Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The California Supreme court announced Wednesday that it will hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the anti-gay amendment that overturned the right of gay people to marry in the state.

In May, the same court, which is composed of seven Republicans and one Democrat --- who are all elected for 12-year terms --- decided 4-3 to strike down a law banning same-sex marriage.

The judges are being asked now to decide whether the constitution can be amended to make discrimination against a minority group legal, a move that directly violates the constitution's "equal protection clause," a foundational principle that instructs government to guarantee that all citizens enjoy the same rights --- or whether a change to the equal protection clause should have been made through the constitutional "revision" process, which would have required a two-thirds vote by both houses of the legislature before going before the electorate as a ballot initiative.

In a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmeic, who served as a high official in the Reagan and Bush I Justice departments but who supported Barack Obama this year, laid out a compromise to the constitutional debacle brought on by the passage of Proposition 8 that puts the solution in the hands of California's governor:

Guest blogged by Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet

The electronic voting problems in the 2008 election are broader than recently-publicized snafus such as machines not turning on, voter databases omitting names, or touch screens not properly recording votes, according to an analysis of 1,700 incident reports from the nation's largest voter hotline.

Moreover, the voting machine issues and the confusion they caused among poll workers appear to have compounded the delays faced by untold thousands of voters this fall, a preliminary analysis of 1-800-OUR-VOTE reports by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a researcher at Princeton University and the University of California, has found...

Guest Blogged by Emily Levy of VelvetRevolution.us

California's Proposition 8 --- a Constitutional amendment to ban the right to same-sex marriage in the state --- currently has more "yes" (in favor of discrimination) votes than "no" votes tallied, 52.2% to 47.8%, according to the CA Sec. of State's website. This represents a difference of 434,830 votes. But according to the No on 8 campaign, three to four million provisional and vote-by-mail ballots remain uncounted...

We've got two shameful situations with early and absentee voting. Well, there are many more, no doubt, but for purposes of this article, we'll focus on the outrage in D.C., where thousands of voters are not receiving their absentee ballots, so they're being forced to go vote at county headquarters. And out here in Los Angeles, the world's largest voting jurisdiction, with just one, single early voting location.

News on both of those scandals --- and the response we received from our inquiry about the L.A. situation from L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan --- follow below...

And speaking of GOP voter registration hucksters, it looks like Nathan Sproul of Sproul & Associates, the group accused of destroying Democratic registrations in several states during previous elections, has been hired by the McCain-Palin campaign and the RNC again this year. Knock us over with a feather...

Well, that was fun. My first time on Fox. And I don't feel dirty at all! Hopefully, it'll not be my last. Hey, I was even honored to offer them a big scoop on air, in the form my very own "Fox News Alert", after which, I'm told, they ran the headline during top of the hour news and on the crawl. So we did some good, if only for that. You're welcome, Fox!

Host Julie Banderas asked me, kindly, near the end of the segment (video below), if I'd felt they'd been "fair and balanced" with me during the segment. I believe they were, which was much appreciated. Though I wish I had answered "Yes, you were, thanks. In this segment. And I hope you'll have me back to discuss the GOP's ACORN 'voter fraud' hoax, about which you guys have been anything but fair and balanced over the last week or two, and, in fact, dangerously unfair and unbalanced."

But, hey, ya can only fit so much into seven minutes. And I think I was able to get some good info in. You'll let me know. Here's the segment...

For those who've asked, yes, when I was booked I was told we'd most likely be discussing "voter fraud" issues, not housing crisis issues...

This just in as Brad is headed over to the FOX News studios. Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported on the Republican voter registration outfit who had allegedly been illegally changing thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican.

Last night the head of that GOP backed group, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested by the California State Election Fraud Taskforce and Oxnard, CA Police.

According to CA SoS Debra Bowen's press release, Jacoby himself had committed voter registration fraud and perjury by lying on his own voter registration form. (That's similar to what Ann Coulter did, though she not only committed felony voter registration fraud, she also committed actual voter fraud, as well, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare.)

UPDATE FROM BRAD: It was my pleasure to break this story today on Fox "News" of all places! Thanks to John Gideon for getting it posted as I was on the roll towards the studio. I'll have the video up of my appearance on Fox, and the "Fox News Alert" I was able to do, later tonight (it's now posted here). Please note, this isn't the first time there have been serious problems with GOP-gathered voter registrations in CA, as outlined recently at Alternet. Looks like the GOP's voter registration record for errors far outpaced ACORN! Whaddaya know? (Our special coverage of the GOP's ACORN "Voter Fraud" Hoax is right here.) More updates now at bottom of article.

Bowen's press release, just out, on Jacoby's arrest is posted in full below, along with a number of additional updates after it...

SAVE R VOTE is a group of election watchdogs in Riverside Co California. Yesterday the group gave the county Board of Supervisors a report that they wrote after pouring over more than 10,000 documents for the past three months. Their report included evidence of elections staff correcting documents to balance ballot inventory; electronic voting machines being delivered up to 11 days before the election, some times to bathrooms [Election law permits officials to deliver voting machines a week before Election Day]; and missing electronic voting cartridges. Of course the county registrar could only do all she could do to minimize the issue. Congratulations to SAVE R VOTE. They got the county supervisors to listen. They have ordered an audit of the Registrar’s office to determine why there were hundreds of violations found. ...

-- Brad Friedman

The Computer Security Group at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) has released a short, chilling video demonstrating how a single person can hack an election on a touch-screen voting system --- even one with a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Trail" (VVPAT) added to it --- in such a way that it is highly unlikely that the manipulation would ever be detected by either the public or election officials.

The video which shows "just examples of the different ways in which the system can be compromised" is the latest in a similar string of such demonstrations that have been released over the last two years, all showing how easily electronic voting systems can be tampered with, often undetectably.

In the UCSB video posted below, the hack of Sequoia voting system being prepared for use in an entire county, is done in approximately 3 seconds, by a single person with simple insider access and a $10 USB thumb drive. Every machine used in the county, in such a case, would be effected. Moreover, the viral hack would not be discovered by pre-election "Logic and Accuracy" testing --- in cases were election officials actually bother to perform such tests prior to elections --- nor would it likely be discovered even in the event of a complete, 100% post-election audit of the touch-screen "paper-trail" records.

The hack demonstration, prepared by the UCSB scientists as part of California's 2007 Top-to-Bottom Review" of all of the state's e-voting systems, also reveals how so-called "security seals" placed on such machines after they've been programmed for an election, can be easily defeated without detection...

I'll be jumping in again today (Wed.) to host KPFK/Pacifica's "Special Election Year Coverage" hour from 2p-3p PT (5p-6p ET).

My guests will be...

• PHIL LINDSEY of ShowMeTheVote.org to discuss the latest in the case of his arrest while trying to vote last week during Missouri's state primary, and
• DEAN LOGAN, L.A. County's Registrar of Voters, to discuss concerns about the polls here in November, as well as what happened to cause my own votes to be flipped by the voting system during last June's state primary election.

KPFK is heard at 90.7FM in Los Angeles and 98.7FM in Santa Barbara and streams live on the net at KPFK.org. Please tune in, stream in, and call-in at 818-985-5735, if you like.

Post-Show Update: Thanks to both Phil Lindsey and Dean Logan for joining me today. It was a very good and informative hour, if I say so myself. So informative, in fact, that someone called in to complain after the show that I wasn't tough enough on Logan. Okay. You can decide for yourself if I was, or wasn't, or if he even deserved it this time out. The archive follows. I appreciate that he showed up and took questions. We've got to work with election officials, folks. Period. Even as we hold feet to the fire.

(Appx. 1 hour) MP3 Download or listen online here...

-- 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...

Just minutes ago, the ground gently rattled and rolled a bit here at The BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters in Los Angeles for 15 seconds or so.

Wire services, TV and radio news responded within seconds to report a sizable 5.8 (later downgraded to 5.4) magnitude quake, centered some 28 miles east of downtown.

Don't have much more to offer for the moment, but wanted to report --- particularly for those who know we're back in L.A. --- that we're fine here. While the shake was noticeable, it was either far enough or deep enough (reports now say it was 7.6 miles down) that it didn't even much rattle the cupboards where we're located near Hollywood.

More later if we're able to offer any other notable developments...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

On Election Day this November, voters in San Francisco will vote on a local initiative to rename one of the city's largest waste treatment plants in honor of George W. Bush. If the initiative passes --- and since the number of Republicans in the city is statistically zero, it very well might --- the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant will be forever known as the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. It is as fitting a monument to the eight years of the Bush presidency as we can think of, with the possible exception of naming a garbage dump after him.

The San Francisco effort is the work-product of local activists who came up with the idea in the most grassroots of all settings: over beers. Subsequently, the group set up the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, which handled promotion for the petition drive. On Thursday, the city's Department of Elections certified that the 7,168 signatures the commission submitted were valid and approved the initiative for the November ballot.

Although the organizers in San Francisco are clear that their effort is satire, this is a cause that grassroots organizers in other cities should consider seriously. This nationwide effort could be similar to, but hopefully more successful than, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, which was the brainchild of the anti-government lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is best known for his close associations with corrupt Bush cronies like (now-imprisoned) Jack Abramoff and (perhaps incarcerated one day) Karl Rove.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

A new Field Poll shows that 42 percent of California voters say they will vote for Proposition 8, the ballot initiative sponsored by the national anti-gay lobby that would amend the California Constitution to revoke the right of gay people to marry, while 51 percent say they plan to vote against it, according to a report in the Mercury News:

Mercury News also reports that "[women], older baby boomers and residents of coastal California --- particularly the Bay Area --- were among those most hostile to the proposed ban. Protestants, Latinos, residents of inland counties and people in their 40s and over age 65 were the most likely to favor it."

At least one professional advocate of bigotry toward gays was quick to downplay the poll results. "Historically, the Field Poll has understated the support for upholding the definition of marriage," Jennifer Kerns, a spokeswoman for ProtectMarriage.com, told the Mecurty News. "The reality is that the vast majority of Californians support the definition of marriage as between a man and woman."

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Polling before Labor Day in the presidential race is all but useless, still -- this is amazing:

That last number, Obama's 46 point lead among independents, is significant. This is just a guess but much of the antipathy among independents toward McCain, the self-described "maverick," likely can be traced to his position in favor of drilling off the coast.