Stephen Heller, the Los Angeles whistleblower who turned over documents from Diebold's attorney, Jones Day, in 2004 showing the Voting Machine Company had illegally installed uncertified hardware and software in California --- and was preparing to lie about it --- has pled guilty, according to a statement tonight from the LA County District Attorney's office.

In an email moments ago from Heller, he tells us that he and his wife "are very happy it is over."

Heller, whose story we detailed in an article [PDF] published by Hustler some months ago, was a temporary worker at the voting machine company law firm when he stumbled across the troubling documents.

At the time, we quoted Michael Kohn, general counsel for the National Whistleblower Center, as saying, "This is a very rare instance. In fact, the only one of which I’m aware, in which a whistleblower has been charged with a felony. I find it outrageous."

Outrageous indeed --- especially considering Diebold voting systems were decertified by the state when it was found the company was attempting to game the certification process, shortly after Heller shared the documents with the Oakland Tribune and election watchdog BlackBoxVoting.org.

But Heller doesn't have the same kind of money for high-priced attorneys that Diebold does (that would be your money that Diebold uses for this sort of thing, by the way); we're not suprised he opted for the deal.

In an email message from Heller sent to The BRAD BLOG tonight, he wrote:

The LA County DA's statement says Heller pled to "unlawfully accessing the company computer in connection with its legal representation of Diebold Inc." and they quote his formal "apology" as follows:

A notice added tonight to the Stephen Heller Defense Fund website says "The case has been resolved! More details will follow soon." It goes on to thank supporters, urging them to "check back soon because Stephen is going to post the entire story here soon."

Heller tells us he's being contacted by the media tonight and plans to send a more detailed statement to The BRAD BLOG by morning.

UPDATE: 11/21/06 5:00pm PT: As promised, a new story, including a fresh exclusive statement from Heller --- concerning his thoughts on Diebold, American Elections and that he may have his sentenced reduced in a year --- is now posted here.

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution

Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization, issued a press release yesterday announcing their new report, "Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006."

According to EDA, the Edison-Mitofsky National Exit Poll, conducted by a consortium of news organizations, showed at 7 p.m. on Election Night an 11.5% vote margin in favor of Dems nationwide. But by 1:00 p.m. on the following day, according to EDA, "[T]he Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as 'forcing,' to match the reported vote totals for the election." The adjusted exit polls showed "a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals."

It was EDA co-founder Jonathan Simon whose foresight in downloading the Edison-Mitofsky exit polls on Election Night 2004 before those polls were adjusted made the discovery of the now-infamous "red shift" possible. Analysis of the original exit polls from 2004 became one of the most compelling bodies of evidence to suggest that the 2004 election was stolen on behalf of George W. Bush.

Now EDA reveals evidence of similar manipulation of this year's election. In his story Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Election Hacked, executive editor of OpEdNews Rob Kall quotes Simon as saying:

The BRAD BLOG wishes to point out the difference between election "hacking" and "rigging." Hacking can be done by outsiders armed with such difficult-to-obtain weapons as a hotel mini-bar key (in the case of the Diebold TSx) or a finger (in the case of the Sequoia touchscreen machines). Rigging would be done by an insider such as someone working for an electronic voting machine company or a department of elections. The evidence of skewed results in the 2006 Congressional election doesn't specifically prove whether hacking or rigging or both occurred, but certainly magnifies the call for further investigation into irregularities in the 2006 elections. Will this new report help the newly-elected-but-apparently-robbed-of-its-landslide Democratic Majority Congress understand the importance of revamping our election system before 2008?

The next phase of Election Defense Alliance's work will be to analyze results of specific Congressional races. This work will include analysis of exit polls commissioned by Velvet Revolution (of which The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder) and other independent organizations. Perhaps then we will find out how many Democratic (or even Republican) candidates who have been declared losers actually won their races.

Like brother like brother. Even San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas's brother apparently believes it just fine to cheat at the polls.

Online polls in any case.

The BRAD BLOG has learned that Don Haas, the brother of SD County's Registrar, (one of the country's worst, by the way) has apparently been gaming a recent online poll hosted at the website of conservative San Diego radio talkshow host Roger Hedgecock. The right-wing talker has joined the chair of the Democratic County Chair in calling for Mikel Haas's resignation due to his abominable administration of county elections.

A quick investigation by The BRAD BLOG this morning reveals the poll used at the Hedgecock site can easily be gamed by simply deleting "cookies" on users' computers, allowing them to vote as many times as they wish. Don Haas encouraged readers in a posting yesterday at his website to "act like a democrats and vote three times."

As well, brother Don has been posting anonymously here at The BRAD BLOG with the user name "OMSmedia" since November 9th. In a comment this morning, in reply to Democratic U.S. House candidate Francine Busby's concession in the CA-50 race last night, Don describes her as a "loser" and continues by adding "love it when you uninformed nutroots lose."

He has his own website at OMSMedia.com which has a "Hardcore Conservative" graphic logo on the home page. In various postings in the "Live Journal" on the site, Don supports his brother's use of hackable Diebold voting machines, spreads disinformation about them, refers to Democrats as "asses," suggests all "gay representatives" are "pedophiles," and writes that "any [Senatorial] candidate yelling about the President should just resign"....

San Diego's very conservative radio host and fill-in host for Rush Limbaugh, Roger Hedgecock --- who agrees with me nonetheless about Electronic Voting Machines --- wonders if San Diego County's Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas, one of the worst in the country, should resign.

We won't say any more than that, since we'd hate to bias the poll in any way. But rest easy knowing that the results of Hedgecock's unscientific online poll will be at least as reliable and accurate as any election Haas has ever run in San Diego.

Sleepover on your answer before deciding for sure, but either way, please vote in the poll...

UPDATE 1/14/06 1:08pm PT: We hadn't noticed this earlier, but it looks like the San Diego County Democratic Party Chair, Jess Durfee, called for the resignation of Haas on Election Night due to all of the reported problems with machine failures, lack of available paper ballots, etc. On Election Night, the far right-leaning Union-Tribune reported Durfee as saying "his polling place in University Heights was out of paper ballots by 9 a.m., and all the machines in that precinct were down by noon."

Also reported in the same article by the U-T...

We're changing our previous "neutral" stance and calling for Haas's immediate resignation. He's a disgrace, has undermined confidence of the electorate, has made a mockery of the rule of law, and the result is is that elections in San Diego have become a complete joke under his tenure in the county. There is absolutely no basis for confidence in the reported results of any election administered by Mikel Haas on November 7th.

Despite massive problems with their voting machines all over the country, at least two of the leading voting machine companies, Sequoia and Diebold, are still in extreme denial. But at least they have the "courage" to keep their names off record when talking to the press about it now...Cowards.

Witness the last two grafs of this ComputerWorld story on touch-screen vote-flipping --- the type that was reported all over the country both in Early Voting and on Election Day this year, and certainly in a big way back in '04...

It's not a problem. It doesn't exist. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

So not only are these guys liars, they're now cowards afraid to go on record with their names when spreading their utter bullshit.

By the way, one of those "conspiracy theory activist bloggers" who had the "non-existant" "non-problem" was Marshall Cook, a candidate for city council in Pinellas Park, Florida, last March. He kept trying to vote for himself, but his vote kept flipping to his opponent until he was finally forced to move to a different crappy Sequoia touch-screen voting machine.

As we reported at the time, quoting from that "activist blog" otherwise known as the St. Petersburg Times(!)...

Idiots.

Tired of reading me whine about problems with our crumbling electoral system? Now you can watch me whine about them instead.

As if it's not enough I've had to become a spokesman, a journalist, a broadcaster, an investigator, an advocate, a political consultant over these last two years or so..on the Saturday before the election, I was asked to become a Standup Comedian...of a sort.

Click the photo for a quick 4 and a half minute video of an onstage appearance at the premiere of Electric City: A Political Comedy Special, in which I was shanghaied into appearing with a bunch of actual comics (such as Marc Maron, John Fugelsang, Rick Overton, etc.) on the Saturday night before the election.

As I was exhausted at that point, I'm glad the bit was caught on video tape. Otherwise, for the life of me, I'd not have been able to tell you a thing I spoke about that night. The week(s) before the election are all a blur to me right now.

The gig was smartly hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz of The Young Turks. A two-minute trailer (in which I also appear briefly) for the entire evening is posted below as well...

From Salt Lake Tribune in Utah, the state which ran the 23-year elected Emery County, UT Election Administrator, Bruce Funk out of a job when he dared allowed independent investigators to test the new Diebold touch-screen systems forced on him by the state...

The local ABC affiliate is reporting the Lt. Governor (a big supporter of Diebold, as we recall) says the problem is in the voting card encoders...

Too late, Lt. Governor. Nice going.

This just in from poll worker Patti Newton from San Diego, where Registrar Mikel Haas has been sending all of their pre-programmed, election-ready, hackable Diebold touch-screen systems home with poll workers on "sleepovers" since Oct. 16th.

Newton reports the machines have been going to high-school kids who have also been recruited to be in charge of those machines tomorrow! Have we mentioned that San Diego's Mikel Haas is amongst the worst most irresponsible Election Administrator's in the country?! From Newton...

But wait, she followed up with more!

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...

Heading over to KTLK am1150, Los Angeles' Progressive Talk, Air America affiliate to co-host today on the Bree Walker Show from 2p-4p PT (5p-7p ET).

We've got a huge guest line-up for the two hour show, including SPENCER OVERTON of Stealing Democracy, REBECCA ABRAHAMS and STEPHEN SPOONAMORE on the secret MD Diebold SAIC Report, TOM COURBAT and RON WATT on Sequoia's "Vote As Much as You Want" Yellow Button, John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and much much more!

Listen up online here!...

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…

Quickly Blogged by John Gideon

In a 17-page report published by the Columbus Free Press and written by Peter Peckarsky, Ron Baiman, and Robert Fitrakis it is revealed that:

Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

A Press Release, which is copied in full on the other side of the fold, was just received from Steven Hertzberg, the Project Director of Election Science Institute that exposes the fact that in September election workers in Cuyahoga County, Ohio put every Diebold memory card into laptop computers in order to archive election information. These laptops were found laying around the office and, in some cases, were even brought from home. There is no way to know how many viruses may have now been transferred from these laptops to the memory cards. Luckily this incident was caught on video tape.

This failure on the part of county election officials is exactly the type of failure that Diebold has claimed over and over again cannot happen. In the new release, Prof. Edward Felton of Princeton University and the recent Diebold TS hack, says:

The press release from Princeton and the Election Science Institute is posted in full below...

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...