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Experts Begging Diebold to 'Come Back to Reality, Secure Nation's Voting'
Is that the Diebold Secret Source Code that Arrived in my Mail Today?
By Alan Breslauer on 10/22/2006 10:50pm PT  

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Diebold's "system is utterly unsecured," said cyber-security expert Stephen Spoonamore in the online print version of ABC World News' report on Sunday Night.

Spoonamore continued, "The entire cyber-security community is begging them to come back to reality and secure our nation's voting."

With the election only 16 days away, ABC World News worries "about another Florida style ballot fiasco" in tonight's e-voting segment. One major concern, it seems, is that e-voting machine maker Diebold's source code is turning up in random mail boxes, as The BRAD BLOG reported last Thursday. Yet, despite this latest revelation coming on the heels of a Princeton study evidencing the ease in which Diebold machines could be hacked, Diebold maintains everything is peachy.

-- ABC's Video report here...
-- ABC's printed report (with additional details) here...

UPDATE FROM BRAD 9:22pm PT:

We're delighted to see that ABC News has finally decided that there is a story here worth reporting. Wish they had come on board long ago. In any case, the print version of their story, written by Jake Tapper, Rebecca Abrahams and Eduardo Sunol, has several notable details above and beyond the video report. In addition to the comments from Spoonamore above, there's this...

Diebold, the company that makes the voting machines, told ABC News, "These discs do not alter the security of the Diebold touch-screen system in any way," because election workers can set their own passwords.

But ABC News has obtained an independent report commissioned by the state of Maryland and conducted by Science Applications International Corporation revealing that the original Diebold factory passwords are still being used on many voting machines.

The SAIC study also shows myriad other security flaws, including administrative over-ride passwords that cannot be changed by local officials but can be used by hackers or those who have seen the discs.

The report further states that one of the high risks to the system comes if operating code discs are lost, stolen or seen by unauthorized parties --- precisely what seems to have occurred with the discs sent to Kagan, who worries that the incident indicates the secret source code is not that difficult to obtain.

"Certainly, just tweaking a few votes in a couple of states could radically change the outcome of our policies for the coming year," she said.

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News-Journal Says Curtis is 'Independent Thinker', 'Prepared Well' to Serve Florida's 24th Congressional District
Feeney's Record, Refusal to Discuss Issues 'Gives Voters Reason to Look for a Better Choice'
By Brad Friedman on 10/21/2006 10:30pm PT  

(Blogged on the road by Brad from the Bioneers Conf. in Marin, CA)

It was one thing when Daytona Beach News Journal endorsed computer programmer turned vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis over his Democratic primary opponent (whom Curtis thumped in that race).

It's quite another thing --- a coup, in fact --- that now the News Journal has endorsed Curtis over the powerful sitting U.S. Congressman and former Florida Speaker of the House, the corrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), in their race for the U.S. House seat in Florida's 24th district.

Feeney, of course, is Jeb Bush's former gubernatorial running mate, the man who promised to deliver Florida's electoral vote to George W. during the 2000 fiasco no matter what the Supremes had to say, the only so-far unindicted Congressman to have gone with Jack Abramoff on a paid golf trip to St. Andrews, Scotland, and the man whom Curtis accused --- via affidavit, video-taped Congressional testimony, and lie-detector test --- of commissioning a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

Shamefully, Feeney has done little more than mount a disgraceful smear campaign against Curtis, attempting to paint him as "crazy" and not fit for office. The campaign seems only to have highlighted Feeney's own lack of seriousness as a legislator; one fit more for prison than the U.S. House of Representatives.

The News Journal's complete endorsement of Clint Curtis seems to bear that out, to Feeney's eternal disgrace. Here's a few snippets...

Curtis has prepared well to serve Dist. 24

Clint Curtis, a former Republican who switched parties to challenge U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Oviedo, offers voters in the 24th congressional district a real --- and better --- choice.
...
Feeney is not really talking issues in this campaign, though, choosing to focus largely on denigrating his opponent. It would appear that Feeney assumes that being Republican is enough.
...
Curtis, however, has gone beyond the personal battle between Feeney and himself. He has defined his positions clearly: He supports energy independence and development of a constantly renewable energy supply. He favors a single no-fault universal health plan. He would like to see a renewal of the space race and stronger support for NASA.

Feeney's record gives voters reason to look for a better choice.
...
Curtis is a novice at politics, but he is an independent thinker who demonstrates his ability to serve the public by thoroughly studying issues and developing well-thought-out and imaginative stands.

· RECOMMENDATION: Clint Curtis for U.S. House, District 24.

...

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com
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What the U.S. Media Didn't Tell You
By Alan Breslauer on 10/21/2006 10:35am PT  

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

mexico vote graph

With the US election looming, Kenneth Anderson revisits the recent Mexican presidential election for the November/December issue of The Humanist (go directly to PDF).

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ALSO: State Report Finds Sensitive Voter Registration Database Vulnerable to 'Across-the-Board Access'
Diebold, State Election Director Lamone Continue State of Denial...
By John Gideon on 10/19/2006 8:42pm PT  

Guest Blogged by John Gideon (with additional snark provided by Brad Friedman)

The Washington Post is reporting in Friday editions that the FBI is investigating the "possible theft" of Diebold electronic touch-screen voting system source code in Maryland.

While the Maryland State Board of Elections admits that the disks contained "the software...used in Maryland in the 2004 elections," Diebold denies everything. Of course. They gave their catch-all apologia --- the software is for "versions...that are no longer in use in Maryland" --- although they were forced to acknowledge "the version of one program apparently stored on the disks is still in use in 'a limited number of jurisdictions.'"

The disks feature logos from Ciber Inc. and Wyle Labratories, Inc., two labs that test voting machines and software (sort of) for Diebold. Both firms deny the disks are theirs.

According to the article...

The disks delivered to [ex-Delegate Cheryl C.] Kagan's office bear labels indicating that they hold "source code" --- the instructions that constitute the core of a software program --- for Diebold's Ballot Station and Global Election Management System (GEMS) programs. The former guides the operation of the company's touch-screen voting machines; the latter is in part a tabulation program used to tally votes after an election.

Three years ago, Diebold was embarrassed when an activist obtained some of its confidential software by searching the Internet. The company vowed to improve its security procedures to prevent another lapse.

The release of such software poses a risk, computer scientists say, because it could allow someone to discover security vulnerabilities or to write a virus that could be used to manipulate election results."

WaPo goes on to report...

The Washington Post obtained copies of the disks Wednesday and allowed Avi Rubin, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, along with a colleague and a graduate student, to review the software on the condition that they make no copies of it.

"I would be stunned if it's not real," Rubin said.

Rubin, who has said that electronic voting systems that do not produce a paper record of each vote cannot be secured, led a team that produced an analysis that pointed out security vulnerabilities in the Diebold software found on the Internet in 2003.

Sam Small, the graduate student, said the version of Ballot Station "was consistent with what we've seen previously." Small could not gain access to the GEMS software because the material on two of the disks was protected by a password."

...

The Diebold statement said "it would take years for a knowledgeable scientist" to break the encryption used on the software apparently contained on the disks delivered to Kagan. But Rubin said "the data and files were not encrypted" on the Ballot Station disk he reviewed.

So will Diebold just continue to deny that anything has happened or can happen? Will MD State Election Director Linda Lamone just pass on Diebold disinformation as she always does (despite knowing better...since she's seen the unredacted scientific reports on these systems from security organizations like SAIC and RABA?) Or will someone finally understand that this is a massive problem that needs immediate attention?

Maryland, along with Georgia, was one of Diebold's original "showcase states," implementing Diebold's hackable paperless touch-screen voting across virtually the entire state since 2002. With failure after failure, we might add.

If it's all not bad enough, in what is reported by WaPo as "an unrelated development" in the same article, a new report from Maryland state auditors revealed that the state's new voter registration database does not have proper security controls in place for access to the data...

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

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BRAD BLOG FRONT PAGE: They're Not 'Glitches', And They're Not the Fault of the Poll Workers! Stop Blaming Them!
By Brad Friedman on 10/19/2006 2:40pm PT  

On the same day as NYTimes front paged a story on the coming electoral meltdown. Chicago Trib follows suit in a front pager today that focuses on massive problems in Chicago and Cook County.

Like the Times, who modified their original headline yesterday shortly after publishing to refer to "Voting Woes" instead of "Voting Chaos" as it was originally described, the Trib turns backflips to downplay the concerns, blame as much as possible the poll workers and "human error," along with "glitches" and "hiccups," instead of placing blame where it squarely deserves to be placed: on the Voting Machine Companies and the Elections Officials who approved this garbage for use in our elections.

The headline is "Voting Glitches Feared on Nov. 7," but as a close reading of the article reveals, these are not "voting glitches." They are not even "glitches." They are FAILURES of the voting machine companies and elections officials. Period. End of story. Got that?

The story rightly refers to "a virtual meltdown" in last spring's primary in Chicago and Cook County, and goes on to add that vote totals can be completely fried...

[I]t will still be possible for workers to accidentally fry vote totals if they forget to disconnect the power from ballot scanners before data cartridges are removed at the end of the night.

"We don't want you to erase any of the memory," warned Gail Weisberg, Cook County's equipment manager/coordinator, during a training class last week in Hoffman Estates.

So vote totals can be entirely "fried" and yet we're actually using this system on November 7th?! Moreover, note the language above that says it's "possible for workers" to fry the vote totals. Instead of the more appropriate, "it's possible that the poorly designed systems could have their entire vote totals fried."

As I've gotta hit the road to head up North for speaking engagements and meetings over the next several days, and as things are now melting down all around us, as predicted --- with some 20 days left until Nov. 7th --- my patience is just about worn thin with the apologists, liars, and those journalists, "advocates," and public officials who have no excuse to claim ignorance anymore.

So I hope you'll pardon the more graphic language I feel compelled to use below...

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

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'New Machines, Long Lines, Confusion'...
UPDATE: Times Replaces Word 'Chaos' With 'Woes' in Headline!
By Brad Friedman on 10/18/2006 5:33pm PT  

Nice of New York Times to start paying attention...now that it's too late to do much of a damn thing about it.

FLASHING now at DRUDGE REPORT...

NYT: BE PREPARED FOR CHAOS ON ELECTION DAY; NEW MACHINES, LINES, CONFUSION
Wed Oct 18 2006 19:12:07 ET

With an unusually large number of tight races and dozens of states shifting to new electronic voting systems, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines and heightened confusion at the polls on Election Day, Nov. 7, the NEW YORK TIMES will front on Thursday.

"North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Mississippi and Missouri are among the states considered most likely to experience difficulties, according to voting experts who have been tracking the new technology and other election changes.

Developing...

UPDATE 7:35pm PT: Complete NYTimes story now up. "New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Chaos". It's well worth a read!

FURTHER UPDATE BY JOHN GIDEON 9:00pm PT: The story reveals that many of the voting machines now being used in Yolo Co, California for voters with disabilities only work in Vietnamese. These machines are only being used in the county because SoS McPherson and his staff unfairly denied certification to Vote-PAD which was supposed to be used in that county.

FURTHER UPDATE BY BRAD 9:20pm PT: Looks like the NY Times, who hasn't done much of any reporting on this topic up until now has had second thoughts already. The original headline discussed "...Voting Chaos" but has now been softened to "...Voting Woes". I've got my money on "chaos", not "woes" this November. It's a shame they've backed off. They were so close to telling the truth. Sigh...

FURTHER UPDATE BY JOHN 8:10am PT: While my 'UPDATE' from last night says many machines only worked in Vietnamese the article actually says 'some machines' and I have now found that, in fact, 3 machines were affected. My apologies for the incorrect wording.

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Whistleblower-Turned-Congressional Candidate's Story Told as Part of Film on Citizen Patriots Fighting to Save Democracy
'Crazy' Smear by Curtis' Opponent, Feeney --- the Man He Says Asked Him to Create Election Flipping Code in Florida --- Continues to Shame Corrupt Congressman...
By Brad Friedman on 10/17/2006 6:47pm PT  
"I grew up thinking you're supposed to do the right thing. And that's what I do. I'll do it until someone makes it so that I can't."

-- Clint Curtis, software programmer, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional Candidate (FL-24), in the new e-voting documentary Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System.

An enormous number of superb documentary films that cover the topic of our American electoral meltdown are being released. Last week, I quickly ran a preview item on HBO's Hacking Democracy --- premiering Nov. 2nd on HBO --- which gives a first-hand account of the detective story as it has unravelled over the last three years concerning the many lies of the Diebold corporation. I've now seen the final cut and will have more details on that extraordinary film soon.

In the meantime, I was thrilled recently to get a look at David Earnhardt's breathtaking Eternal Vigilance: The Fight to Save Our Election System documentary, which tells the story of America's crumbling democracy and a few of the citizen patriots across the country who are attempting to save it.

Along with a focus on some of those folks, the film's emphasis is on the impossibilities which seem to have occurred in the tainted 2004 Presidential Election and the likes of which we may look forward to in the weeks and years ahead.

Earnhardt's film draws a great deal from a series of speeches and interviews filmed in April of 2005 during a National Election Reform Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.

I participated as a speaker at several events during that conference, as did computer programmer, whistleblower, and former lifelong Republican Clint Curtis who had, at the time, yet to even dream of running against a very close friend of the Bush clan, the corrupt U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) --- the very man Curtis has alleged asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype when they both worked for the same Oviedo, Florida, software firm in 2000.

Curtis left the Republican party after being soured on them vis-a-vis his direct experiences with Feeney.

Earnhardt was kind enough to share with The BRAD BLOG the section of the film which introduces the basics of Curtis' vote-rigging claims about Feeney. It's a beautifully done segment --- and not just because it includes interviews with me as well, but it doesn't hurt! --- which should go a long way towards allowing folks to decide whether Curtis is "crazy" as Feeney's reprehensible smear campaign and website against him is hoping to trick voters into believing now that they've become Congressional opponents.

Here's the clip (about 8 mins) from Earnhardt's film which I found to be finally as uplifting and hopeful as it was maddening and heartbreaking. The entire film can be purchased on DVD at the website www.EternalVigilance.us where additional clips from the film are also available.


NOTE: There is yet another documentary, still in the works, wholly devoted to the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises, Inc., vote-rigging scandal and The BRAD BLOG's so-far two-year long investigation and reporting of it. That films goes into considerably more detail on the entire breadth of the allegations (including the Chinese spying, the mysterious death of the Florida Inspector General who was investigating Curtis' claims, etc.). We hope to have details and, perhaps a short preview from that film soon as well.

Please pass the permalink to this article far and wide to help counter the hundreds of thousands of corporate PAC and RNC dollars that Feeney is using in his shameless attempt to discredit Curtis.

While you're at it, if you'd like to help unseat Feeney, one of the most corrupt members of Congress, please donate to Curtis' citizen-funded campaign. We've spoken to him recently, and he continues to be upbeat about his chances, but while the national Dems have still failed to help his campaign (as with so many others across the country), it's up to the people to help someone who will fight for electoral integrity get into the U.S. Congress!

(Hat-tip Hotpotatomash for help with the video!)

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com

The publicity email sent to us this morning from filmmaker David Earnhardt follows in full...

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

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'Never Mind the Mountains of Technical Disasters, Make Sure Voters Have a Driver's License!'
By Brad Friedman on 10/16/2006 11:09am PT  

Over on dKos, diarist "histopresto", a new Ohio "Precinct Election Official" in-training, shares his first-hand account of his recent training session.

Not only was he stunned to hear of the meltdown the state experienced with its new voting equipment during their May primary (psst, histo, I know Markos doesn't find such things important, but we do, so maybe that's part of why "it wasn't publicized" as you mentioned...It certainly was over here at The BRAD BLOG!), but after he details all of the primary election problems he came to learn about, he adds "Amazingly enough, after all of these technical problems were addressed by various fixes, the big thing that was stressed by the trainer had NOTHING to do with voting machines. Instead, they spent most of their time talking about the new VOTER ID requirements that people are going to be encountering this November."

Sigh...He goes on to report:

The new state Voter ID law is so flawed that the BOE has determined that these documents are NOT acceptable ID to vote, typically because they don't have an address: Social Security card, Birth Certificate, Home/Car Insurance Card, Military ID, US Passport, State Employee ID, College ID, Notices from the BOE. Thanks to Ohio House Bill 3, a parting gift from the Ohio Republican Party, it is now easier for an American citizen to enter the United States from a foreign country than it is to vote in the State of Ohio.

Check out the full report...

(Hat-tip emailer Sharon A.)

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The Revolving Door Seems To Be Working Fine For Ex-Insiders as Thousands in Campaign Contributions to the Commission Chair from Old Friends Ensure Diebold's Premier Local Outfit Gets the County Contract!
State Election Integrity Advocates Issue News Release With Some Superb Reporting That Seems to Have Eluded the Local Mainstream Media!
By John Gideon on 10/13/2006 3:33pm PT  

Yesterday the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project (IBIP) issued a press release that is, as I explained to Brad Friedman, "un-freaking-believable". The DuPage County chapter of IBIP has been hard at work tracking cronyism and favoritism on the part of DuPage County, IL Election Commission Chairman J.P. "Rick" Carney in his dealings with Diebold Election Systems representatives from Fidlar Elections and Liberty LLC.

Kudos to IBIP for some great reporting!

The complete "un-freaking-believable" press release follows below...

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

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No Wonder Hearne's Phony GOP Front-Group, ACVR, Didn't Want to See the Report Released
They're Named Three Times as the Only Group Forwarding the 'Voter Fraud' Bullshit!
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 2:57pm PT  

Following up on our Wednesday coverage of the four- month-old report on "Voter Fraud," which the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) refused to release when they discovered the report points to just how little such fraud actually occurs. The facts don't lie, despite the loathesome high-level GOP/Team Bush operatives who call themselves the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights' (ACVR), and their ongoing disingenuous and well-funded efforts to establish that voter fraud is rampant, perpetrated almost exclusively by Democrats, and must be cured by disenfranchising and unconstitutional Photo ID requirement laws at the polls (although not for absentee or military balloting, of course).

We've now had a chance to review the unreleased report [PDF] in full. It's just twelve pages. But it slams the notion that there is any massive problem in America with "Voter Fraud", despite ACVR's continuing campaign to suggest the problem is an epidemic --- versus all of the many other forms of disenfranchisement that really do occur and really do threaten our democracy.

"There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud," the report explains, "or at least much less than is claimed, including voter impersonation, 'dead' voters, noncitizens voting and felon voters."

The report singles out ACVR as the only named proponent of the discredited notion that voter fraud is plaguing the country --- ACVR is ignominously named as dissenting three times in the report! --- so it is little wonder they didn't want this report to see the light of day.

ACVR's main perpetrator and Democracy-Hater-in-Chief, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne II, was actually a part of the "working group" assembled for this report. Notably, Hearne failed yet again to mention that he was the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. in his bio at the end of the report.

Similarly, Hearne withheld that information in his testimony on behalf of ACVR during now-disgraced Rep. Bob Ney's U.S. House Adminstration Committee hearing in March of 2005. ACVR was the only "Voting Rights" group invited to discuss the travesties of Election 2004. He testified only that he was a "longtime advocate of voter rights" and must have just forgotten to mention his Bush/Cheney connections...or that the ACVR had been formed just three business days prior to the hearing!

The EAC's buried report points to problems not with voter fraud, but instead with minority voter intimidation, improper purging of registration rolls, dirty tricks, and all sorts of things that the loathesome ACVR con-men have spent enormous amounts of money trying to smoke-screen, via propaganda reports hoping to fool America into believing that double-voting, dead people voting, and non-citizens voting is the real threat to democracy.

It's not. But anti-American monsters like Thor Hearne definitely are.

The biggest problem, the EAC's unpublished report finds, is absentee ballot fraud; a problem that is decidedly not addressed in any way by the despicable Photo ID laws that Hearne and friends have been promoting in statehouses around the country. He and his evil compatriots were even able to convene a phony "blue-ribbon" panel last year on Election Reform, chaired by Bush Family crony James A. Baker, in order to endorse the call for a national Photo ID requirement at the polls. (Who better to lead an Election Reform panel than the man who went to the U.S. Supreme Court in order to keep voters from having their votes counted in Florida in 2000?!)

Apparently snake-oil salesman Hearne was unable to fool the rest of the folks working on the EAC report into believing he wasn't utterly full of shit (as previously reported in exacting detail by The BRAD BLOG.)

Consider this embarrassing ACVR moment from the EAC's buried report...

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

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'Candorville' Skewers 'Liebold' and the Mainstream Media...
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 12:25pm PT  

Kudos, btw, to Candorville cartoonist Darrin Bell, who has had his sharp eye on this issue for a while. His strip is widely syndicated (it's in our copy of LA Times for one), so his coverage of "Liebold" should be receiving quite a few eyeballs today.

He contacted us this morning to alert us to today's toon, along with the promise that "there will be more to this storyline as the election approaches."

He asks that we also point folks to the main Candorville website. We're happy to oblige!

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Main Smear Website Remains, But Blog Featuring Unsubstantiated Attacks, Lies --- Initially Posted Without 'Paid for by Feeney' Disclaimer --- Now Removed, Redirected!
Hapless, Corrupt Congressman's Sad Attempt at Discrediting Whistleblower Curtis Continues to Backfire...
By Brad Friedman on 10/13/2006 6:35am PT  

Poor, poor, corrupt, ethically-challenged, morally bankrupt Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff). Can't even run a smear campaign without getting into trouble, screwing it up and seeing it backfire.

As we reported several weeks ago, the feckless Florida Republican launched a "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear website and blogsite, to attack his whistleblower-turned-congressional opponent with doctored photos and doctored facts.

The Tom Feeney for Congress Campaign's shameful tactics continue to fizzle, apparently, as they have been forced to remove their smear blogsite, which had been set up on blogger.com to attack Curtis. The removal of the site, and the link to it from the main smear-site, comes not a moment too soon: we had planned to run an item on Feeney's latest demonstrable lie, which we had noticed was recently posted on the smear blog. The blog, which had been at CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com is now redirected to an innocuous search page, with no trace left behind.

In a blog item Feeney posted on the site --- before he "disappeared" it --- he charged that an article published in Hustler about the mysterious 2003 death of Raymond Lemme "was based on the delusions of Clint Curtis's murder conspiracy theory," or some such nonsense.

As it was "we," Brad Friedman, who actually wrote the article in question [PDF], we can tell you that it was based on nothing of the sort. It was based on the mysterious and still unexplained circumstances surrounding Lemme's death, which the Valdosta, GA police had initially ruled a suicide, but then later reopened the investigation after The BRAD BLOG reported on an affidavit filed by Curtis. Curtis alleged that his former employer YEI had harbored Chinese illegal aliens spying for China (later confirmed), overbilled on state contracts (later confirmed), and that Feeney, who also worked for the firm as lobbyist and attorney --- while simultaneously serving as Speaker of the Florida House --- had requested Curtis to create a software vote-rigging prototype (not yet confirmed, but similarly not disproven.)

Lemme was an investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office, looking into the charges Curtis originally filed with the state of Florida in early 2001. In his sworn affidavit, Curtis says that Lemme told him in June of 2003 that his final report was almost complete, and that he'd found the corruption "went all the way to the top." Two weeks later, Lemme was found dead in Valdosta, Georgia.

Our story on Lemme's death detailed the many contradictions between the official police report and the unearthed photographs of the death scene --- photographs which the police report originally stated were taken at the scene but unavailable, due to a "failure in the camera's flash memory cards."

And now, Feeney has scrubbed the smear blogsite altogether, in what appears to be the latest misstep in the Congressman's bizarre and shameful campaign.

Previous follies in Feeney's smear campaign include (but are not limited to):

  • Using hit song "Crazy", by Gnarls Barkley, without permission on the smear website. Feeney removed it after complaints from the record publisher.
  • Linking to a "How to Make a Tinfoil Hat" website. This prompted the owner to redirect his page --- when clicked from Feeney's smearsite --- to an ethics watchdog webpage detailing Feeney's lobbyist- and foreign agent-funded vacations in violation of Congressional ethics rules. (Feeney is the only, as-yet-unindicted Congressman remaining in the House to have traveled with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to a posh golf resort in Scotland.) Feeney removed the link a day or two later.
  • Failing to include "Paid for by Tom Feeney" on the smear blogsite. He recently added the disclaimer after a complaint was filed with authorities.
  • Creating a wacky 9/11 Conspiracy Theory concerning Curtis. Disproven by the very evidence Feeney used to make it.
  • A smear campaign mailing featuring doctored photos of Curtis and a Hustler magazine cover, sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters. A local mom was angered at having to explain the "smut" campaign literature to her 9 year old son, who picked up the mail. Local news stations covered the misstep.
  • All of this from a man who issued a news release in the early morning hours after Curtis's landslide victory in the Florida primary. Quoth Feeney: "Serious times demand serious leaders and Curtis is not even in the same solar system as the rest of us."

    Really? Which solar system are you in, Mr. Feeney? We're still waiting for your "serious" leadership, or at least a serious campaign on both the issues and allegations.

    For his part, Curtis recently issued a press release calling on Feeney to explain what he knew of Florida colleague Mark Foley's sexual predator issues and when he knew about them. As a GOP Deputy Whip in the U.S. House, Feeney is a part of the Leadership who had been reportedly made aware of Foley's predilections long before the information was publicly revealed.

    So far, Feeney has refused to comment on the record, to our knowledge, concerning the Foley matter.

    He has also refused to take a polygraph test concerning Curtis's allegations and has denied, but not answered to, them. Curtis, who gave an account of the remarkable story in video-taped sworn testimony to a Congressional panel in late 2004, successfully passed such a polygraph on his own in early 2005.

    For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
    The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
    - A Quick Summary of the story so far.
    - An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
    - Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
    To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com
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    Website Guarantees Results at the Polls Through New Technology...
    But Only in E-Voting Jurisdictions...
    By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2006 11:35am PT  

    So what shall we make of this?...

    Among several of many interesting points on the website...

    Winning Elections
    The future of election management is today's reality. Election Consultants delivers results - guaranteed.
    ...
    Outdated Methods
    Ineffective strategists, costly marketing and unreliable polls have been a mainstay for centuries of election campaigning. Over hundreds of years, virtually no substantial improvements have been achieved in the reliability of election outcomes... until now.
    ...
    Guaranteed Results
    Election Consultants is so confident in our ability to secure a desirable outcome for your next election, that we guarantee complete satisfaction. If any individual precinct covered by our services fails to deliver promised results, then all service fees will be waived.

    EXCLUSION: Guarantee does not include precincts that use non-electronic voting equipment. Click on Technology for a list of supported electronic voting equipment

    ...And much more. Well, what will they think of next?

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    Landmark Documentary Will Feature Exclusive Footage of First Known Hack of Diebold Optical-Scan Voting System!
    Investigative E-Voting Fraud Film --- Three Years in the Making --- to Debut on Cable Channel Nov. 2nd!
    By Brad Friedman on 10/11/2006 6:35am PT  

    Think things have gotten bad for Diebold and friends? Something tells us they're about to get a whole lot worse.

    HBO has just announced that they will be debuting Hacking Democracy, the long-awaited documentary film by Simon Ardizzone, Robert Carrillo Cohen and Russell Michaels, on November 2nd --- just days before millions of Americans will head to the polls to use all-new untested, inaccurate, hackable, electronic voting systems for the first time.

    The BRAD BLOG received the first press release issued by HBO on this film late yesterday; it's posted in full at the end of this item.

    We've yet to see the final version of the eagerly anticipated film (though we're told a screener is headed our way) but we've spent hours of time in conversation over the last year or two with both Michaels and Cohen as the pieces --- and the evidence --- were coming together.

    We're told there are some remarkably damaging revelations to be seen --- and heard --- in the film, which includes not just interviews with Elections Officials, Computer Scientists, Security Experts, and Diebold Spokesliars, but loads of on-the-scene, first-hand documentary footage of some of the most remarkable and stunning moments during the long road of discovery in the E-Voting Revolution Scam that's been perpetrated on American democracy before, during and since the 2004 Election.

    The investigative film, nearly three years in the making, is said to lay out a devasting case against E-voting in general, and Diebold in particular. The film, previously known as VoterGate, was released on the Internet in a very short, barebones "Presidential Election Special" just prior to the 2004 Election. At the time, that early, quickly compiled version --- which was jaw-dropping in and of itself --- followed the early stages of investigations into electronic voting machine fraud, vulnerabilities, and malfunction by Bev Harris and the late Andy Stephenson of BlackBoxVoting.org.

    The earlier clips were released for free on the Internet in 2004 when the filmmakers felt they had already acquired so much important footage that they felt a responsibility to do something with it before the Presidential Election.

    But as remarkable as the revelations of that short version were, that was then and this is now: some two years, miles of footage, and at least two or more actual demonstrated voting machine hacks later. The now-retitled film includes scores of fresh never-before-seen interviews, damning statements, and documents, and culminates in one of the most devasting moments in E-voting's short and sordid history: The Leon County Florida Hack, by computer security expert Harri Hursti, of a Diebold optical-scan voting machine in December of 2005.

    The filmmakers were there for that watershed moment when the legendary Supervisor of Elections in Leon County, Ion Sancho, allowed independent computer security experts the opportunity to try and hack his paper-based Diebold optical scan voting system. The result was a flipped mock election, with no trace of the hack left behind, save for the paper ballots (which, in Florida, are now illegal to examine by hand after they have already been counted by a machine.)

    Diebold said it couldn't be done. Diebold, apparently, lied.

    That hack resulted in shockwaves across the national electoral landscape as it revealed the very real consequences of what had, up until then, been a largely theoretical fear about the vulnerability of electronic voting machines to malicious tampering.

    An election had now been flipped for the first time on an actual voting system, this one a paper-based Diebold model. The touch-screen systems, we would later learn, are even more vulnerable.

    The Leon County Hack will be seen, as it occured, for the first time when HBO premiers the film just days before this November's general election, when millions of Americans will be using those same new, hackable, optical-scan and touch-screen voting systems made by Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Hart InterCivic, and others for the first time.

    It's about to get much worse, indeed. We hope to have more on Hacking America in the coming days.

    UPDATE 10/15/06: Details now available on HBO's site here...

    HBO's complete first press release on the film, including a schedule of air-dates, follows in full...

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

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    AP Has New Details on the Apparently RNC-Funded Registration Fraud in Tennessee, Now Linked to Sproul & Associates
    Fraudulent, Shredded Voter Registrations In 2004 Linked To Same Shadowy RNC Operative, Recipient of Largesse...
    By Brad Friedman on 10/10/2006 9:35am PT  

    Last week we ran an item on fraudulent Voter Registration Forms submitted by a group reportedly tied to the RNC down in Tennessee where there's a tight U.S. Senate race in play to replace the outgoing Bill Frist.

    More information on those dirty tricks, and the ties to long-time Arizona-based GOP operative, Nathan Sproul & Associates, are now being reported by AP.

    Sproul & Associates, and their various shadowy front groups, were linked to the shredding of Democratic Voter Registration Forms in Nevada, West Virginia, Oregon and elsewhere in 2004 as reported by Max Blumenthal in October of 2004 and again recently in Bobby Kennedy's Rolling Stone exposé asking "Was The 2004 Election Stolen?" More details about Sproul and the millions of dollars he seems to have received from Team Bush '04, and their attempts to hide those costs, were reported by Mark Crispin Miller in June of 2005.

    Regular readers of The BRAD BLOG will recall that Sproul & Associates were given buckets of unreported RNC cash before, during and after the 2004 election. For some reason or another. Sproul is also reported to be an organizer for the Christian Coalition. Natch.

    And now, AP is reporting the RNC hired a group down in Tennessee calling themselves Liberty Consultants to register (Republican) voters. Even if they had to make them up to do so. And whaddaya know? Liberty Consultants are funded by our old friend Nathan Sproul...

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

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