The lawsuit brought last week in San Diego to force Registrar Mikel Haas to obey an order from the Secretary of State's office that paper ballots should be counted as "normal ballots" was denied in San Diego Superior Court today.

The writ, originally filed in Appeals Court last week, was denied on jurisdictional grounds and refiled in the Superior Court. Due to time constraints at that point, the section of the complaint seeking to stop voting machine "sleepovers" (which have now been ongoing for a full three weeks in the county) was dropped when the case was re-filed.

The denial today, which had also sought to force Haas to inform San Diego voters at the polls of their right to vote on a paper ballot, will be appealed, according to Carlsbad, CA, attorney Ken Simpkins. Election Integrity organization VelvetRevolution.us' Strike Force continues to raise money to fund such court actions, as it did with the original filing and several others --- including the contested Francine Busby/Brian Bilbray special U.S. House election last Summer.

I spoke with Simpkins earlier today about the court ruling and the judge who didn't seem to understand the differences between provisional, absentee and "normal ballots." Paper ballots, requested by any California voter, are supposed to be counted as "normal ballots" on election night, according to a memo from the CA SoS.

As time is way short for me right now, here's a quick transcript of my notes of the conversation I had with Simpkins, describing the judge, who reportedly made his feelings known early on during the questioning when he referred to E-Voting as "the appropriate wave of the future"...

Arizona may be a battleground tomorrow. Here's an idea, from Art Levine of Salon, of the mess on the ground due to AZ's disenfranchising new Photo ID laws. Don't think these laws keep folks from voting? Read on to see how unbelievably difficult it's become for college students to register to vote in the state...

On Friday night, we broke Rebecca Abrahams's exclusive story concerning the long-sought yet never-released complete "Risk Assessment Report" of Diebold's electronic voting systems as commissioned by the state of Maryland from the Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 2003.

Tonight, The BRAD BLOG is releasing that report exclusively in full as given to us by Abrahams, who says she obtained it from a source described to us as "a patriotic high-level state official." She says the source is "someone very close to this situation" in the Maryland government.

The original, never-before-released SAIC report was nearly 200 pages in all, and details a number of extraordinary security vulnerabilities found in Diebold's AccuVote-TS (touch-screen) voting systems as deployed by the state of Maryland initially in 2002. The version of the SAIC report that was eventually released to the public, after extreme redaction, was a mere 38 pages long.

It was reported by Abrahams that neither the full MD State Board of Elections, nor even the Governor himself, was ever allowed to see the full report.

Regarded by many in the computer science, security, and election integrity community as "The Pentagon Papers of E-Voting," the report as released by MD's State Election Administrator, Linda Lamone, was edited, changed, and, of course, highly redacted by someone.

To this date, it remains unclear whether or not Diebold itself was responsible for the changes, edits, and redactions, but according to several computer scientists and security experts with whom we discussed the matter today, the company currently seems to be the leading candidate responsible for changing and removing information from the independently commissioned SAIC report. Those with whom we spoke questioned the propriety of Diebold having such final control over an independent report concerning its own systems. Systems, we might add, that will be used across the state and indeed across the entire country this November 7th, despite the information withheld from the public in this 2003 report.

Also unclear --- since the state and virtually the entire computer science and security community have been unable to review the complete, original report until now --- is whether or not any of the various 180 or so recommendations for changes contained in the report have ever been addressed and corrected by either Diebold or the state of Maryland.

Myriad independent reports on Diebold systems have shown, over the last several months and years since the SAIC report was completed, that scores of serious security vulnerabilities still remain on Diebold's voting systems --- including their paper-based optical-scan voting machines, touch-screen voting machines, and even their central tabulator software.

Reports of these serious vulnerabilities have now been documented by Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti, the computer security firm Security Innovation, and BlackBoxVoting.org in both Leon County, FL and then in Emery County, UT; by a team of scientists at UC Berkeley commissioned by the CA Sec. of State; by Princeton University; and even by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (as The BRAD BLOG originally reported in September of 2005 after a tip from a Diebold insider).

Whether or not the vulnerabilities revealed in those subsequent studies --- made mostly over the last year or so, but some, such as the Dept. of Homeland Security's CERT alert came even prior to the 2004 Presidential Election --- were discovered previously in the full 2003 SAIC report has been widely questioned until now.

If, in fact, such vulnerabilities were indeed found in 2003 by SAIC but subsequently kept covered up by Diebold or their allies within the MD State Elections division, such as longtime booster Lamone, the question of accountability --- and even the specter of malicious out-and-out fraud --- has been raised.

During an interview with Abrahams and Stephen Spoonamore, the CEO of computer security firm Cybrinth Inc., on a radio program we co-hosted yesterday, they suggested that an FBI investigation may currently be under way in Maryland concerning several events surrounding the use of Diebold machines in the state.

We've not yet had time to review the entire unredacted report as posted below. However, given the importance of this never-before-released information --- and after close consultation with Abrahams and several others --- The BRAD BLOG feels the national public interest in the information contained in this report requires full and immediate release and disclosure.

The report, therefore, is released here for the first time...

Gosh...maybe there's a pattern here or something. Is there something to be concerned about here?...Here are just a few of the headlines from the National section (much more in the state-by-states) of today-only's 'Daily Voting News' from John Gideon...

This list is also notable because it contains the very first story ever on e-voting concerns (at least that I could find in a quick search) from the completely useless Los Angeles Times! Waytago, guys! Just in time! You win the BRAD BLOG's "Most Useless and Irresponsible Big City Newspaper in the Country" Award!

Their very first article comes today despite a mountain of problems for years, not to mention the last few months, across California, including the myriad disasters ("sleepovers" and everything else) just down the road in San Diego; a hapless Sec. of State who has approved one hackable, malfunctioning electronic voting machine after another (offering an ersatz blessing for the rest of the states from "the country's largest voting market," as Diebold calls us); and one of the most important Sec. of State races ever, with a real democracy champion, Debra Bowen, running against the inveterate liar and democracyhater, SoS Bruce McPherson.

Add to that list of reasons why the LA Times should be utterly ashamed of themselves is this comment in their own article today from one of the top scientists on McPherson's own team of voting systems advisors:

Of course, Jefferson's been saying that for months. But has the LA Times bothered to report any of it? Little wonder they haven't devoted a single article to this issue until just three days before the election. Nothing to see here at all. Move along. Don't read those headlines above. Everything's still just fine.

Ohio Rep. Bob Ney (R-Abramoff) has finally resigned from Congress this afternoon, nearly a month after pleading guilty to two felony charges of conspiracy and making false statements, and mere days before the most contentious midterm elections in recent memory.

In a call to Congressional Quarterly, Ney said, "I'm done with everything I wanted to complete." (That would include pulling down one more monthly paycheck of more than $12,400.) His congressional collegues had promised to expel Ney upon return from the Election Recess on Nov. 13.

Former Rep. Bob Ney is the first Congressman to be convicted in the ever-widening Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal, which has ensnared a number of his Republican colleagues, staffers, aides, and other government officials on Capitol Hill.

He is now a felon who is no longer allowed to vote under Ohio law. Nonetheless, the voters of America are now stuck with the disastrous electronic voting systems instituted by his Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which he pushed through Congress in 2002.

Carter Evans, of GoTVNetworks.com, a cell phone video content provider, has put together a very good and incisive series of news reports on America's E-Voting Meltdown. You'll see some familiar faces --- ours included --- in his four part series of short reports. In Part I, posted below, you'll also see Diebold whistleblower Chris Hood (a long time source of The BRAD BLOG's) for the first time on camera. He's tremendous.

Evans promises an interesting run-in with voting officials down in Florida in upcoming reports. Here's Part I of his report (about 3.5 minutes)...

-- Streaming Flash version...

UPDATE: GoTV now has all 4 parts up. Good, quick, easily digestible stuff. All segments now viewable right here.

Special to The BRAD BLOG by Guest Blogger and Freelance Network News Producer, Rebecca Abrahams

In September, 2003 Linda Lamone, the Administrator of Maryland's State Board of Elections and President of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED) hands over a critical study on the security of the Diebold Election Systems machines that count all of Maryland's votes.

Between the time that the State of Maryland commissioned the highly respected Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to evaluate the effectiveness and security of their electronic voting machines and the time that the study is made public, critical pieces of information have been edited, omitted and, in some cases, words added, to fundamentally alter the original meaning of the report's conclusions.

The original SAIC report, coming in at nearly 200 pages, was reduced, redacted and altered such that the only version the public --- or even state officials including the Governor and the full State Board of Elections --- would ever be allowed to see was a wholly sanitized 38-page version of the report.

Until now.

For the first time, we've been able to review the complete, much sought-after, unredacted version of the SAIC report which has been kept at bay from Maryland state officials…as well as the computer science and security community…as well as the election integrity community and public at large since it was originally completed in 2003.

It has been called "The Pentagon Papers of Electronic Voting Systems" by some members of the computer science and security community.

Our EXCLUSIVE access to that document --- which we will be releasing in full shortly --- was made possible by a patriot whistleblower. The information, some of which is detailed below, could be explosive in the final days before the Midterm Elections.

UPDATE: The complete, unredacted SAIC Report is now available here for downloading.

As well, a transcript of an EXCLUSIVE unaired network interview that I carried out with Lamone --- in which she tore off her microphone and cut off the interview after I dared to confront her on some of these issues --- will follow below as well…

Heading over to the studio to Guest Host for Jerry Quickly on KPFK 90.7 FM (Los Angeles' Pacifica station). Got a great guest lineup to jam into the one hour Bradcast!

We'll have ROB COHEN, one of the filmmakers of Hacking Democracy, just minutes before tonight's premiere on HBO at 9pm ET (see my review at ComputerWorld, if you're inclined). SHERI MYERS, a Los Angeles Election Integrity activist and creator of the CHEATED! comic-book, which tells the story of what happened in Ohio in 2004 in a way that even George W. Bush can understand. And attorney KEN SIMPKINS who recently filed a lawsuit against San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas concerning Diebold "sleepovers", emergency paper ballots and more. We'll have some fresh breaking news on that case!

You can call in (I think) as well as tune in online to listen!...

UPDATE 11:36pm PT: Was a good show, I think. Audio of the complete 1hr show now here [MP3]. Enjoy!

My article/review of HBO's Hacking Democracy (begins airing tomorrow, Thursday, Nov 2. @ 9pm) has now been posted over at ComputerWorld. I haven't read their final edit yet, as tech probs (yes, tech probs at ComputerWorld! And we're using these machines for voting?!) held up publication until just moments ago. But I trust it resembles something along the lines of what I orginally wrote for them. You can read my take on the landmark documentary in my ComputerWorld feature article now posted here...

As well, HBO has been kind enough to send us a trailer which, thanks to BRAD BLOG video-ace Alan Breslauer, is now online. EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREVIEW posted right here...

And, just in case you missed it, see late last night's post on Diebold's pathetic (yet hilarious!) last-minute attempt to stop HBO from running this film. Catch that late-breaking news right here...

UPDATE: ComputerWorld has now posted a complete package on E-Voting issues compiled and edited by CW's Security Section editor, Angela Gunn. Tons of stuff available that I haven't even begun to comb through, but thought you might want to know about what appears to be an excellent new resource. It's all available from right here...

Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, blogs today on Electronic Voting. Here's just one of the money quotes...

"The equipment has been tested by independent agencies and federal agencies," Diebold's Chief Disinformation Officer, Mark Radke lied to Diane Sawyer in a recent Good Morning America interview on ABC.

Sadly, the only ones there to counter Radke's knowing and misleading disinformation was a computer scientist from Princeton, and a Republican governor. Not a Democrat in sight.

The National Democratic Party, to their eternal shame, has remained virtually silent about the grave national security threat --- as it has been described by almost every computer scientist and security expert with whom the The BRAD BLOG has discussed the matter --- which our country now faces vis a vis the nationwide use of inaccurate, uncountable, unaccountable, hackable and, yes, untested electronic voting systems.

To be crystal clear, Radke was simply lying in his statement to Sawyer. He knows damned well that not a single independent body --- nobody, none, zero...no computer scientist, security expert or federal, state or local election official or organization --- is allowed to test Diebold's voting systems in full and release their findings publicly. The same is true for the systems of every other voting machine company in America.

The only federal testing of these systems is done by the so-called "Independent Testing Authority" (ITA), a consortium of three private corporations chosen and paid for by the voting machine companies themselves. The ITAs test only what their client Voting Machine Companies tell them to test. They do so in secret and without releasing the results of their limited testing publicly.

Lou Dobbs Tonight filed a very good report on the ITA scam the other day. The video and transcript are here.

ABC's online coverage of the interview goes on to report that "Approximately 40 percent of Americans will use these machines to vote in November."

That is wrong. Well over 80% of American voters will use such machines this November. ABC should know better by now.

Most disturbingly, the DNC has said and done literally nothing about the problem, and has let it fall to the Republican governor of Maryland, Robert Ehrlich, to speak about the issue nationally.

Says Ehrlich about the need to scrap these dangerous systems at the end of ABC's report:

Ehrlich is 100% correct. As we reported last August after we were invited to address state party chairs and the DNC's national attorneys at their Summer convention, the national Democratic party continues to whistle past democracy's graveyard. As far as we can tell, not a thing has changed since then.

In the meantime, as we've reported previously, the Republicans are positioning themselves to be able to scream Democratic fraud via electronic voting machines along with their even more disingenuous claims of "voter fraud." Here's a blog item posted today by some wingnut who quotes a couple of our reports from months ago as "proof" that Democrats are preparing to flip votes via Sequoia Voting System electronic machines. The blogger's supposed basis for the report is the claim that Sequoia was purchased by a consortium tied to Venezuala's Hugo Chavez.

You'll also note the anonymous blogger linked the above points only to problems reported on Sequoia systems, ignoring the mountain of reports that voting systems made by Republican-based companies such as Diebold, ES&S and Hart Intercivic are equally, if not more, unfunctional, inaccurate and vulnerable to tampering and fraud.

We don't see the Dems waking up any time soon, as they have failed so far to challenge any of the outrages already plaguing the system during early voting --- from illegally truncated screen displays, to touch-screen votes flipping from one candidate to another, to illegal voting machine "sleepovers" with poll workers as are now occuring in California, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. By the time Election Day rolls around, poll workers in San Diego County, for example, will have had more than three weeks to have found the 60 seconds they would need to game a single pre-programmed, election-ready Diebold voting machine --- that they've been allowed to keep in their houses since SD County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas has been handing them out like candy since October 16th. (NOTE: We'll have much more on that tomorrow.)

The Democrats, so far, have failed to do a damned thing about any of it, choosing instead to close their eyes, cross their fingers, and hope for the best. Good luck.

Blogged By John Gideon, 28 October 2006

Still over a week from election day and already the problems are piling up. Meanwhile the vendors and their shills are making excuses and attempting to sell the voting public a line of garbage. Among the shills is a federal agency, the Election Assistance Commission, that is supposed to assist the voter and, instead, has sent their chairman out on the road to defend the vendors.

In a blog posted yesterday, Brad said it well:

In a rebuttal to DeGregorios' opinion piece in the Tallahassee Democrat Avi Rubin, Johns-Hopkins Professor, computer scientist and author of "Brave New Ballot" had this to say in his blog:

In The Mean Time Across The Nation...

I only have a second as I've got to hit the road to get up to Santa Barbara to speak at tonight's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner (along w/ Wes Clark), so I'll try to be quick about it...

The U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) is a complete and utter failure. The current commissioner, Paul DeGregorio, has done nothing to instill confidence in elections or provide a lick of oversight in the deployment and use of these voting systems across the nation in the Midterm Election. In his latest interviews and editorials, he is reprehensibly doing nothing but echoing Voting Machine Company propaganda and Election Officials who choose to be apologists for them.

See DeGregorio's latest editorial here from the Tallahassee Democrat, in which he posts completely unfounded and unsupported "opinion" in contradiction of virtually all scientific evidence.

Contrast DeGregorio's nonsense with the comments of his predecessor, the honest, Bush-appointed, non-crony, Rev. DeForest Soaries, from this unaired network interview, in which he flatly states there are no standards for electronic voting systems in place and that 'elections in America are ripe for stealing.'

The EAC, under the "leadership" of DeGregorio, has become hopelessly compromised as he's allowed even the disinformation experts, such as "Thor" Hearne from the phony GOP front-group "American Center for Voting Rights," to set the agenda for the commission. Note that DeGregorio and Hearne are old St. Louis GOP colleagues. What a scam.

Below are a few choice pieces of information unsubstantiated horse excrement, from DeGregorio's editorial yesterday.

On this one point only, I can actually agree with DeGregorio: "Americans should be confident that their vote will be counted, whether they touch a screen or fill in an oval."

Yes, they should be confident, but they have absolutely no basis for that at this time, thanks to folks like you, Paul. Your words do not give such confidence. Transparency gives confidence. We've had quite enough "faith-based elections" in this country. Anyway, read on for some of DeGregorio's most shamelessly misleading garbage... (You can contact the EAC here.)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

In what may be the most revealing of all of the "Democracy At Risk" series Lou and Kitty discuss the broken system of certifying electronic voting systems for use by the voter. Lou correctly points out that the system represents a conflict of interest between the manufacturers and the Independent Test Authorities (ITA) who are paid by the manufacturers to test and approve the manufacturers products.

The text-transcript of Thursday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org

In this segment Lou interviewed two ex-Commissioners of the Election Assistance Commission. Ex-Chairman Deforest Soaries and Ex-Assistant Chairman Ray Martinez. As revealed in an earlier interview reported by BradBlog, Chairman Soaries is speaking out and speaking out loudly.

Of note in tonight's interview is this exchange:

The text-transcript of Monday's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...