North Carolina counties which use touch-screen voting systems will now have to post a "Voter Alert" at precincts warning voters about potential problems with the machines following a complaint [PDF] filed in federal court by the state's Republican Party on Friday. The lawsuit, heard today on an expedited basis, was filed after voters in several counties had reported to party officials that their attempts to vote for straight-ticket Republican ballots were flipping on the screen to straight-ticket Democratic ballots.

Those reports of vote-flipping led to the NC GOP issuing a threat late this week to sue the State Board of Elections (BoE) if their demands were not met to order certain precautions be taken at polling places which used the 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems. After the Executive Director for the BoE sent a letter in response to the GOP's demands, downplaying the reported incidents as "isolated" and "no different than ones that must be addressed in every election," the Republican complaint was filed in federal court on Friday afternoon. (The sharp letters back and forth between the state GOP and BoE can be read in our previous report on the NC situation.)

Judge Malcolm Howard tonight also ordered that pollworkers must tell voters to read the printed alert, and that memory cards and other programming materials, records and audit logs from the oft-failed ES&S iVotronic touch-screen DREs must be preserved for examination after the election. Late today, the BoE Executive Director Gary O. Bartlett sent a notice [PDF] to the County Boards of Elections detailing the changes ordered by the federal judge.

The "Voter Alert" to be posted in all precincts using the touch-screen voting systems must read as follows...

Unlike Jan Brewer, who was elevated from Arizona's Sec. of State to Governor by Obama's ill-considered selection of Janet Napolitano from AZ Governor to Director of the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, the state's newly appointed Republican SoS, Ken Bennett seems to have the ability to tell the truth every now and again --- even in the days just prior to a hotly-contested election...

TPM has the full story...

In related previous coverage, we outlined this year's 'GOP War on Democracy' here a few weeks ago, reporting on the various fraudulent "voter fraud" campaigns of Rightwing groups who were busy gearing and ginning them up at the time, by noting, among many other things...

[UPDATE 10/30/10: The North Carolina Republican Party has both filed and won their suit against the State Board of Elections. See details at end of article for more.]

It would have been nice if these guys had spoken up years ago, when the bulk of the Republican Party and their sympathizers were labeling Democrats as "conspiracy theorists" and "sore losers" for their documented complaints of touch-screen voting systems flipping votes on screen to Republican candidates. But better late than never, we suppose.

This afternoon, Legal Counsel for the North Carolina Republican State Executive Committee sent a letter [PDF] to the NC State Board of Elections threatening legal action if their "demands" were not "immediately" met for taking a number of specific actions to mitigate reported touch-screen voting problems describes as "significantly more widespread than the NC GOP initially understood."

The GOP attorney, John E. Branch III writes that the voting system problems should have been addressed prior to the early voting period "and, to the extend they were not, the touch screen systems should have been banned."

The problems in contention are related to reports of the state's ES&S iVotronic e-voting systems reportedly showing votes as flipping from Republicans to Democrats on the screen. The threat from the state GOP comes on the heels of complaints made last week in two different NC counties, Craven and New Hanover. Those reports were a switch from previous years when voters in dozens of states had reported votes flipping largely from Democratic to Republican.

Branch charges that the party has "received word" that similar problems have emerged in "Mecklenburg...Randolph...Cumberland, Wilson, Pender, Forsyth, Lenoir and other counties," which all similarly use the oft-failed, 100% unverifiable ES&S touch-screen voting machines. The same systems are also used in more than a dozen other states...

[Note: This piece was originally written for and published by Truthout earlier this week, prior to escalated, and often breathless, allegations now being made from the Right of "voter fraud!" and "election theft!" by the Reid campaign in NV. Many of those claims are baseless and evidence-free at this time, though some have roots, at least, in legitimacy. The article which follows offers evidence for the legitimacy of some of their claims. But I will try, if time allows, to post another piece soon, separating important fact from irresponsible and even sometimes silly fiction in many of GOP/Fox/Drudge/Breitbart-fueled allegations in NV. - BF]

Sharron Angle should start filing the lawsuits right now. Then again, so should Harry Reid. However, it might be a bit more difficult politically for the Senate majority leader, given the undeserved support Reid has shown in the past for Nevada's 100 percent unverifiable, error-prone, hackable, illegally-certified, electronic voting systems the state forces all voters to use at the polling place.

Given that the Angle/Reid contest in Nevada is likely to be among the closest - and most closely-watched - races for the US Senate this November 2, both parties would be wise to get to court and file for an order to ensure all of the hard drives, flash memory chips and memory cartridges to be used in their electronic voting machines during both early voting and on Election Day are securely retained for 22 months after the election.

The federal law requiring as much, Retention of Voting Documentation (42 USC. 1974 through 1974e), has, however, never been followed in any state to my knowledge, at least in regard to the sensitive memory cards and hard drives from electronic voting systems. Those devices hold both ballot programming and the way the computers have recorded - accurately or not - the way voters have voted. They might also hold the only evidence of any system malfunction or malfeasance. Nonetheless, officials routinely scrub those materials not long after the polls have closed. Key evidence - perhaps the only actual evidence - of how voters had hoped to vote and of any obstruction to that intent, is thereby lost forever.

The voting machine still used across the Silver State - the horrible, hackable, failure-prone Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen voting machines with VeriVote "paper trail" printer add-on - has a storied history. There is also a recent history of very close elections in Nevada. Consequently, both candidates would be wise to bring on experienced Election Integrity experts to advise them in what can and will go wrong with those voting systems this year.

Unfortunately, while Reid seems to have long been in denial about the unverifiability and outright failure of the systems used in his state, Angle has likely been duped into buying into her own party's propaganda about "voter fraud," when the real problem is election fraud ... or just plain failure. Particularly in Nevada ...

From Utah's Daily Herald today...

What could possibly go wrong?!

Well, nothing, according to Scott Hogenson, the either clueless or misleading (or both) Utah County chief deputy clerk-auditor...

Please check out my new piece I filed today at Slate headlined "The Faith-Based Vote." As it's not necessarily about what some may think, I'll note their sub-title: "In many of Tuesday's closes races, states will use those same old, suspect voting machines."

The article details the 100% unverifiable voting systems which will be used to report the "winners" and "losers" of some of the closest and most-watched elections across the country next Tuesday.

Please feel free to leave comments there, Tweet it, Reddit it, Digg it, share it on Facebook and otherwise help them to feel good about carrying more such coverage. Thanks!

UPDATE 10/28/10: Dan Rather describes my Slate piece as "Fascinating (and scary)". Thank you, sir. And for your own similarly fascinating and scary work on these same issues.

[The AK Supreme Court has put a stay on the Superior Court Judge's order. For now. See important update at bottom of article.]

As we've been suggesting in our two previous articles on the issue, the Alaska Division of Election's unprecedented move to supply printed lists of write-in candidates to polling places, purportedly to "assist" voters seeking help, violates state election procedures.

A judge today ruled in favor of the Alaska Democratic Party (ADP), as well as the state Republicans who joined the suit, by issuing a temporary restraining order finding the DoE's practice a "clear violation of Alaska administrative regulation."

We covered the issue over the weekend when it first came up, as letters went back and forth between the ADP, who charged the procedure amounted to "electioneering" inside the polling place, and the DoE, who claimed they were required by state and federal law to provide such assistance to voters.

We covered it again last night, when the DoE responded to our public records request for previous lists of printed write-in candidates by denying the request, since, as DoE Director Gail Fenumiai wrote, "The requested records do not exist."

State Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner agreed that the state's argument "rings hollow", noting, "If it were important 'assistance' for the division to provide voters with lists of write-in candidates, then the division has been asleep at the switch for the past 50 years. The division first developed the need for a write-in candidate list 12 days ago."

The ruling comes as a blow to incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who tossed her hat into the ring as a write-in candidate after her primary loss to the GOP's Joe Miller. Along with Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, a fierce three-way battle has ensued for the open U.S. Senate seat from Alaska. Although it's unclear what leg they have to stand on, the state has said they will appeal Pfiffner's decision ordering the immediate removal of the printed list of "certified" write-in candidates from polling places across the state. The judge also ruled that pollworkers may not mention Murkowski's, or any write-in candidate's name, to voters.

As reported by Erika Bolstad in today's Anchorage Daily News...

After reports of ES&S touch-screen votes flipping away from Republicans, for a change, over the last several days in North Carolina and in Texas, reports are now coming in from Nevada about similar occurrences on that state's Sequoia touch-screens, just in time to underscore the importance of my story published today at Truthout, "Hacking Harry Reid (or Sharron's Angle)" arguing that one or both of the candidates locked in the Silver State Senate Standoff need to get to a court immediately, even though neither of them are likely to do so.

First, the reports of touch-screen troubles today in NV (which closely mirror the scores of reports in the same state that I detailed exclusively in 2008 as affecting Obama and the Democrats during early voting). This time, however, it's Republican voters charging trouble with touch-screens...

Over the weekend we covered the dispute between Alaska's Division of Elections (DoE), who has been handing out printed lists of write-in candidates to early voting sites, and the Alaska Democratic Party (ADP) who says doing so amounts to inappropriate electioneering at the polling place for write-in U.S. Senate candidate Lisa Murkowski in support of her challenge against GOP nominee Joe Miller and the Democrat's Scott McAdams.

The ADP went to court yesterday to file for an injunction, an official told The BRAD BLOG late today. The judge will issue his finding on Wednesday morning. But an admission we received today from Gail Fenumiai, Director of the DoE, may make it more difficult for the state to make their case.

As we detailed Saturday, in letters back and forth between the parties, the Fenumiai has been arguing that the list of candidates --- which reminds voters that Murkowski is running, and shows how to spell her name (a potential matter of dispute when determining which write-ballots should be counted or thrown out) --- is required by state and federal law in order to "to provide assistance to voters in the polling place upon request." She claims "The list of write-in candidates is the best way for poll workers to provide consistent information and assistance to voters if requested, regarding write-in candidates."

In response, ADP attorneys argued "There is no statutory or other legal basis for generating and making available to voters a list of write-in candidates and we are unaware, in the fifty-year history of the state, that such a list has ever previously been generated or used."

Indeed, as other names may be written in on ballots, in addition to those on the list, and the deadline is still open for write-in candidates to file a declaration of intent (giving them certain post-election privileges), the procedure seems legally dubious as well as historically unprecedented as ADP attorneys have charged.

To get to the bottom of it, and to find out if, in fact, the DoE has ever taken such action to "provide assistance" in previous elections, as Fenumiai claims is required by both state and federal law, The BRAD BLOG dashed off a public records request for any similar printed lists of write-in candidate provided to polling places during any previous elections.

This afternoon we received our reply from the DoE's Director, denying our public records request because, as she explains, the DoE has never supplied such a list prior to these 2010 general elections, so there are no records to send in response to our request.

Here's the pertinent part of her response [which is linked in full below]...

I've seen a lot of horrific articles on e-voting in my time. At this point, given all that we've come to learn over the last five years or so about the utter failure of these systems, I usually just ignore such pieces as no longer really worth my time to even point out.

However, Richard Wolf's article last week in USA Today was so spectacularly bad, and so astonishingly unbalanced in favor of e-voting shills and unapologetic proponents who have been proven wrong time and again over the years, that I must take a moment to at least flag it here, given it's length, publication in a prominent, national MSM outlet, and extraordinary lack of a single quote from any real Election Integrity experts or e-voting critics.

Wolf's article, "10 years after Bush v. Gore, new concerns about voting" would better be headlined "10 years after Bush v. Gore, MSM still quoting long-discredited e-voting flacks."

With what appears to be dead seriousness, Wolf reports that ten years after FL 2000, our elections in the U.S. are in much better shape, as he writes: "The verdict? Elections are more accurate: There is less chance that voters will make mistakes, and there are safeguards in case they do."

Mr. Wolf must have been living in a cave from 2000 until just last week. Given the roster of discredited e-voting shills he quotes in the piece, almost exclusively, it's clear he's, at the very least, living in another time, say 2004 or so...

In the summer of 2007 they ran one of the most extraordinary and explosive exposés on the topic we've ever seen. It included absolutely mind-blowing details on ES&S iVotronic touch-screens voting machines (the same ones currently failing in North Carolina and in Texas and being used in about 15 other states this year) and featuring an astonishing segment with seven on-camera employee/whistleblowers from Sequoia Voting Systems charging they were ordered by higher-ups to rig the chads to fail, only in Florida, on the paper ballots their company made for the 2000 election. You can (and should!) watch that remarkable report --- picked up by absolutely nobody in the MSM, incredibly enough --- right here.

This Tuesday, it looks like HDNet's Dan Rather Reports is set to roll another story on hackable e-voting systems. Here's the :30 second teaser for their latest...

The premiere showing will be Tuesday, Oct. 26th @ 8pm and is described this way on HDNet's Dan Rather Report's website:

With all the endless hours (upon hours, upon hours) the network and cable news mainstreamers like Chris Matthews have found to devote to the horse-race and politicking of these elections, you'd think they might be able to find more than just 19 seconds to cover the issue that can be, and so often has been, the deciding factor in so many recent elections. If you'd think that, you'd be wrong. 19 seconds is all Rather got on this weekend's Chris Matthews Show to discuss the topic. [Hat-tip Heather at Crooks & Liars]...

UPDATE 10/27/10: The HDNet folks have responded to pleas to make the episode available for all (even those of us who don't have it on their cable system!). The entire episode is now available here through next Wednesday only! Get it while it's full, free and hot!

Otherwise, it's also available here via iTunes for $1.99 according to Mr. Rather who was nice enough to let me know on the Twitters.

For folks with shorter attention spans, or those who need a little more encouragement, Rather blogs about the episode here, and here's a 2.5 minute video clip featuring the great Frank Heindel, patriot Election Integrity advocate of South Carolina, who is (as he notes in comments below), the one alluded to when the description above says "one American's fight against voting machines in his state."

[Now UPDATED with additional reports of additional vote-flipping and touch-screen failure from other NC counties at bottom of article.]

Aaand the touch-screen voting machines continue to flip votes during the early voting period. Right on schedule. Just as always. But, for the second time this week we have the unusual occurrence of votes reportedly flipping away from the GOP.

Yesterday our report was of a touch-screen in Dallas, TX, caught on video flipping an attempted vote for Republican Gov. Rick Perry to straight-ticket Green Party selections in Dallas, TX.

Today's report, where the local election official is also misleading voters by downplaying the incident, comes from the same type of 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machine, but it took place in Craven County, NC, according to P. Christine Smith of the Sun Journal...

Tyson also went on to report there were long lines reported as voters waited to use the two touch-screen voting machines available at one location (paper ballots don't cause that problem) and, even more disturbingly, "machines reporting 250 ballots cast where 400 voters had signed in to vote."

Well that's a problem, isn't it?...

As you may know, the U.S. Senate race in Alaska between GOP nominee Joe Miller and Democratic nominee Scott McAdams, Mayor of Sitka, has been thrown into what's quickly turning into a potential three-way toss-up with Sen. Lisa Murkowski's write-in bid for the seat.

She and her father have long been insider fixtures within Alaska's political establishment, and so now both the state Democrats' supporter McAdams and Miller's campaign are accusing the Department of Elections, run by the state's Republican Gubernatorial administration, of taking sides to help Murkowski by inappropriately making a printed list of those write-in candidates who have filed a declaration of intent (under AS 15.25.105) available to voters who ask for help at the polling place.

A series of letters back and forth between the Alaska Democratic Party (ADL)'s attorney Joe McKinnon and the Director of the state's Division of Election (DoE)'s Gail Fenumiai highlight a questionable-at-best assertion that the printed list of write-in candidate names should be shown to voters if/when they ask questions about how to cast a write-in vote.

Fenumiai argues that the best way to provide assistance when it's requested, as required by both state and federal law, is by showing voters the list. McKinnon disputes the argument, and offers specific citations of law, demonstrating that the statutes are very specific about what sort of help may or may not be provided to voters at the polling place. He argues that offering the name of a write-in candidate to voters constitutes "electioneering," as specifically barred inside or within 200 ft. of the polling place...

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

Aaaand here we go again. Our first report of touch-screen vote flipping of the year during early voting. And, for an added twist, this time it's Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry who seems to be getting screwed by the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting system in question.

Most such reports of touch-screen vote-flipping or vote-hopping, historically, have been from Democratic voters seeing their votes flip to candidates of other parties, though there have been isolated reports over the years of Republican voters experiencing the very same problem. Indeed, another report has been published today from a voter in Collin County, TX, who says his vote flipped from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill White over to the Republican Perry.

The Dallas incident was posted as a YouTube video by programmer Don Relyea and began to go viral early this morning, before being set to "private," presumably by Relyea, at YouTube a few hours ago. So, unfortunately (for now), we're unable to show the video itself, though we watched it several times this morning before it was made unavailable, and have a step-by-step analysis of precisely what is seen in the video, as detailed by an Election Integrity expert who reviewed it a number of times to explain what is actually seen in it.

The removal of the video, seemingly shot via a cell phone camera, may be due to Texas law barring recording equipment of any kind in polling places. Dallas County Elections Administrator Bruce Sherbert told The BRAD BLOG that he has now referred the matter to the District Attorney for investigation, not due the purported incident of vote-flipping, but rather due to Relyea's video-taping of the event.

Sherbert's explanation for what is seen in the video, however, downplays the purported problem and does not appear to sync up with what is actually seen in the video supporting Relyea's contention that his attempted vote for Perry was being inappropriately flipped to a number of Green Party candidates on the ES&S iVotronic system...

It's getting incredibly difficult to keep up with the amount of The Crazy out here of late. So here is a very quick round-up of the latest today (so far)...

• She Did What?!: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' activist Tea Bagger wife --- and, apparently, long-term denialist --- Virginia leaves a voice message to Anita Hill asking her to apologize for Hill's accusations, twenty years ago, that she was sexually harassed by Thomas. Hill's attorney was "shocked" by the call. In 2007, in a New York Times op-ed, as we noted at the time, Hill said she stood by her testimony. Hill repeated the sentiment again today, saying she has "no intention of apologizing because I testified truthfully about my experience and I stand by that testimony," as WaPo reports on yet another woman who knew Thomas back then coming forward today to say "The Clarence I know was certainly capable not only of doing the things that Anita Hill said he did, but it would be totally consistent with the way he lived his personal life then."

• Kreepy Scam: Matt Osborne from Osborne Ink notices our report on the insane email from Gary Kreep, Esq, Executive Director of the group calling themselves "United States Justice Foundation", sent out to the Tea Bag set on Monday, warning that ACORN is "still alive and ready to steal the November 2 elections" with "MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD". (Never mind that the org has been knocked out of business by the O'Keefe/Breitbart/MSM "pimp" hoax, and that they've never been shown to have stolen even one vote, much less an entire election.) Osborne tweets to us that Kreep is the same cretin who actually aired an Obama Birther Infomercial asking viewers to send him money for...something or other. He's doing the same thing in his latest ACORN "voter fraud" email scam.

• More Birther/Voter Fraud Fraudster Connections: TPM picks up on Mother Jones' report that the so-called "voter integrity program" discussed by Illinois' GOP candidate Mark Kirk on a recorded phone call "was launched by the Illinois Republican Party, working with a conservative political action committee and an anti-Obama birther". Without evidence for the claim, Kirk had cited two predominately African-American areas of Chicago as "vulnerable" and "where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat."

• He's back!: And speaking of phony "voter fraud" allegations, we reported some weeks ago on the Houston group calling themselves "King Street Patriots" and their "True the Vote" campaign warning about, as usual, massive Democratic voter fraud!!! (Sans evidence to support the actual claim, naturally). Their call to draft "poll watchers" has now reportedly led to voter intimidation charges such as "poll watchers 'hovering over' voters, 'getting into election workers' faces' and blocking or disrupting lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots" as early voting has opened in Houston where a fire recently destroyed all 10,000 of their 100% unverifiable e-voting machines (don't worry, they borrowed more from neighboring counties). The DoJ has now been called in to investigate the complaints. But, as it turns out, one of the folks supposedly responding to the complaints of voter intimidation on behalf of the county attorney's office is none other than John Tanner, George W. Bush's disgraced Voting Section Chief at the DoJ. Tanner was forced to step down from his post after The BRAD BLOG, in 2007, infamously caught him, on video, downplaying concerns of racial discrimination and intimidation at the polls by telling folks at an L.A. seminar that white people are more likely to be disenfranchised because "minorities...die first". He looks to be making a similar "both sides do it" play now in Houston, telling TPM "There are a lot of allegations out there on both sides." Really? Where are the complaints of voter intimidation by Democratic poll watchers in Houston? None have so far been reported, but we'll try to get more info on this.

• Uhhhh...: Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)'s opponent, businessman Ron Johnson has a "deer in the headlights moment", caught on tape, during an interview with the Green Bay Press-Gazette editorial board when he was asked what he plans to do to bring back jobs for the middle class. He can't think of anything other than cutting government spending and freezes up when asked for more specifics. The moment helped lead to the paper's endorsement of Feingold for the first time ever (previously, they've always endorsed his opponent.)

• Mythgivings: If you missed it in yesterday's Green News Report, WV's GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate, in a debate Monday, discussed "the myth...and I say myth, that there is Global Warming." His Democratic opponent in the coal state, Gov. Joe Manchin, while not necessarily believing GW is "a myth", none the less ran a campaign ad last week displaying his manliness by shooting a hole, literally, through "Cap and Trade" legislation (which had been killed months ago anyway in the U.S. Senate.)

• Louder Than Words: Obama's Dept. of Justice appeals for an "Emergency Stay" of the Federal Judge's recent order for a "worldwide injunction" on the military's unconstitutional "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. This comes after Obama has repeatedly claimed he will end the policy "on [his] watch"; after the Military instructed recruiters yesterday to begin accepting openly gay applicants; and after Arabic translator Lt. Daniel Choi --- who had been discharged from the military for being gay --- walked into the Times Square recruiting office yesterday to sign up again (great video there, btw! Choi says there was plenty of "unit cohesion" in the office, even after his application to serve his nation openly.)

• Man in the Mirror: Glenn Beck, The Crazy personified, says the idea of evolution is "ridiculous" because he hasn't "seen a half-monkey, half-person yet". Sigh...

Seeing more of The Crazy out there? Let us know about it in comments.