely in hopes of suppressing the Democratic-leaning vote) --- where actual voter fraud does occur, it's almost always via absentee balloting.

In this latest case in Cudahy, however, though the stolen elections involved absentee ballots, it was still accomplished by election fraud, not voter fraud, since the voters themselves appear to have done nothing wrong. Rather, as is almost always the case when it comes to fraudulent elections in this country, it was a matter of insider officials gaming the system.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A nuclear re-start for Japan --- but also a solar revolution; Most anti-environment Congress in history, gutting everything --- or at least trying to; Rio+20: UN Sustainability summit gets underway in Brazil; PLUS: Oh really, Donald Trump? OPEC is in the tank for Obama?!? .... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Great German Energy Experiment; Carbon Capture Fail: Earthquakes caused by process would defeat purpose; Massive Twitter storm against fossil fuel subsidies; Arctic sea ice death spiral 2012; San Onofre nuclear problems caused by faulty models; Global warming's evil twin threatens West Coast fishing grounds; Debunking Fox News' EPA drone lie; EPA: new rules on soot pollution; VA-GOP Fail: Norfolk is sinking; Another virus infects Canada’s salmon farms; CA gov seeks new restrictions on toxic flame retardants ... PLUS: Pollution, Poverty, People of Color: Falling into the 'climate gap' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below...]

It's hump day on the Mike Malloy Show, where we're sitting in as guest host all week for the vacation Mike over your public airwaves, on the Internet (streaming links below) and on SiriusXM ch. 127!

Once again tonight, we'll be BradCasting, LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• DOUG WEAD, Presidential historian, NYTimes best-selling author and Senior Advisor to Ron Paul on the extraordinary attacks (literally) by the GOP establishment against Paul supporters at county and state conventions and on what could turn out to be a very interesting turn of events at this year's Republican National Convention in Tampa! (One that the MSM doesn't seem to be much noticing yet!)
• TRENT LANGE, President of the California Clean Money Campaign, and their effort to curb the effects of big secret money in politics with AB 1648, the California DISCLOSE Act.
• PLUS! Much more, along with your phone calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (use code 55447 when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: A kinder, gentler show tonight...after last night's eruption... or not. You can decide for yourself with the commercial-free audio archives which are now posted below! I think you'll enjoy them!...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal issued a terse decision denying a petition for rehearing of the earlier 2-1 9th Circuit panel decision in Perry vs. Brown [PDF] in which the majority ruled that CA Proposition 8's effort to strip away the previously recognized right of same sex couples to marry was unconstitutional.

The court order noted: "The matter failed to receive a majority of the votes of non-recused active judges in favor of en banc consideration." (En banc essentially means 'by the full 9th Circuit', as opposed to a three judge panel.)

The order added, however: "The mandate is stayed for ninety days pending the filing of a petition for writ of certiorari in the Supreme Court. If such a petition is filed, the stay shall continue until final disposition by the Supreme Court."

This essentially means that, despite the determination that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, same sex couples in CA cannot effectuate their right to marry until either 90 days have lapsed, or longer if a Supreme Court challenge is filed.

As The BRAD BLOG previously averred, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt's earlier majority opinion in this case was "so narrow and so tightly crafted to meet the criteria of a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Romer v. Evans, that it minimized the chances that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide to hear the case, let alone reverse the decision."

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Recently, The BRAD BLOG criticized the undemocratic features of the new "Top Two" open primary system (aka the "Cajun Primary") in California. The new system, approved via a ballot initiative in 2010, changes the state's primary to system to allow a single, open primary in which the two candidates who receive the highest numbers of votes, go on to face each other in the November general election even if the combined totals of the 'Top Two' do not amount to a majority of votes cast in the primary.

In our critique, we cited the race for the newly created CA-26 Congressional seat where, despite a Democratic Party voter registration advantage, come November, voters may be forced to choose between a 'Tea Party' Republican and a stealth Republican who changed her party registration to independent just days prior to the candidate filing deadline because the two are matched against four Democrats on the June 5 "Top Two" primary ballot.

Our analysis drew criticism in comments from some right-leaning readers claiming our critique was simply a case of sour grapes by a progressive author. But, the state's upcoming U.S. Senate race reveals that the undemocratic potential of the 'Cajun Primary' cuts both ways; that there is a distinct possibility that all Californians, come November, will be forced to choose between the incumbent corporate Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein, and the Occupy Wall Street-connected, computer scientist David Levitt (see video below), who is also a Democrat...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

When the new Congressional map was first produced by the non-partisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission, CA's GOP leadership expressed concern that it might lose up to five of its nineteen Congressional seats in the bargain.

Although its legal challenge to redistricting was rejected by the CA Supreme Court (a majority of whom were appointed by Republican Governors), the June 5, 2012 "Top Two" open primary (aka "Cajun Primary") contests, approved by a 2010 ballot initiative, may allow for GOP pickups, even in areas where Republican voters represent the minority.

One example is in the newly created CA-26 Congressional District, which reveals a potential formula by which the GOP can overcome adverse party registration numbers --- in that case, 40% (D), 36% (R), 19% (I) --- in order to seize a Congressional seat.

Because four Democrats are competing in the CA-26 primary, long suffering progressives, including this writer, who had previously been forced to cast a protest vote in the now defunct, heavily gerrymandered CA-24 District of the outgoing, extreme right-wing Republican Elton Gallegly, may awake on June 6 to the reality that, come next November, they will be forced to choose between a 'Tea Party' Republican and a County Supervisor who "changed her voter registration...from Republican to 'no party preference' in preparation for her bid for Congress"...