While most of the media is reporting the huge Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate tonight, and the big GOP wins in a whole bunch of Governor's races, Reuters notices that there were a lot of problems for voters across the country today...

They go on to summarize election problems and failures in a bunch of states, most of which we covered in one form or another earlier today (including many more). But we missed this really bizarre case of still-unexplained very dirty tricks out of Chicago earlier today...

While we've been covering multiple cases of on-screen vote flipping by the 100% unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) systems, another electronic vote-related system failure, relating to the state's Electronic Voter ID (EVID) system, has also emerged in the state of Florida.

The state Democratic Party filed an emergency Motion for Ex Parte Relief [PDF] earlier this evening seeking to compel Broward County election officials to keep polls open until 9:00 p.m. They alleged, among other issues, that an "EVID system throughout the day has prevented voters from being able to update their address on the day of the election, as they are permitted to do by law."

Instead of being allowed to vote, voters were "asked to present themselves at the Supervisor of Elections office in order to update their address and return to the polling place at a later time to vote a regular ballot." That and other issues may have prevented the lawful casting of ballots in an extraordinarily close Governor's race...

Zach Roth and Trymaine Lee of MSNBC highlight a number of the problems at the polls being reported so far in various states today.

"Voters in Connecticut, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states all encountered potentially serious problems casting ballots as Americans went to the polls Tuesday," they report. "The issues included malfunctioning machines that caused long lines, problems with statewide voter registration systems, missing voter lists, and delays processing voter registration applications. Meanwhile, voter ID laws and other strict voting measures kept others from even attempting to make it to the polls."

Here are the key portions of their problem reports from each of those states...

By our count, Virginia is now the 7th state to report touch-screen voting flipping in the 2014 election (though we may have missed a few in Pennsylvania and elsewhere).

During Early Voting, prior to today's mid-term, we've covered 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes reportedly flipping on screen in Texas (D to R), in Illinois (R to D), in Tennessee (NO to YES on anti-choice initiative), in Maryland (R to D) and in Arkansas (unclear which direction the votes were flipping in several different counties), and in North Carolina, where votes were said to be flipping from D to R in the crucial, neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race there.

Now, "Republicans and Democrats alike" are reporting votes flipping in a U.S. House race in Virginia Beach and Newport News, and one of the Republican candidates involved has supplied a video tape of the flipping votes cast on the town's Diebold AccuVote touch-screen systems...

We first ran this helpful list back in 2012. We've slightly updated it for the 2014 mid-term elections. Please share it around wherever you can...

First and foremost:

• If you have problems or see problems at the polls, be sure to report them to 866-OUR-VOTE, or at OurVoteLive.org!

• Catch any problems at the polls on photo or video? Upload it to YouTube and social sites, and tell us and the rest of the world about it!

• Be at the polls when they close and photograph and video tape the results tapes that are printed out from electronic systems. Results have a way of changing between the time they're printed out at the close of polls and the time they show up on the web. Your photographic evidence could help save an election!

• Watching results on the web throughout the night? Take screenshots, save them as you go, and include a timestamp in the filename when you do. Those web results also have a way of changing, sometimes in the wrong direction, throughout the night. Your evidence could help save an election!

So far, in the run-up to Tuesday's mid-term election, we've covered 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes reportedly flipping on screen in Texas (D to R), in Illinois (R to D), in Tennessee (NO to YES on anti-choice initiative), in Maryland (R to D) and in Arkansas (unclear which direction the votes were flipping in several different counties.)

Now, votes are reportedly flipping from Democratic to Republican in the "toss up" U.S. Senate race in North Carolina, a crucial contest if Democrats have any chance of hanging on to the majority in that chamber. The "down to the wire" contest is also reportedly turning out to be the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history.

So can supporters of either candidate actually have any confidence at all in results to be reported after the close of polls on Tuesday in the Tar Heel State?...

Just so you don't miss this part, since it's at the very bottom of the letter, let's run it up top and add a red arrow to it:

That's from the letter included inside of this very scary envelope being sent to Kentucky voters (at least some of them) by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), in his sleazy re-election campaign against challenger Allison Lundergan Grimes (D):

Click the graphic above to enlarge and see the whole thing. The letter sent inside the scary envelope, as published by Sahil Kapur at TPM today, follows below (and is also enlargable by clicking)...

Via KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas...

It's also "generally an issue" that occurs in Arkansas...on voting systems made by ES&S...year after year after year, as The BRAD BLOG has reported, continuously, over the past decade and as we quickly summarize below.

Are this year's votes flipping from R to D in Arkansas? From D to R? The story doesn't say, and, frankly, we're delighted about that. Because it doesn't matter!

Over the past decade or more, reports of touch-screen votes flipping from D to R have been far more common across the country, but it can go the other way as well (and/or to and from third parties). The point is that even when these god-forsaken 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems work as designed, there is still no way to know that any vote ever cast on one of them during an election for any candidate or initiative on the ballot was ever recorded as per any voter's intent!

As to the Pulaski County Election Commission's reported "plan" for dealing with this problem as they move forward between now and Election Day, it's a disaster in the making...

The pace of GOP voter suppression stories and scams is now cascading in faster than we're able to fully check out or report in detail. So, for now, here are a few very important stories that are likely to become even more relevant in the coming days, even as we've only time for quick coverage here at the moment...

The Politicus USA headline typified MSM coverage of what Brad Friedman often refers to as the "horse race" --- "Democrats Surge As Michelle Nunn Leads Georgia Senate Race In Third Straight Poll."

For The BRAD BLOG, and for a good many election integrity advocates and computer scientists, that narrow focus ignores "the track conditions," which, in Georgia entails the continued use of touchscreen voting systems courtesy of a 2009 determination by the Georgia Supreme Court that "unverifiable elections are just fine."

Where horse race coverage focuses exclusively on the here and now, this site feels it helpful to look back a dozen years to what took place in Georgia shortly after Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox signed a May 2002 contract with what was then known as Diebold Election Systems Inc....

With the latest KPFK/Pacifica Radio fund drive behind us, it was great to be back on the air live today with The BradCast!

Just in time for Election Day next week, we got everybody up to date on all of the terrible SCOTUS rulings in regard to GOP voter suppression from over the past several weeks --- in OH, NC, WI and TX (and an important Photo ID ruling by the state Supreme Court in AR) --- for those who may have missed our coverage during the fund drive. Now it's up to the voters to try like hell not to be disenfranchised, particularly in TX, where it won't be easy this year.

Plus, our musical tribute to touch-screen vote-flipping now taking place all over the country --- yet again! And, the latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen as the future of climate change is on next Tuesday's ballot.

Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

As we told you recently, after 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems reportedly began flipping votes from Democratic to Republican in Texas, and from Republican to Democratic in Illinois, and then from "NO" to "YES" on an anti-choice measure in Tennessee, there would be more. There always is, as we discussed on Thom Hartmann's TV show earlier this week.

Now it's reportedly happening in Maryland. Again.

Yes, there are still many states and counties out there that have so little respect for their voters that they force them to use these horrible, completely unverifiable electronic voting systems because, clearly, they don't give a damn whether votes are recorded accurately or, more to the point, whether any voter can ever know that any election result actually reflects the will of the voters. Whether these systems fail (as they often do), whether they are hacked (as they easily are), or whether they work accurately, voters can never know one way or another --- and that is the core problem with them.

Nonetheless, these machines are still in use across the country in 2014. One of the very first states to foist them on voters back in 2002 was Maryland, when they installed 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting systems across the entire state.

Those systems are still being used there today and --- whaddaya know? --- they are flipping votes, according to the state Republican Party which is now demanding an investigation after receiving complaints from "about 50 voters in 12 Maryland counties"...

It occurred to me on the way over to the studio on Monday, when I was worried I might be running late, that if I didn't make it, Thom could just re-run the almost identical conversations we've had about virtually the same damn thing from back in 2012 or back in 2010 or back in 2008 or back in 2006, etc...

For much more on the above, please see these stories from Friday:

• "E-Votes Flip D to R in Texas, R to D in Illinois: More Trouble With Touch-Screens (2014 Edition)"
• "Touch-Screen Votes Flip 'No' to 'Yes' on Abortion Amendment to State Constitution in TN"

...and whatever other similar stories we may have to run between now and Election Day next Tuesday.

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)

In the run-up to the 2012 Presidential Election, as Superstorm Sandy was bearing down hard on the East Coast, we wrote quite a bit (both here and at Salon) about how flooding and, specifically, power outages in several states that rely almost exclusively on electronic voting systems, could cripple the integrity of elections in a number of them.

Ultimately, among the hardest hit of those northeastern states was New Jersey, which, shamefully, still forces almost all of its voters to cast their ballots on 100% unverifiable electronic touch-screen systems.

On the weekend before Election Day, as water was rising and power was out across much of the eastern part of the state, NJ's Gov. Chris Christie and Lt. Governor Kim Guadano issued an unusual, emergency order, allowing for the use of early voting to ease the crush on Election Day in areas where some polling places would be shut down to due flooding, and for the use of paper ballot voting in precincts where power was still likely to be out as of Election Day.

We applauded those emergency measures at the time, particularly as the chances for voters to actually have their votes counted accurately and transparently could only increase with the use of hand-marked paper ballots in a state which has had nothing but disasters over the years with their oft-failed, easily-manipulated touch-screen voting system.

However, at the same time Guadano was announcing those emergency measures, she also --- without bothering to consult with election officials around the state --- tossed in one other emergency order [PDF] which, as we warned at the time, was likely to be a terrible mistake.

Guadano ordered emergency Internet Voting --- of a sort --- by allowing for voters displaced by the storm (and it would be left up to election officials' discretion to determine which voters were or weren't "displaced") to cast their ballots via email or fax.

We now know, thanks to a new report from the Rutger's School of Law [PDF], that, indeed, NJ's experiment with voting over fax and the Internet was a disaster, one that led to tens of thousands of unauthenticated votes in 2012, and which hasn't hasn't been reported by the media...until now...

Just after this morning's official start of our regular biennial coverage of votes flipping on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems around the country, this report comes in right on cue from the great state of Tennessee...

Amendment 1 is a TN ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to "to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother."

Ellis, who explains what happens in the video posted below, happens to be a long-time election integrity advocate in Tennessee. He was very instrumental in helping the state legislature pass, nearly unanimously, the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), a 2008 law to move to all of their 95 counties to paper ballots. Shamefully, after TN Republicans took over the legislature later that year (via the statewide touch-screen voting system, in a year when the GOP got trounced literally everywhere else in the country), they fought and then eventually repealed the reform which would have done away with the state's 100% unverifiable e-voting system.

The Republican fervor to continue the use of such unverifiable voting systems in the state may have been best reflected by a comment offered directly to us in 2007 at a meeting of the Davidson County (Nashville) election commission. After Tennessee election integrity documentarians David and Patricia Earnhardt (filmmakers of the award-winning Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which both Ellis and I happen to appear in) reported seeing their own votes flip on touch-screen systems in Davidson County during Early Voting for the 2008 Presidential Election there, we explained:

Greer later became Chair of the county's Election Commission after Republicans took over the state legislature that year for the first time since Reconstruction.

For much more on the issue of touch-screen vote-flipping, what you need to be concerned about, what you don't need to be concerned about, and what you can do about all of it, please see our earlier detailed story today on votes now reportedly flipping Democratic to Republican on Diebold touch-screens in Texas and flipping Republican to Democratic on Sequoia touch-screens in Illinois.

The systems reportedly flipping votes in Maury County, TN are the infamous iVotronics made by ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine manufacturer and the one with, perhaps, the longest and most spectacular history of election failures in the U.S.

Here's the video report on the Maury County vote flips from WSMV...

MONTHLY BRAD BLOG SUBSCRIPTION	ONE-TIME DONATION
Choose monthly amount... $10 : $10.00 USD - monthly$20 : $20.00 USD - monthly$50 : $50.00 USD - monthly$100 : $100.00 USD - monthly	(Snail mail support to "Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028" always welcome too!)