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Latest Featured Reports | Saturday, November 2, 2024
The GOP 'Voter Fraud'
Before the Storm:
'BradCast' 10/31/24
A primer on what election fraud actually is (and isn't), and how Team Trump is sowing seeds to steal the election if he loses again this year...
'Green News Report' 10/31/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
From extreme drought to deadly flash flooding in Spain; Worldwide toll on health from climate change is rising; PLUS: Environmental proponents hold breath for U.S. election...
Previous GNRs: 10/29/24 - 10/24/24 - Archives...
'Closing Arguments'
with Digby and Driftglass: 'BradCast' 10/30/24
Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of 'Pro Left Podcast'...
Trump Promises to be a Lawless, Authoritarian President. Believe Him: 'BradCast' 10/29/24
Also: Bezos, Musk, and the menacing threat of America's ascendant billionaire oligarchy...
'Green News Report' 10/29/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Climate and U.S. economy on the ballot; World on pace for dangerous warming, U.N. warns; PLUS: Biden cracks down on lead paint and its serious threat to America's children...
Previous GNRs: 10/24/24 - 10/22/24 - Archives...
Election Heats Up: Ballots Burn, Billionaires 'Obey in Advance', Callers Ring In: 'BradCast' 10/28/24
Also: Philly D.A. sues Musk over million dollar 'lottery'; Much more...
Musk's Privatized Internet Satellite System Threatens U.S. National Security
Why the FAA should revoke the billionaire's license to own and operate Starlink, and federal law must be amended to nationalize it...
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THIS WEEK: Halloween Horrors ... Billionaire Endorsements ... 'The Best People' ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's most important toons...
Harris on Hope, Trump's Fasc-ism in Bumpy Closing Days: 'BradCast' 10/24/24
Also: GOP political terrorism in AZ; Kelly's '9-1-1 call to America'; Trump withheld FEMA disaster aid to WA, CA, GA, UT and MD...
'Green News Report' 10/24/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Record heat, drought, wildfires in Northeast; Climate future depends on Senate majority; PLUS: Biden Administration racing election clock with climate and infrastructure funding...
Previous GNRs: 10/22/24 - 10/17/24 - Archives...
Kelly on Trump: 'Fascist', Admires Hitler, Disrespects Constitution and Disabled Vets: 'BradCast' 10/23/24
Also: Chris Melody Fields Figueredo on more than 150 referendums before voters this year...
Accountability Comes For Rudy, Other Election Deniers: 'BradCast' 10/22/24
Also: Trump flip-flops on NC voting rules; GOP vote supp-ression group targets 'Hispanic-sounding' names...
'Green News Report' 10/22/24
Double whammy in Cuba; Historic rains in NM, France, Bangladesh; Largest, longest ever coral bleaching event; PLUS: Oil lobby preps to overturn Biden climate rules...
Elon Musk's 'Vote Buying' and Lying for Trump: 'BradCast' 10/21/24
Guest: Eddie Perez, former Twitter official and longtime election and voting system expert...
Sunday 'High Anxiety' Toons
THIS WEEK: Neck and Neck ... Foxy Lady ... Enemies Within ... Song and Dance ... And much more! In our latest collection of the week's most nerve-racking toons...
'Green News Report' 10/17/24
Climate change-fueled storms raising insurance prices nationwide; SBA fund runs dry after back-to-back storms; PLUS: SCOTUS allows EPA limits on power plants...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
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VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
(All times listed as PACIFIC TIME unless noted)
Media Appearance Archives...
'Special Coverage' Archives
GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
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Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

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RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
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GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


TONIGHT: L.A. Cty Registrar Dean Logan, Grist's David Robertson
LIVE! 9p-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), Call-in#: 877-520-1150
By Brad Friedman on 7/7/2010 4:50pm PT  

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below.]

It's hump day for my latest week-long sting filling in as Guest Host on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. We'll be BradCasting LIVE all this week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room will again be up and rolling here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by for that as ya listen! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

  • DEAN LOGAN, Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk on his office's report on the six different failures I encountered while trying and failing (again) to vote last June on the county's ES&S e-voting machines, and on his plans for the future to replace the disastrous systems in the country's largest voting jurisdiction.
  • DAVID ROBERTS, Grist.org's climate and energy reporter on the status of federal clean energy legislation, the BP disaster and what cap and trade actually means.
  • PLUS: Whatever else you and I feel like talking about, including your calls at 877-520-1150, tweets to @TheBradBlog and whatever else comes up along the way...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

* * *

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

* * *

POST-SHOW UPDATE: A thinking man (and woman)'s show tonight. I think. Lots to bite off and chew into. Enjoy the audio archives below, and the chat archives below them...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Registrar issues 5-page report, offering explanations for the no-less-than-6 different problems that occurred when I attempted to cast my ballot on the ES&S voting system last month..
By Brad Friedman on 7/7/2010 4:00pm PT  

[Ed Note: L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan was my guest on Wednesday night to discuss this report and its associated issues, as I am guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show again this week. The audio archive of that interview is now posted here. - BF]

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office has issued a 5-page report on the complete failure I experienced while attempting to cast a ballot on the county's electronic voting system during this year's June 8th statewide primary.

The failures that I encountered last month --- as I detailed that night --- mirrored, almost exactly, those that occurred when I attempted to use the very same system, at the very same polling place, during the statewide primary in June of 2008 when the ES&S InkaVote Plus e-voting system that time had misprinted 4 out of 12 of my votes.

This time, it didn't misprint my ballot because I caught the problem --- on two separate machines --- before getting to the point where the system would have printed out my ballot. And this time, just as they concluded after a detailed investigation last time, L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan's office is chalking it up to, essentially, 'human error', in addition to limitations and inadequacies of the e-voting system itself...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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TONIGHT: SC's Judge Vic Rawl, Ernest Canning
LIVE! 9p-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), Call-in#: 877-520-1150
By Brad Friedman on 7/6/2010 3:45pm PT  

[Now UPDATED with audio archives below!]

We're back again tonight filling in as Guest Host on the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show. We'll be BradCasting LIVE all this week from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT). Please join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in!

The LIVE chat room will be up and rolling again here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so come on by for that as ya listen! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

So far scheduled for tonight's show...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates around the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

* * *

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show. Or just see below!...

* * *

POST-SHOW UPDATE: A damned fine show, if I do say so myself. But you'll let me know if I'm wrong. All of it recorded and posted for posterity in audio archives (and even chat archives) below...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Without full transparency and citizen oversight, there is almost no way to root out (election) fraud, as hopefully Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas now understands...
By Brad Friedman on 6/29/2010 4:11pm PT  

"...[W]ithout full transparency of results, this fraud would not have been uncovered." - Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos founder, 6/29/10

There's an interesting bit of news today --- ironically enough, from Daily Kos --- which underscores the importance of citizen access to, and transparency of, election data, at least if anyone ever hopes to be able to root out and/or discover fraud, be it in elections or virtually anything else.

I say "ironically enough," because Daily Kos --- including both its founder Markos Moulitsas and a number of its front-page writers --- have, for years at their site, poo-pooed concerns about election fraud and e-voting by disinforming their readers about the very serious concerns presented by the disastrous election system used in most of the U.S. By marginalizing such concerns as little more than "conspiracy theory," they have continued to ill-serve both their readers' and their own self-interest (that of electing Democrats to office) in the bargain.

More, in a moment, on today's news from Kos himself, accidentally underscoring the long disservice his site has offered to readers on the e-voting front. But first, a personal incident involving hamburgers yesterday also serves to underscore, yet again, a related issue, and why hand-marked paper ballots --- and actually bothering to count them --- is an absolute imperative for Election Integrity...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 6/19/2010 4:35pm PT  

More disturbing news for voters who are forced to rely on the historically dreadful ES&S electronic voting system, this time in Alabama, on the paper-ballot system in Autauga County which uses a computer to tally votes:

PRATTVILLE --- District Attorney Randall Houston is investigating possible voting improprieties in Autauga County after someone allegedly gained improper access to the circuit clerk's computer.

At issue is a vote cast in the name of a Prattville man. His name wasn't on the list of final absentee voters Circuit Clerk Whit Moncrief produced the night before the primary election. After the election, the man's name was on the list as having voted absentee.

Houston said he is confident the veracity of the countywide vote tally hasn't been compromised. Autauga County is a strong Republican county, and news of the recount of the GOP nomination for governor has been front page news for the past two weeks.
...
[Houston said,] "[W]e are in the early stages of the investigation. We have to go where the evidence takes us. We may find other problems as we go forward with this matter."
...
"I ran a final report of all absentee voters the night before the election and this man's name was not on the list," Moncrief said. "From my recollection and the records at my disposal, this man didn't vote absentee. How his name got on the absentee list following the election is beyond me.

"The only thing I can think of is someone tapped into the computer used for absentees from outside my office."

The computer that records absentee information sits beside Moncrief's desk in his courthouse office. Access is double-password protected, and Moncrief said he hasn't given his passwords to anyone. When the problem regarding the security of the system came to light about mid-week, he said that he changed both of his passwords.

[Hat-tip Joyce McCloy of Voting News.]

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Ends U.S. Senate campaign, vows to 'speak out about frail, vulnerable election system'...
By Brad Friedman on 6/18/2010 2:16pm PT  

Judge Vic Rawl just released a public statement on the heels of the SC Democratic Party Executive Board's insane rejection yesterday of his protest to the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen system's announced "victory" of Alvin Greene to be the state's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate. Rawl's statement reads in part:

I wanted you to hear from me that we will not be appealing last night’s decision by the Democratic Executive Committee to reject our protest of the election results. My campaign for the United States Senate has ended.

The issues we raised about the lack of election integrity in South Carolina are real, and they are not going away unless people act. I assure you that I will continue to speak out about our frail and vulnerable election system in the months to come.

Rawl's comments follow on both his own impromptu remarks after yesterday's protest was rejected, and his Campaign Manager Walter Ludwig's barely-contained on-the-record comments following the hearing: "We're certainly disappointed, but the unique circumstances of this election gave us an opportunity to put the specter of voting machines in front of the national public in the strongest way since Bush v. Gore."

As we'll be guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show again for the first week of July, hopefully Rawl and/or Ludwig will be able to join us to explain what the hell happened, what they intend to do about it, and what the hell is wrong with SC's shameful, apparently democracy-hating, Democratic Party Executive Board. (See yesterday's report & live blog of the hearings for all the insane details.)

* * *

Previously related at The BRAD BLOG:

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Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation, with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

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Rejects Judge Vic Rawl's protest in 5 hour hearing with expert testimony on how ES&S voting system failed
Greene not at hearing, presented no case, evidence that election results were accurate...
By Brad Friedman on 6/17/2010 5:53pm PT  

The South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Board rejected Judge Vic Rawl's official protest to the results of last week's U.S. Senate primary, despite no evidence presented that the results were accurate, and despite Alvin Greene having not even shown up to the protest hearing. Rawl had originally filed his protest based, in large part, on the "well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina."

Greene's election as the Democratic party nominee for the U.S. Senate, to run against incumbent Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, stands. The vote of the Executive Board was 38.5 to 7.5 in favor of rejecting Rawl's protest and upholding the results. Not kidding.

The Rawl campaign presented an impressive five-hour case in Columbia today, including two computer scientists and security experts who both asserted that there was no reasonable explanation for election results other than some kind of voting system malfunction in either the hardware or software. Voters testified that they had trouble selecting Rawl on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems, and that their votes were flipped to Greene. Campaign workers testified that they received calls all throughout Election Day concerning problems with the machines and reports that pollworkers were swapping out sensitive memory cartridges.

Despite the historical record of failure of the ES&S voting system, and numerous state-sponsored studies (in state's other than SC) which all found that the systems are poorly coded and exceptionally vulnerable to malicious manipulation, Rawl's team of computer scientists were not allowed access to the voting system hardware and software in order to examine it for bugs or tampering.

Rawl's attorney instructed the Executive Board that they were required to vote on the protest on the basis of whether the evidence presented in the hearing demonstrated the results to be true and accurate or not. No evidence was presented that the results were accurate, only that they were not. Nonetheless, the SC Democratic Party's Executive Board voted resoundingly to reject Rawl's protest, which the candidate has said he will not appeal.

After the motion was rejected, and the meeting adjourned, Rawl quieted the crowd to say a few words (the following is now transcribed directly from the audio)...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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JUST IN: Protest hearing to be streamed LIVE Thursday @ 3pm ET...
By Brad Friedman on 6/16/2010 7:54pm PT  

First, some very good news just in: The hearing for the protest to the results of last week's SC Democratic U.S. Senate primary will be streamed live on Thursday at 3pm ET via Live.VicRawl.com.

The protest will be heard by the Executive Board of the South Carolina Democratic Party to consider Judge Vic Rawl's protest to last week's bizarre election.

Second, I'm happy to say that I have finally been able to make contact with the campaign of former state legislator and Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl. I had a somewhat lengthy conversation earlier today with his campaign manager Walter Ludwig, and continue to be happy to report that it seems they have a very good grasp of the issues at stake --- in relation to the horrific ES&S e-voting system --- in their challenge to the 100% unverifiable election of Alvin Greene in SC's recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary race.

As I noted last night, in discussing Rawl's interview yesterday on Fox, given the sharp learning curve for those unfamiliar with the complex issues involved with e-voting and Election Integrity, they've done an excellent job of getting up to speed, at least inasmuch as possible in the short time they've been forced to become "experts" on the topic.

That, of course, is just another pitfall of using insanely complicated rocket science instead of common sense and eyeballs to add one plus one plus one in our current electoral system. Most candidates with questions about their election results simply can't afford the resources and computer scientists and time needed for the forensic investigation of these systems --- that's if they're even allowed access to the often proprietary trade-secret hardware and software --- following an election and prior to the date by which they must file and argue a legal challenge. That, as opposed to simply examining paper ballots and chain of custody procedures, as would be the case with sane, paper ballot elections.

Ludwig seems to understand just how bad the voting system is that voters were forced to use in SC's recent election, the same system used in dozens of other states despite The BRAD BLOG's best efforts over the past six years to warn of the dangers.

"These machines are incredibly frail and subject to manipulation. They don't work very well." In short, Ludwig told me, "They're crap."...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 6/16/2010 12:53pm PT  

There are a number of points in Andreas Antonopoulos' article at Network World yesterday with which I respectfully disagree (eg. His assertion that counting paper ballots by hand might take longer than with machines, and nuances in regard to his belief that a federal standard for voting machines is the answer, etc.)

But for someone who doesn't cover the unique circumstances of e-voting exclusively or in great detail, he is essentially right on the money in his general assertions about the insane, 100% unverifiable nature of South Carolina's recent primary election. In regard to the questions about Alvin Greene's impossible-to-prove "win" over Judge Vic Rawl for the Democratic nomination to run for U.S. Senate, he writes, among other things:

How have we reached the point where the only way to audit an election is statistics? Why can't we get a robust, audited and validated election result? The simple answer is that we can, but we choose not to.

[T]he best solution is paper and pencil. It is auditable, secure, repeatable, easy and robust.

I note the above today, largely in response to the dead-enders, who I've begun to hear from yet again of late, who describe folks like me as "Luddites" or somehow "against progress". Those who believe that elections ought to be 100% verifiable by the citizenry --- and that any sort of concealed vote counting, electronic or otherwise, is a grave threat to democracy --- are not "Luddites". We are well-informed realists and patriots.

For the record, I spent some ten years of my life making my living as a computer programmer. Network World's Antonopoulos, author of the magazine's "Security: Risk and Reward" blog, is also senior vice president and founding partner at the the IT consulting and research firm, Nemertes Research. And the bulk of the science on which all of my reporting is based, comes directly from the top computer scientists and security experts in the world.

If anyone would like to call us "Luddites", after all of these years being proven right, again and again, on these issues, bring it on. You're only succeed in making yourself appear grossly ill-informed. Or worse.

[My thanks to "HeartlandLiberal" at dKos for bringing the Network World piece to my attention, and, for kicking back a bit at the many horribly dis-informed and mis-informed Kossacks who have been ignoring and/or poo-pooing these issues for years, to their own shame and disservice.]

* * *

Previously related at The BRAD BLOG:

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Interviews on Fox 'News'; Complaints filed with FEC, State AG concerning bizarre Democratic U.S. Senate primary election
UPDATE: Rawl appearance on Hartmann: 'It's about the sanctity of our elections'...
By Brad Friedman on 6/15/2010 9:17pm PT  

Former Circuit Court Judge Vic Rawl's official protest against the results of South Carolina's Democratic U.S. Senate primary election last Tuesday --- when he was purportedly beaten by Alvin Greene, a jobless man who didn't campaign and didn't even have a campaign website --- will focus on what he describes as "systemic issues involving the software of the voting machine," according to the four-term, former state legislator in an interview with Fox "News" today.

The video and transcript of that interview --- in which Rawl displayed a very impressive command of the issues surrounding the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines used in the election --- are posted below. It's well worth reading and/or watching.

But first, Democratic House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) also appeared on Fox today where he said, "I believe there was hacking done into that computer." He later added, that because SC used the type of voting machines that have been decertified by so many other states, "maybe somebody wanted machines that were easily hacked into."

Take a look...

Clyburn's comments are remarkable --- certainly for a currently-serving Democratic official, much less one as high ranking as he is. Perhaps his comments will help change the way the bulk of the mainstream media has been covering this issue to date. They've been looking at everything but the obvious potential for computer failure or manipulation, even though Rawl has been going out of his way to point to it --- as we saw in his remarkable statement announcing his protest of the election results filed yesterday, due, in no small part, to "the well-documented unreliability and unverifiability of the voting machines used in South Carolina."

Since speculating on the accuracy of the results, or lack thereof, is all that most of us can do, given the nature of the type of e-voting system in use in SC which offer zero proof of actual winners and losers, there is certainly every reason to believe the election could have been hacked. The state's woeful ES&S system --- both its voting machines and its central tabulators --- has been shown time and again, in scientific report after scientific report, to be easily manipulated, particularly by a well-placed election insider.

That said, there still remain other less nefarious explanations for the results, and it should also be noted that Clyburn got quite a few of the details --- albeit fairly minor ones in the scope of his main point, if rather important to the rest of the country --- wrong...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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NBC affiliate WBCD reports, inaccurately, that state's ES&S touch-screen voting machines include 'independent paper back up'...
By Brad Friedman on 6/14/2010 8:16pm PT  

The local Charleston, South Carolina, NBC affiliate, WCBD, was hoodwinked by someone; apparently it was the SC Election Commission. In the following report, WCBD's Larry Collins says that he has checked on the claim that "there is no independent paper back up from [South Carolina's] touch machines." He then goes on to inaccurately report, presumably from information given to him by the state election commission, that "there is a paper trail" on the state's ES&S iVotronic voting systems...


Collins' reporting is patently inaccurate.

The pieces of paper seen hanging in the background behind him are end of the day reports or possibly some "poll tapes," printed out after polls close, showing the purported tallies from each machine or precinct. They are not auditable "paper trail" records of voters' votes, and they are not verified in any way, shape, or form by the voter.

Those printouts can say absolutely anything, as printed, including the actual vote counts, erroneous vote counts due to machine malfunction or misprogramming, or, as seen in the following Fox "News" clip, vote counts that have been purposely manipulated by tampering and/or the inclusion of a virus implanted on one of the voting machines' memory cards...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Vic Rawl says inexplicable Democratic primary contest casts 'cloud' over state election; Notes 'irregularities', problem reports from voters, poll workers, vows 'electoral reform', calls for 'full and unblinking investigation of overall integrity' of state's ES&S voting system...
UPDATE: 'Burden of proof' on Rawls. Good luck with that.
By Brad Friedman on 6/14/2010 12:32pm PT  

[UPDATED at end of article.]

A formal challenge to the announced results of South Carolina's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate has now been filed by Judge Vic Rawl, the candidate who wasn't announced the winner by the state's oft-failed, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable ES&S e-voting system.

Rawl released an official statement on his website today, in conjunction with the filing and a press conference he held in Charleston this afternoon.

The statement points generally to a number of findings being made by the campaign as independent experts have analyzed the results, voting patterns and problems being reported by poll workers and voters on Election Day where the unknown, unemployed candidate Alvin Greene defeated Rawl on the unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting systems, performing 11 points better on those machines than he did in the paper-based absentee results. The oft-failed, easily-manipulated ES&S election results reporting system gave Greene a 59% to 41% "victory" over Rawl.

Greene did no campaigning, had no name recognition, had no campaign website, faces felony obscenity charges and managed, somehow, according to the electronic results, to best Rawl, a four-term state legislator to win the nomination to face incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in this November's general election.

We've covered details and analysis of this bizarre matter in two previous articles since last Tuesday's election:

As you'll see below, Rawl's official statement today reads as an indictment of the state's electronic voting system and, frankly, as a summary of years of The BRAD BLOG's oft-ignored reporting (and warnings) about the ES&S e-voting system's disastrously failed record...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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'Something smells here,' finds 538.com, suggesting possibility of 'very devious manipulation' of voting machines or tabulators...
By Brad Friedman on 6/11/2010 8:55pm PT  

This post is an update to our earlier one today, which highlighted early, unexplained disparities seen by academic experts working on behalf of South Carolina Democrats, between paper-ballot absentee voting results and those from the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen systems used on Election Day last Tuesday in South Carolina for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary race between the unheard of, jobless candidate Alvin Greene (who did absolutely no campaigning), and state legislator Vic Rawl (who did).

As we detailed in the previous post, Greene's "victory," thus far, seems to make absolutely no legitimate sense to state Democrats, or anybody else, in truth. The disparities in the voting patterns were described by experts quoted in Politico earlier today as "curious," "staggering," and "red flags," and by Election Integrity experts who we quoted as "clear signs of election fraud." Please read that post first for the full background on this story.

We've already included one update to our previous post, based on a post by Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight.com, a site which focuses on statistical analysis of elections. That post examined the possibility of the race factor in Greene's "win" over Rawl as the former is African American while the latter is white. Schaller's analysis of precinct data in the race, however, as compared to non-white registrants in each, found "no relationship between the race of a county's registrants and Greene's performance in that county," thus largely, but not entirely, ruling out race as an explanation for the bizarre results.

While Schaller had posited four existing possibilities for what "could have happened here" in his original article --- including the possibility of "systematic" election fraud --- he has now filed a follow-up report describing the matter as "getting weirder by the hour." His new piece includes a number of reports from other statistical experts which "suggest tampering, or at least machine malfunction, perhaps at the highest level"...

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'Staggering' disparities seen between Alvin Greene's Election Day touch-screen results and paper-based absentee vote
Will corporate MSM have courage to 'go there'?...
By Brad Friedman on 6/11/2010 1:55pm PT  

[UPDATED twice at end of article.]

Nobody in the South Carolina Democratic Party had ever heard of Alvin Greene, the jobless candidate for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination, before he reportedly defeated state legislator Vic Rawl last Tuesday. That, despite the jobless candidate's lack of actual campaigning, campaign website, or even spending any money on a campaign as far as anyone can tell. And there remain questions at this hour, as to where he even came up with the $10,440 filing fee to get on the ballot in the first place. Greene's interview on MSNBC last night is one of the most bizarre ever seen on television (full video posted at end of article).

Unless something changes between now and November, however, Greene's inexplicable victory will pit him against the state's often-controversial, and far-Rightwing Republican incumbent, Sen. Jim DeMint.

But where some have suggested Greene was a "plant" in the race, experts now examining the actual election result data from both SC's unverifiable Election Day touch-screen machines and its electronically counted paper-ballot absentee voting system are noting "curious" and even "staggering" disparities, suggesting what some Election Integrity experts are describing at this hour as "clear signs of ELECTION FRAUD in South Carolina"...

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No Tea Bagger protests against the courts latest Big Government encroachment?...
By Brad Friedman on 6/10/2010 1:58pm PT  

If you still have any doubts about what this Supreme Court is up to, even after their disastrous Citizens United ruling, yesterday's "emergency order" should now make things crystal clear...

In a burst of judicial activism, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upended the gubernatorial race in Arizona, cutting off matching funds to candidates participating in the state's public campaign finance system. Suddenly, three candidates, including Gov. Jan Brewer, can no longer receive public funds they had counted on to run against a free-spending wealthy opponent.

The court's reckless order muscling into the race was terse and did not say whether there were any dissents, though it is hard to imagine there were not. An opinion explaining its reasoning will have to wait until the next term, assuming it takes the case, but by that time the state's general election will be over and its model campaign finance system substantially demolished.

It seems likely that the Roberts court will use this case to continue its destruction of the laws and systems set up in recent decades to reduce the influence of big money in politics. By the time it is finished, millionaires and corporations will have regained an enormous voice in American politics, at the expense of candidates who have to raise money the old-fashioned way and, ultimately, at the expense of voters.

"Regained," New York Times? Did we miss something? Had the "millionaires and corporations" previously lost their "enormous voice in American Politics"???

Maddow covered some of the details in quickie coverage last night, observing: "It's great news for anyone psyched to get all the riff-raff out of politics so we can get over this whole democracy fantasy and just settle down to being ruled by our economic overlords, like the founding fathers intended."...

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