Blogged by Brad from the road...

I was able to listen in via cell phone to the Press Conference just held outside the San Diego courthouse where Attorney Paul Lehto has filed a lawsuit to contest the results of the Busby/Bilbray election.

I wasn't able to hear everything...but here are a few quotes as transcribed as best as I could from speakers Lehto, Judy Hess, Barbara Gail Jacobson and Mimi Kennedy...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Meet Mark Jenkins, a Republican from Gate City, Virginia, who supposedly lost the 2004 mayoral race, but who stood up for his rights, and for those of the voters, and for democracy in general, after it turned out that his opponent, incumbent Charles Dougherty, had captured nearly 90% of the absentee votes, but less than 51% of the overall total.

After the usual number of shenanigans and attempted shenanigans, the result has been overturned, and now the supposed winner faces time in prison! And --- guess what --- the people behind the shenanigans appear to have been --- are you ready for this --- well-connected Republicans!

Blogged on the road by Brad...

Mimi Kennedy, chair of Progressive Democrats of America, makes some noise re: the Busby/Bilbray election fiasco over at Huffington Post yesterday...

Lawless Elections: Sleepovers, Voter Vault and San Diego

Please note that PDA has been on top of this issue from Day 1, proving to be the only large national organization (along with VelvetRevolution.us, of course) to meet this issue with the seriousness that it deserves. For that, they deserve mountains of credit and support in return. Mimi has spoken at most of the CA50 Busby/Bilbray related Townhall Meetings and Press Conferences and has been organizing nationally to fight for accountability on this matter as well as to ensure the same mess won't happen around the country this November.

In other words, they're fighting for electoral integrity now rather than waiting until November. Their efforts should be a model for all groups, nationally and locally, who take election integrity seriously. As I've tried to stress many times, fighting for accountability in Busby/Bilbray now is about accountability across the nation prior to the election.

If there's one thing Busby/Bilbray teaches us, it's how difficult it is to fight for accountability after an election has been held when irresponsible, appointed elections officials like San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas are given credibility by the media simply because they have a title before their name. No matter how little they deserve such credibility and no matter how illegally and irresponsibly they administer an election against the best interests of the very voters they are supposed to be serving.

And now...I'm back off the grid. Don't bother me. I'm trying to notice trees and mountains and the sky. (When the phone's not ringing...urgh...)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

According to an article in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer the recent Cuyahoga County primary fiasco was the result of widespread dysfunction in the county's election offices, where officials ignored specific warnings of the looming calamity, according to a report also released today that blames election chief Michael Vu and deputy chief Gwen Dillingham.

According to the paper:

In a companion article the Plain Dealer reports on the 13 warnings and gives some examples:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Readers of The BRAD BLOG know that the state of Arkansas had a "Train Wreck" in their primary election and that much of the blame was laid at the feet of their voting machine vendor Elections Systems and Software. Now the Associated Press and The Arkansas Democrat Gazette both report that an independent study has been done at the request of the state and the study agrees with what The BRAD BLOG has said all along.

According to the Associated Press article:

and they go on to report:

ES&S has the largest slice of the voting machine business in the country. They found it impossible to support a string of state primaries held over a 5 to 6 week time span. How are they ever going to be able to handle a general election where all 50 states vote at the same time?

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

NOTE FROM BRAD: I'm still out on the road, will be for a while, and thus unable to check into the net with much frequency! Not getting all of my email either because of it, so my apologies. Thanks Dave for getting this up! More when I am able to check back in from a location with net access and enough time to get caught up-ish.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Atlanta Progressive News has published a long article about a situation we were very interested in yesterday, which otherwise seems poised to fall off the map. How curious!

The APN piece is called Machine Vote-Flipping Claimed in McKinney Primary and I have found it on the net in a very few places. But I can't find any other news about this story on at all. Anywhere. Even the "McKinney for Congress" website is quiet --- it hasn't been updated since yesterday afternoon as far as I can tell.

In the interests of getting this story a bit more exposure, we provide not only a link to it (above) but we will also post generous excerpts below the fold.

By the way, according to the "official" results of the election, McKinney got more votes than any of the other candidates, but not a majority, and she will have to go through a run-off against her most successful opponent, Hank Johnson, to whom votes were being flipped yesterday according to the reports we have received.

Just off the air from the Mike Malloy show. And yes, before I came on he did comment that when touched the screen of the Diebold voting machine he used to vote in today's Georgia primary, it was touching the ass of Satan. If you missed it, his interview with me follows. It was a lively one. We discussed trouble at the Georgia primaries, the Busby/Bilbray sleepover mess, Diebold skullduggery in the California Secretary of State's office, and all manners of democracy crumbling.

He asked me to stay over for an additional segment after the top of the hour, when we had a....skeptic call in from Sacramento who believes I'm "a phony." Which is always fun, of course. Glad to meet the critics. Enjoy...

-- Brad on Mike Malloy Show, 7/18/06 [MP3, appx 40 mins]

Also, I had meant to post this a couple of weeks ago, so will take the opportunity to do so now before I hit the road for the next bunch of weeks and may become scarcer than I'd like (but I really need a break. Big time. So please forgive me) This is audio from the Ed Schultz when NBC/HBO sports anchor Jim Lampley was sitting in for Schultz show a day or two after our Emergency Busby/Bilbray Townhall in San Diego. I'm on with him for just a quick few minutes, but he gave one of the kindest and most generous introductions I've ever received. Lampley is a terrific hero himself, and was kind enough to show up to support us at the San Diego event with his wife Bree Walker (whose new show in Los Angeles, I hope to be doing soon as well. Like Lamps, she's aces!)

-- Brad on Ed Schultz Show, Guest Host Jim Lampley, 6/30/06 [MP3, appx 5 mins]

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

According to sources in the Cynthia McKinney camp, Georgia voters attempting to vote for her in today's Democratic Primary are seeing their votes flipped to her opponent, Hank Johnson.

McKinney has a well-deserved reputation for speaking truth to power, asking tough questions, and not backing down (see this video, or read this transcript).

Diebold, on the other hand, has a history of touch-screen machines flipping votes from one candidate to another --- commonly called "vote-switching" or "vote-flipping" --- and otherwise failing altogether.

The first of several federal whistleblower qui tam (fraud) suits have now been filed against one of America's major electronic voting machine companies, The BRAD BLOG can now report.

Florida attorney Mike Papantonio who, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. hosts Ring of Fire, weekends on Air America Radio, was a guest on Mike Malloy's radio program last night. [Complete audio is available at bottom of this article.] He discussed the upcoming whistleblower suits that he and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are filing against several of the voting machine companies. Pap was loaded for bear.

During the interview, he gave several new details on the federal fraud suits now being filed, which include several whistleblower plaintiffs whose stories were originally reported here at The BRAD BLOG, as mentioned last week in a quick item here, with some fresh details of our own. Pap reported last night that the "dream team of lawyers" they've assembled to take on these evil, irresponsible, anti-American companies includes a bunch of those who took on the tobacco companies in a successful quarter billion dollar suit --- so they're not likely easily intimidated, we'd think.

Papantonio is a senior partner at Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Echsner & Proctor, P.A., a Pensacola lawfirm. (website here) RFK Jr. is also "of counsel" for this firm.

Speaking of the level of fraud to be revealed by the suits, which must be sealed by law for 60 days as the Attorney General decides if they will join the complaint, Papantonio told Malloy: "When you hear the details, when you hear the caliber of the fraud... you... it'll make Americans feel like they're living in a damned banana republic, a third world country. I have never heard such outrageous facts."

"And you know what?" he continued, "We've had our investigators look at it. We verified everything. And when you hear it, you're gonna say, 'Not in America.' ...Bad news is: Yeah, it is in America."

The fraud suits, Papantonio said, are "a way to get at their money, and that's the only thing these people understand."

"At the end of the day, we're gonna shut down some of these companies," Papantonio said. "Some day these hacks are gonna be across the table from me, and they're gonna have to answer the questions that nobody else has been able to ask them."

Pap excoriated the DNC, "the indolent Democrats and the lazy media," for not participating in any of this, and decried the fact that he and RFK Jr. were essentially forced to take action on their own, given the Dems' failure to do anything.

He also spoke of the voting machine "sleepovers" about which we've been reporting here in detail of late. As well, he had several kind words for this website and several other election integrity groups. "Unless you had these organizations out there like Black Box Voting or BRAD BLOG, people like that, paying attention to this, this wouldn't even be on the radar screen," he said.

You can listen to the entire segment in full right here:

-- Mike Papantonio on the Mike Malloy Show, 7/12/06 [MP3]

(Thanks to Ring of Fire producer Scott Millican for the heads-up and for the smartly edited, commercial-free audio file!)

UPDATE: AP finally notices the spate of lawsuits being filed against these e-voting companies and their shitty wares across the country. AP is still way behind us here at The BRAD BLOG, of course, and haven't noticed the RFK Jr. suits, but hey, they don't have the access to the huge resources and manpower that we are able to leverage here, with our enormous staff and boundless funding, so we'll cut AP some slack. They're just a little blog or something, right? I'm sure they're doing their best. Thanks to Pam of The Democratic Daily for the heads up!

The astute BRAD BLOG reader may recall my appearance on the Peter B. Collins show last October when the good Peter B. had invited Monterey County, CA Registrar of Voters Tony Anchundo into the studio to demonstrate the county's brand-spankin' new Sequoia touch-screen voting machines that were slated for first time use in last November's special election.

That interview, both audio and complete text transcript, is right here...

After Anchundo's in-studio demo of how the new system is supposed to work, I pressed Anchundo to find out whether or not he actually intended to count the virtually uncountable "toilet-paper roll" voter-verified paper trails created by the Sequoia machines or if he would rely on the machine count. He committed on air that the county had planned to count "100%" of those paper trails.

Incredulous, but nonethless happy to have that promise on-air and on-the-record, I asked which count would be the official count in the case of a discrepancy; the paper count or the machine count. He said we'd have to trust him to make the best decision at the time. "Faith-based voting," in other words.

While I was skeptical that he'd even be able to count those paper trails at all --- or even that it could be done in reality, even if they'd wanted to --- he promised to come back to the show after the election to report on how the 100% count went and which count they ended up using.

Weeks and months went by and Peter B. and his producer attempted to book Anchundo, the 13-year Registrar, for the promised follow-up. It seemed the office was not eager to return calls or book a return appearance.

Then last April, Anchundo suddenly and mysteriously resigned --- just six weeks before the California primary elections --- leaving county officials "stunned", as the Monterey Herald reported it at the time.

And then finally, last Friday, a caller to Peter B.'s show, during my regular weekly appearance there, gave us a tip to this report from the Salinas Californian...

More details at the Californian, but all I can say is: "Trust and faith in the elections officials,"...indeed, Mr. Anchundo. A picture perfect lesson in why no elections officials should ever be trusted.

Just ask the heroic and legendary Ion Sancho, Election Director of Leon County, FL who said in a speech last May: "Trust no one. If it can't be verified, it can't be used."

Or ask the courageous Yolo County, CA Registrar-Clerk, Freddie Oakley, who smartly wrote recently about some of her election official colleagues: "They also argue that, 'We have to trust our poll workers…' To this I can only say…only if they are incorruptible."

Or finally, ask Oregon Secretary of State, Bill Bradbury, who delivered this knock-out speech last November:

If only San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas --- who has never heard of an indicted election official, and isn't concerned that a poll worker might try to tamper with a programmed election-ready voting machine when he allows them to keep them in their car, house or garage for weeks before an election --- would care as much about his voters as Sancho, Oakley or Bradbury... Unfortunately, Haas seems to be falling into the Anchundo category instead.

Trust me.

Since Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and attorney Mike Papantonio have now discussed this out loud on the air on their Ring of Fire radio program (where yours truly will be a guest next Saturday, by the way) and since this week's Rolling Stone references it, we may as well share a few more prevoiusly undisclosed exclusive details about the upcoming federal qui tam (false claims or fraud) lawsuits to be filed against two of the major American electronic voting machine companies.

As previously reported, The BRAD BLOG can confirm that those two federal whistleblower suits will soon be filed by RFK Jr. and Papantonio. They will be filed via Papantonio's Florida-based firm Levin, Papantonio, Thomas, Mitchell, Echsner & Proctor, P.A.

The first of the two suits, The BRAD BLOG can now reveal, is scheduled to be filed late next week --- around the 13th --- according to the attorneys preparing the case. Representatives of the firm are scheduled to meet this week with officials at the U.S. Department of Justice to discuss some of the legal requirements of the first suit.

Because qui tam suits have very specific rules pertaining to public disclosure issues prior to filing, for the moment we can't say too much more about them, but regular BRAD BLOG readers will likely be familiar with some of the players involved in these suits.

Beyond that, we'll refer to Rolling Stone's coverage this week of Kennedy and Papantonio's plans --- with more to come, no doubt, on these very pages in the days and weeks ahead...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon while Brad takes care of other important business related to the Busby/Bilbray fiasco

Many Riverside County California voters went to the polls on primary election day, June 6, with the plan that they would use their right to request paper ballots instead of voting on the Sequoia Edge Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen) voting machines.

Those voters will probably be surprised to learn that the county Registrar of Voters thumbed her nose at them. The paper/absentee ballots they were given --- Xerox copies of the ballot on 8 1/2×11 paper --- were then punched into the DRE's by election workers later. On the same touch-screen systems the voters had wanted to avoid by requesting a paper ballot in the first place. This was all done without their knowledge, without their permission, and without their ability to verify that their ballots were recorded as they had voted them.

Moreover, the voters were forced to attach their names and addresses to the ballots! So much for private voting in Riverside!...

UPDATE: Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore responded to the story by Art Cassel with a 'Letter To The Editor'. See the text of the letter at the end of this article.

(Hat tip to "journalist" "Jeff Gannon" who thought we'd not be interested in covering this story! Wrong again, old boy! Thanks for the tip!)

Apparently, it's neither a case of "sour grapes" nor "sore losers" when Republicans challenge elections that they reportedly lost. That's only the case when Democrats charge irregularities or illegalities in an election. And, of course, when it's a Republican whose ox has been gored, the GOP uses every available means to fight the results of the election, and the courts and the legislatures usually play along. And nobody bothers to call them "tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists." Go figure.

Yesterday, in Tennessee, three poll workers were indicted for adding ballots to an election for the state Senate in which a Democrat won by 13 votes.

Of course, the GOP has fought that election tooth and nail, as the GOP, unlike Democrats, always do. And they've even managed to convince the state Senate to overturn the election due to their "allegations" of "irregularities."

As you'll see in the report from AP, the idea of poll workers gaming an election has once again occured. That, despite many absurd claims of late from Diebold spokesperson David Bear to NEWSWEEK, NYTimes and others to this effect...

Believe it, bitch.

Or this equally absurd comment from San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas who discounted concerns of sending easily-hacked Diebold voting machines home for overnights with poll workers just before the Busby/Bilbray election. Even though the machines are incredibly vulnerable to tampering, and storage in poll workers' cars cannot be considered secure --- by Haas' own admission --- there is little to worry about when it comes to fears of poll workers doing anything untoward. As he made clear to me, "you'd have to want to commit a felony, which knocks out most of our poll workers."

Despite plenty of recent examples of "evil and nefarious elections officials" who were more than willing to "commit a felony," it looks like the story out of Tennessee yesterday makes the case against Haas and Bear's feigned Pollyanna-isms. Again.

As reported by AP (emphasis added)...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

It has been a very slow news day even with "No Confidence" press releases from various groups in response to security breaches in San Diego Co. California during the recent state primary. / The one bit of news is a new "Quick Start Management Guide for New Voting Systems". The "Quick" in the title seems to point to how fast the document was rushed out. There is nothing there but a reminder of things most elections officials probably got in classes held by the Election Center. The EAC needed to look at the melt-down in recent primary elections and put out a guide to officials with emphasis on how to keep from being affected by poor vendor service....