[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Just over a week ago, The BRAD BLOG's legal analyst Ernie Canning posited that the decision by a federal court in Wisconsin to strike down that state's polling place Photo ID law could signal "the beginning of the end" for such disenfranchising, Republican-enacted laws around the nation.

Since that landmark ruling in the Badger State, new signs from top elected Republican officials in Pennsylvania and Iowa, and even in Wisconsin, suggest that the (at least) decade-long GOP "voter fraud" fraud may have finally peaked, and will now begin the inevitably long slide into abandoned, historical shame.

We don't want to be too quick to declare the demise of this insidious attempt at reviving Jim Crow with a sophisticated and nefariously misleading legal patina, but after covering this beat for a decade --- long before much of the general public, much less the Democratic Party itself, seemed to notice --- it seems that the recent landmark court ruling in WI, followed by last week's towel toss in Pennsylvania and embarrassing revelations in Iowa, may be seen in the not-too-distant future as the moment that the GOP "voter fraud" fraud finally began to permanently unravel...

While today was Primary Election Day in North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio, we're just now learning about electronic vote tabulators which failed in last month's special election for the U.S. House in Florida, according to Fox4, WFTX-TV in Fort Myers/Naples, Florida...

On Monday night's All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, New Jersey State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg joined Hayes to discuss "smart gun" legislation she helped pass in her state. But it was the curious assertion by a supporter of the technology, claiming that electronic voting machines are now "fool-proof", which kinda just blew my mind.

Mark Glaze, spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, a group which, according to its website "brings together survivors of gun violence to share their stories and advocate for laws that will prevent future tragedies," said twice during the conversation, that e-voting systems are now "fool-proof."

While there were once concerns about e-voting systems, he said (see his full remarks below), those worries have now been assuaged thanks to "public and private partnerships at both the federal and state level that guaranteed that these machines were fool-proof".

Huh, what?! When did that "partnership" take place? And how did they "guarantee" such "fool-proof" results? Was that before or after, for example, the 2012 election in Palm Beach County, FL, when a paper-ballot optical-scan computer tabulation system (made by Sequoia Voting Systems) was discovered, through pretty much a stroke of luck, to have inaccurately declared the "winners" of three different elections, such that the contests were overturned and a hand-count by human beings found that the computers had declared the wrong "winners" in two of them? After that incident came to light, the Vice-President of Dominion Voting, the e-voting vendor which now owns Sequoia, admitted that the bug which caused the wrong "winners" to be named by the computer tabulator exists in all versions of it's Sequoia systems --- both paper-ballot op-scan systems as well as touch-screen systems --- in use across the country.

"And guess what?," Glaze continued telling Hayes on Monday night's show, "Today, there are very few questions about electronic voting machines." Really? Someone must have forgotten to tell that to the voters in St. Lucie County, FL, where hundreds of votes were mistabulated thanks to faulty memory cards in the county's computerized paper-ballot tabulation system (made by Diebold) in the contested U.S. House race between Rep. Allen West (R) and Patrick Murphy (D), also in 2012?

I could go on --- and on, and on --- with similar recent examples along those lines, but I'll spare you. For now. You're welcome. Hopefully you get the picture.

Glaze then went on to assert that, whatever the initial concerns may have been about electronic voting and tabulation systems, "we figured out how to get around it and today electronic voting makes things more fool-proof and easier and reduces the risk of fraud."

Yes. That's actually what he said. And on television, where everyone could hear it!

We've sought comment from Glaze, asking for details in support of his remarks --- and on his great, if unconfirmed news about electronic voting systems! --- and will update this item when and if we receive a response.

Here's the segment from the 5/5/2014 segment of All In. Mark Glaze's gob-smacking comments on e-voting begin just after the 4:20 mark, and I've transcribed them in full below...

I was on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture TV show on Friday, to discuss the week's landmark decision by a federal court in Wisconsin which struck down the state's Republican-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction law as a violation of both the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act and the fact that the decision, as our own Ernie Canning explained, may finally signal the "beginning of the end" for such purposely discriminatory laws.

(And thanks to my friend Mike Papantonio of Ring of Fire, who was guest hosting for Thom on Friday, for the very kind words!)...

Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system --- now in our ELEVENTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

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It was a very independent and very activist-y BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio this week, on a whole bunch of levels.

First up: Christina Tobin, Founder & Chair of The Free & Equal Elections Foundation --- and co-moderator, with Larry King, of the 2012 Presidential Debate where all of the major candidates were invited (as opposed to to just two of them). We discussed her group and their upcoming United We Stand Fest at UCLA on May 10th, which is set to feature a ton of very cool politicians (of all parties), journalist, musicians...and me.

Next: Why Tuesday's landmark decision in a federal court in Wisconsin, striking down that state's GOP polling place Photo ID restriction law is so important to the entire nation, and why Scott Walker and a whole bunch of Republicans across the country aren't gonna like it at all.

Then: Dr. Margaret Flowers of PopularResistance.org --- a pediatrician who left her private practice in 2007 to become a full time activist and advocate for single payer health care --- tells my why, despite what I see as Obamacare's very clear success, I'm completely wrong about it, why it's a "scam" and why she's a "conscientious objector" to the Affordable Care Act.

Followed by: A few brief remarks about the crushing loss this week --- for the entire nation --- of our friend Tim Carpenter, the indefatigable and relentless co-founder of Progressive Democrats of America.

Finally: As always, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report and a preview of more fossil fuel disasters to be covered tomorrow...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

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[This article now cross-published by Salon...]

Very big news out of a federal court in Wisconsin today, where the state's polling place Photo ID law (Act 23) has now been struck down as both a violation of the federal Constitutional as well as under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

While similar laws, all enacted by Republicans, have been struck down by state courts before --- indeed, Wisconsin's, was already found in violation of the state constitution in state court --- and in federal courts under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, today's ruling is the first to strike down such a law under Section 2 of the VRA.

The landmark ruling will almost certainly have national implications for federal challenges in other states against similar restrictions recently enacted by Republicans.

Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the heart of the VRA by making Section 5 unenforceable until Congress passes new legislation to determine which jurisdictions must pre-clear new elections laws with the U.S. Dept. of Justice before they are put into effect, due to a history of racial discrimination in elections in those jurisdictions. Section 2, however, bars discrimination in all 50 states, even though, unlike Section 5, it cannot be applied until after the new law in question goes into effect.

Judge Lynn Adelman's ruling [PDF] today, finding WI's version of the law discriminatory and in violation of both Section 2 and the 14th Amendment of the federal Constitution, is likely to have an impact on federal challenges to similar laws in states such as Texas and North Carolina, where federal cases are pending to block similarly discriminatory polling place restrictions.

Moreover, the judge placed the racial and class discrimination and disenfranchisement that would be caused by this law in stark terms, in regard to how many otherwise legal voters in Wisconsin might lose their right to vote, and how such a law might have directly affected the results of the state's 2010 election, had it been place at the time...

He makes a very cute campaign video. Please watch it above. It's quite clever. But it would be nice if California Secretary of State candidate Derek Cressman, one of two Democratic candidates vying for the job in the upcoming June 3rd primary, had a better understanding of the electronic voting systems he'd be overseeing as SoS.

I had originally intended to run the video above, because it's smart and fun, along with a throw-away remark expressing the wish that Cressman understood more about the very technical concerns about the security and verifiable of e-voting system --- particularly since the way CA deals with them has such a sweeping effect on the same systems as used across the country.

As a former Common Cause executive, Cressman has made his important fight to overturn the Supreme Court's abhorrent Citizens United ruling central to his campaign, as highlighted in the animated campaign video above. That's fine, but the office of Sec. of State, particularly in CA, requires much more.

Rather than offer that throw-away remark, however, I thought I'd see if Cressman had learned more about electronic voting systems since he and I briefly chatted in person at an event last summer, just as he was originally entering the race.

According to comments he sent in response to a recent query from The BRAD BLOG, while Cressman's general knowledge of the systems seems to have improved since we last spoke, and while he remains an ardent opponent of the madness of Internet Voting and some of the most unsecure methods of precinct-based voting, his understanding of the concerns about the vulnerability of e-voting remains troubling --- at least for a Sec. of State candidate in the nation's most populous state...

The candidates polling first, second...fourth and fifth in the 2014 election for CA Secretary of State, according to a recent Field Poll, will appear at a debate being held by the non-profit Sacramento Press Club (SPC) this coming Wednesday.

The candidate polling in third place in that survey, however, Green Party candidate David Curtis, is not invited to participate and he's none too happy about it.

Two Democratic candidates, State Sen. Alex Padilla and former Common Cause official Derek Cressman, one Republican candidate, Pete Peterson, as well as former Republican operative Dan Schnur, now running as an independent, have been invited to attend, but Curtis was not, despite out-polling both Cressman and Schnur in the April survey.

Curtis, says he only just learned of the scheduled debate a week ago. "I only even knew about the event because one of the other candidates Tweeted about it," he explained to The BRAD BLOG via email.

His legal representative, Gautam Dutta of Business, Energy, and Election Law, PC, fired off a 2-page letter [PDF] over the weekend to the SPC President, Secretary and Treasurer demanding that Curtis be included in the debate, and charging that his exclusion "violates federal law governing tax-exempt groups."

For their part, the SPC has, so far, failed to explain the criteria used to invite candidates to participate, though they did send us a statement claiming that Curtis, after learning about the debate and his exclusion from it, "began a tirade of insulting and threatening social media posts about our organization," and "became belligerent and rude, making a conversation impossible" during a phone call with the group's program director...

Seriously, dudes?...

So the NSA knew about this massive security flaw, one of the biggest in the history of the Internet, and rather than warning about the security vulnerability to all Americans, exploited it, instead.

While I can't say I'm particularly surprised by this, I can say, I'm infuriated by it.

If it wasn't before, the NSA has now become a complete joke. What part of "national security" is unclear to the National Security Agency, for chrissakes?!!

For an additional take on the Heartbleed bug as it pertains to electronic and Internet voting systems (For example, how the fact that this huge flaw in open source software was not discovered for years, underscoring the fact that open source is little more than a panacea when it comes to the foolhardy use of computers in elections, and how this bug should end all talk of Internet Voting forever) please listen to my rant during this week's BradCast, beginning approximately at the :31 minute mark.

Last week we told you how Wisconsin's Republican Gov. Scott Walker considers implementing a polling place Photo ID restriction in his state to be so "pressing" that he would call a special session of the state legislature to do it. He says it's the only such matter "pressing" enough to merit such extraordinary action this year, in advance of the November 2014 election --- when Walker himself, just coincidentally, faces a very tight re-election race.

That, despite the fact that two state courts have already found the Republicans' existing polling place Photo ID voter restriction law to be a violation of the state constitution and that expert testimony during one of the two trials detailed how there is only one single known case of voter impersonation fraud in WI over the past 10 years that might have possibly been deterred by such a law. At the same time, tens of thousands of perfectly legal voters will likely be barred from voting under such a law.The state Supreme Court is currently deciding on the state's appeal to the lower courts' rulings.

Republicans pretend that implementing such a law is not about voter suppression, but now at least one of them, to his great credit, strongly and loudly disagrees.

This week, Republican state Sen. Dale Schultz accused his own party of "trying to suppress the vote" and said that he is "not willing to defend them anymore. I'm just not and I'm embarrassed by this."

Schultz also decried the current WI GOP effort to suppress the vote --- one which would likely effect many elderly as well as minority and student voters --- as an insult to veterans, calling it "a slap in the face at the very least to some of the people who gave some of the most vital years of their life in the service of their country"...

Ever since the situation in Ukraine began to blow up (again), I've been trying to figure out what's really been going on. It hasn't been easy. And the U.S. corporate media has not been particularly helpful (again).

My attempt to sort out fact from fiction after last weekend's '97.6%' referendum vote in Crimea is just one example of finding the facts running counter to the U.S. MSM narrative.

We pick up that thread on this week's KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast, as I was joined by investigative reporter Robert Parry of ConsortiumNews.com to try and sort much of it out. His must-read article, "Mainstream US Media Is Lost in Ukraine", tying together blatant media failures on Iraq and Syria and now in Ukraine, begins to crack the nut of what the U.S. media is failing to tell us about the entire fine mess, including some startling audio evidence that we play on the show suggesting that certain narratives --- for example, the one about now former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych's police gunning down protesters --- may be much less (or, at least, much different) than has been generally reported in this country.

Parry explains how "The U.S. mainstream news media is reaching a new professional low point as it covers the Ukraine crisis by brazenly touting Official Washington’s propaganda themes, blatantly ignoring contrary facts and leading the American public into another geopolitical blind alley."

You'll want to hear this conversation.

In the back half of the show...we cover The BRAD BLOG's exclusive this week on a great new gift for election hackers --- just in time for the 2014 mid-terms!; the one WI Republican state Senator willing to stand up against Gov. Scott Walker's voter suppression; Sen. Whitehouse's theory on Citizens United and climate change denial; and, of course, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report, as usual.

Buckle up!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

[Image: Mykhaylo Palinchak / Shutterstock.com]

Hey! Great news! Just in time to practice up your hacking skills before the 2014 mid-term elections, you can now buy your very own ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting system from eBay!...

Yes, the very same voting systems that are so incredibly sensitive and vulnerable to tampering (and which have failed so often in so many states and in so many elections) that both election officials and Elections Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) have long attempted to keep them out of the hands of the public, can now be yours for just $499.99 or "Best Offer" via eBay! And that includes Free Shipping!

And, oh, look! One of them is already sold!...

In a blog item on Monday, law professor Ilya Somin, of the Washington Post's right-leaning "Volokh Conspiracy" blog, declared the weekend's reported 96.7% vote in favor of Crimea joining Russia to be either fraudulent or the result of voter intimidation of some kind.

In the article, Somin called the results "dubious" and "highly improbable," declaring at least three times in his very short, 6-paragraph item that the referendum's results were "achieved" (his quotes) and/or "likely tainted by fraud or intimidation" --- the likelihood of which Somin describes as a "fact."

"It is highly improbable that 96.7% would have voted yes in a genuinely free vote, since the Crimean population includes large Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar minorities that are overwhelmingly opposed to a return to Russian rule," the George Mason University School of Law professor instructs. "Crimean officials are also reporting a high 83% turnout. If that figure is correct, it makes it unlikely that the 96.7% result is explicable by selective turnout. If, on the other hand, officials are lying about the turnout, they could be engaging deception about the vote margin as well."

Mainstream corporate media in the U.S. have a very difficult time reporting on real evidence of fraud in American elections, much less reporting it as "fact." But when it comes to elections overseas, particularly those which involve perceived geopolitical foes of the U.S., papers like the Washington Post seem to have little, if any, reluctance in offering exceedingly speculative arguments that all but declare elections held by others to be "fraudulent." (See this head-spinning irony, also involving Ukraine, just days after the very same disparity in Exit Polling, carried out by the same firm, resulted in questions about the legitimacy of results from Ukraine's November 2004 Presidential election, but not the still-disputed results of the 2004 Presidential elections in the U.S. just a week or two earlier.)

But 96.7% is, indeed, an outrageously high number for any election result. So how much legitimacy should be given to the results of the voting announced from the weekend referendum in Crimea, given what we know about the balloting and what we don't? And can the U.S. learn anything --- for better or worse --- about the way votes were cast and counted in Crimea?...

Meanwhile...Back up in Wisconsin, where two different courts have already found the Republicans' polling place Photo ID restriction law to be in violation of the state constitution, a decision on an appeal waits at the state Supreme Court.

But, no worries, if that Court also agrees that it's unconstitutional to deny WI voters their right to vote, Gov. Scott Walker is ready to call the state legislature back into an emergency session to try to pass another such law, according to the Journal Sentinel...

Despite the fact that an expert on voter fraud testified during one of the trials last year that there was only one single case of voter impersonation in WI that might have been deterred by such a law over the past 10 years, the Wisconsin State Journal reports that Walker sees this issue as very very urgent --- the only one, in fact, that is urgent enough that he would find it necessary to call for a special session of the legislature, for some reason...

Some encouraging news to begin your week, along with apologies to Ian Millhiser for running his short and sweet piece in full, but I'm off the grid for much of today and would like to flag his main point here...

Millhiser may be more bullish on the American people "getting it" than I am. The Rightwing "voter fraud" propaganda has run long and deep, and (unlike The BRAD BLOG) both Democrats and progressives in general took way too long to begin responding to the insidious and very well organized voter suppression strategy by Republicans. Still, I hope he's right and I'm wrong, and that, like so many other issues, the American people will get it right once they truly understand the facts of the long-running and effective GOP scam.

The data points Millhiser cites are encouraging, however, and are in line with a general anecdotal assessment I offered in January, as based on responses from Reddit commenters to the Pennsylvania court that nixed the Keystone State's disenfranchising and unconstitutional polling place Photo ID restriction law passed into law by Republicans there last year.

And, one more point, since the piece above discusses Iowa: A reminder that when the GOP in the Hawkeye State were able to run any type of election they wanted (without having to worry about running afoul of state or federal law or Constitutional issues) in their own 2012 GOP Iowa Caucuses, they chose to not require their own voters present Photo ID before participating, despite working very hard in the year prior to require such restrictions for all voters in the general election.

(In a related point, the Iowa GOP also chose to use hand-counted paper ballots, rather than optical-scan or touch-screen computers in their Presidential caucuses that year as well. Thanks only to that public oversight of the balloting the real winner of the 2012 Iowa GOP Caucus was eventually determined. Without those publicly-counted paper ballots, the man who didn't win, Mitt Romney, who was unofficially declared to be the "winner" on election night in Iowa, would have almost certainly have gone on to become the official "winner" as well, despite receiving fewer votes than Rick Santorum.)

Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system --- now in our ELEVENTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...