Special to The BRAD BLOG by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman of The Columbus Free Press

ED NOTE: The following feature was originally published in the Autumn '07 print version of the Columbus Free Press. The comprehensive aerial overview --- connecting dots from 2000 to 2004 to the outlook for 2008, as based on a wide body of years-long investigative reportage and exposés as collected from a variety of sources, including The BRAD BLOG and many others --- offers such a useful round-up of "our story until now" that we thought running the piece in its entirety here would be a very good idea. We hope you agree.

With record low approval ratings for the Bush/Cheney regime and the albatross of an unpopular war hanging from the GOP's neck, do you think that a Democratic presidential candidate will win the White House, get us out of Iraq, and end our long national nightmare?

Think again – the mighty election theft machine Karl Rove used to steal the US presidency in 2000 and 2004 may be under attack, but it is still in place for the upcoming 2008 election.

With his usual devious mastery, Rove has seized upon the national outrage sparked by his electoral larceny and used it as smokescreen while he makes the American electoral system even MORE unfair, and even EASIER to rig. Thus the administration has fired federal attorneys when they would not participate in a nationwide campaign to deny minorities and the poor their access to the polls. It has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to install electronic voting machines that can be "flipped" with a few keystrokes. And under the guise of "reforming" our busted electoral system, it is setting us up for another presidential theft in 2008.

Thus it should come as no surprise that our exclusive investigations into the firings of eight federal prosecutors who refused to execute Rove’s plans for massive disenfranchisement of Democratic voters reveal a pattern of illegalities and fraud aimed at reducing the number of minority, poor and young voters at the core of Democratic support. In the wake of major news breaks, two felony convictions have come from the rigging of the illegal Ohio 2004 vote count and recount that gave George W. Bush a second illegitimate term. Stunning new admissions from county election boards that illegally destroyed voter records will almost certainly lead to new convictions. And the multi-million-dollar electronic voting machine scam that made possible the biggest electoral frauds in US history is under massive new attack, with key states moving to scrap the machines altogether in a desperate attempt to restore American democracy – but with the job far from done.

Rove, Ney and the Undead

Indeed, the Rovian theft engine is far from dead. The media groundwork has already been laid out for the Republicans to claim that hordes of illegal aliens have registered to vote. The Bush administration has been caught ordering public agencies – possibly in violation of the law – to cease registering voters. In an April, 2006 speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association, Rove openly alluded to the strategy of demanding photo ID and purging voter roles of poor, minority voters just as had been done in 2000 and 2004. And, as always with Bush/Rove, there is much more beneath the surface.

All that has happened to challenge the GOP death grip on the American vote count has been reported in the pages of Hustler and on the internet at FreePress.org, The BRAD BLOG and elsewhere, and is being seized upon by a national grassroots movement determined to restore American democracy next year.

Nowhere has that movement been more in evidence than with the high profile firestorm surrounding Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of eight federal prosecutors without legitimate cause.

Evidence continues to surface from throughout the United States about this blatant Bush abuse of executive power. But we have traced the roots of the firings to an obscure Congressional hearing held at the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, on March 21, 2005, and to a shadowy GOP operative named Mark F. "Thor" Hearne.

The hearing was conducted by none other than former US Rep. Bob Ney (R-18th OH). The once-powerful Ohio Congressman (who is now behind bars) was the godfather of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), the national boondoggle that mandated electronic voting machines for the American electoral process.

That the machines would cost taxpayers billions was a big plus for Ney. They would come from Diebold and other companies that poured money into Republican coffers. Thanks largely to the manipulations of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, these e-voting machine companies would help guarantee the GOP’s ability to steal elections.

Ney’s hearing featured a marquee appearance by J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Secretary of State responsible for delivering Ohio’s decisive 2004 electoral votes to Bush. Blackwell was a key operative for the Bush election campaign in Florida in 2000 and co-chaired the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign in Ohio...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

A great Election Fraud-themed country music video! Including some video of Clint Curtis and much more!

Visit Eliza Jane's website.

By Brad Friedman from on the road in Burlington, CO...

The recent Dan Rather report (complete video here) on the gaming of the paper punchcard ballots by Sequoia Voting Systems in Florida, just prior to the 2000 election, plugs up at least one important "hole" in the Clint Curtis story. We first broke Curtis's story back in late 2004 and have been reporting on it ever since.

You'll recall that Curtis alleged --- in sworn affidavit [PDF], live video-taped testimony before a U.S. House Judiciary delegation, and via polygraph test --- that he was asked by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) to create a touch-screen vote-rigging prototype program, just months prior to the 2000 election when they both worked at the same Florida software firm.

One of the main criticisms of Curtis's striking allegations at the time was that "nobody was even thinking about touch-screen voting systems in Florida prior to the 2000 Presidential Election debacle."

Dan Rather's remarkable investigative report, however, would seem to indicate otherwise: seven Sequoia company whistleblowers reveal on camera that, despite their objections, they were forced to use poor quality paper for the punchcards to be used in Florida in 2000. They also revealed that they had been instructed to deliberately misalign the chads for ballots going to Palm Beach County, FL, only.

Back in 2004, just after The BRAD BLOG broke the original story of Curtis' allegations, some in the media were skeptical. On 12/13/04, Kim Zetter picked up on the story for WIRED and wrote...

Unknown to the dubious Zetter at the time, was that someone at Sequoia, as the Rather report now reveals, seems to have known what they were doing when they gamed those paper ballots in Florida in 2000, since the company had already had touch-screen voting machines in the pipe-line, and indeed, already in use since as early as 1999 in California. If someone at Sequoia was pushing towards a change to touch-screen voting for Florida in 2000, the charges that Feeney might well have been aware, and supporting such a move is not quite as absurd as Zetter seemed to suggest in her article.

As well, another recent revelation puts the lie to Feeney's claim, made years ago, that he no longer had anything to do with the owners of the Oviedo, Florida, firm where he was the general counsel and registered lobbyist in 2000 (even as he served as Speaker of the FL House at the same time). Curtis was employed as a computer programmer for the company, which had multi-million dollar contracts with both the state and NASA, where Feeney's wife has worked for several years.

New information reveals that the owners of the company remain personal friends with Feeney, and continue to funnel money to him even while they hope for further contracts from the U.S. House Subcommittee on Space & Aeronautics, in which Feeney has recently been promoted to ranking member.

TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING SYSTEMS AND PRE-2000 FLORIDA

Connecting a few dots here... Sequoia had already deployed its new touch-screen voting systems in several precincts in Riverside County, CA, back in 1999. In 2000 the systems were to be used county-wide for the first time. Sequoia knew damned well that they stood to make millions from the use of touch-screen voting systems long before the 2000 election, even as their paper ballot shop was preparing the flawed paper ballots for use in Florida's election that same year.

As reported by Rather, the company made just pennies per ballot on the punchcards and only a few hundred dollars on punchcard counting machines. But millions stood to be made on their newer technology, which sold for thousands of dollars per touch-screen machine. The stunning on-camera testimony from the seven company whistleblowers suggests that the company --- and/or someone else --- may have had a plan in place to speed the transition to touch-screens prior to the 2000 election in Florida. That, of course, is precisely the same moment in time that Curtis alleges Feeney asked him to create touch-screen vote-rigging software, when they both worked for Yang Enterprises, Inc....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.Org, with additional reporting by Brad Friedman

The latest set of documents released by Sequoia Voting Systems, in an attempt to clear its name after a recent damning news report, fail to answer any of the questions that the company had claimed that they would. Worse still, The BRAD BLOG has learned that the documents proffered by Sequoia may not even refer to the specific election about which new and alarming questions have been recently raised.

The day after damaging revelations about several touch-screen voting machine manufacturers was aired in a remarkable exposé on Dan Rather Reports, the Vice-President and lead spokeswoman for Sequoia Voting Systems, Michele Shafer, responded in a press release to the charges made, on camera, by seven company whistleblowers featured in the broadcast.

The charges included claims that the workers at Sequoia's paper punchcard ballot plant had been forced to use inferior paper stock for ballots that were created for the 2000 general election in Florida and, as well, they were instructed to misalign the chads for punchcards made specifically for Palm Beach County.

Nobody at Sequoia was willing to take credit for the use of the bad paper, even as the seven workers had, time and again, refused to accept delivery for the inferior stock which was ultimately used anyway. The company failed to provide documents to Rather's team, showing who it was who finally signed off on the delivery. And when pressed, Sequoia had given questionable "received" documents for the paper which didn't have anyone's signature, as the Sequoia Quality Control specialist interviewed said she would have expected.

Shafer responded in her statement by promising to deliver exculpatory documents to prove that Rather's report was all wrong. The documents finally produced late last week, do nothing of the kind...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

ED NOTE: ARTICLE UPDATED TO REFLECT SEQUOIA AND MICHELLE SHAFER'S SHAMELESSLY SCRUBBED, DOCTORED, BACKDATED DOCUMENT. SEE EXPLANATION MID-ARTICLE. - BF

This morning I woke up to an email from Michelle Shafer, Vice President of Communications and External Affairs for Sequoia Voting Systems. Shafer wanted to point out that I had misstated the facts in yesterday's "Daily Voting News" when I asked, "And what about the sale of Sequoia? Smartmatic has been looking for a buyer for Sequoia for over a year now."

Shafer pointed me to a Sequoia press release, from December 22, 2006, in which they say, "The company also today announced its intent to seek an acquirer for Oakland-based Sequoia Voting Systems, a leading provider of voting technology in the United States that Smartmatic has owned since March 2005."

In other words, they've been seeking a buyer for 8 months, not a full year as I'd reported. I responded to let her know I'd be more than happy to issue a correction in today's DVN, as well note the error in the DVN posting here at The BRAD BLOG.

We are interested in being as factual as possible, and regret any error made, no matter how small. When we find one, we try to correct it immediately and transparently.

And, because our email discussion concerned being factual, I pointed out to Shafer that the press release she pointed me to had a number of wholly incorrect facts that she needed to clear up. Her press release from last December, incorrectly states:

She is flat out wrong. On a number of counts. Which I pointed out to her in my response. Her response to that was...we'll call it...a bit surprising...

Guest blogged from DC by Margie Burns

(NOTE: Margie will appear on today's Peter B. Collins Show as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss this article.)

Team Bush began describing candidate George W. Bush as a “compassionate conservative” in 1998, when Bush began his open run for president, as opposed to the behind-the-scenes operation that had begun with his first run for governor of Texas in 1994. By the time the 2000 presidential campaign was in full swing, probably every American with a television had heard the label. In fact, as the actual election approached, the Bush campaign often took to preferring “reformer with results” --- reacting to a margin of diminishing returns for “compassionate conservative.”

Where did they get the “compassionate conservative” label? Hardly anyone would remember or notice in 1998, but the New York Times had run it front-page on August 7, 1978, when Pope Paul VI died and the Times ran his photograph, captioned prominently as a “Compassionate Conservative,” above the fold. Originally the phrase was a genuine tribute to honor a man who by all accounts deserved it (see below). Its recycling by the Bush campaign was a tactic designed to help Bush seem ‘centrist.’

But a 1978 issue of the Times was not the first step in resurrecting "compassionate conservative" as a campaign slogan...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

"I think we in journalism have got to stop being so scared of being unobjective and to start focusing on our job which is to question, question, question," Chris Matthews told Jay Leno this week. Welcome aboard, Chris. Took ya long enough.

Leno begins his July 17, 2007 interview with Matthews by saying that the Hardball host has been "all fired up" this week. Well, that certainly describes Matthews in the video below. While he does take a couple backhanded, albeit deserving, shots at Tim Russert, he focuses his wrath primarily on the Bush administration, adding that "this crowd wasn't even exactly elected, you know."

While Matthews glosses over his own culpability when speaking of the failures of the press, he does deliver a powerful indictment on the Bushies and their vast propaganda campaign against the American people. Here's a particularly good rant:

In the last part of the interview Leno shifts the conversation to the 2008 presidential election and Matthews predicts a Hillary/Giuliani showdown. The video follows in full...

Blogged by Brad from St. Louis...

Supposed to be cooling my holiday heels a bit today, but couldn't let this one pass without comment. USA Today has an article this morning anointing psychologist Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, as the Democrats' new political rhetoric guru.

Nonetheless, in her article, headlined "Democrats get advice on how to talk about issues," reporter Jill Lewis can't seem to help but pass on the conventional wisdom (read: lies) of Republican rhetoric guru/liar Frank Luntz.

"Al Gore should have won" in 2000, Lewis unquestioningly quotes Luntz as telling her. "He lost because Americans didn't want him in their living rooms every night."

No. He "lost" because one vote on the Supreme Court determined that the man who won the national popular vote, as well as the electoral vote in Florida, should not have his votes counted as cast.

Had Lewis gone back and reviewed the findings of her own newspaper, who took part in a study of the ballots across the state of Florida, she likely would have discovered that.

While we realize that history is frequently re-written by the "winners," we see no reason why the corporate mainstream media need to participate in that charade. And yet, nearly 7 years later, and with facts now easily at hand, USA Today continues to do so.

We don't blame Luntz for lying. That's his job. Much as we don't blame Ann Coulter for being an unapologetic liar and hate-monger. We blame USA Today --- and other similarly irresponsible corporate mainstream outlets --- for giving him the platform to continue to pass on his lies without correction. Much as we blame ABC, NBC, MSNBC, et al. for giving Coulter a bully pulpit from which to spew her bullshit.

We need to begin to hold those who hold the keys to the kingdom responsible for allowing the charlatans inside the gates in the first place. Until we hold the media accountable and demand that they clean up their act, the Democratic focus-grouped advice of media message masters like Westen, and George Lakoff before him, won't mean a damn thing.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Amy Goodman interviews former Marine spokesperson Josh Rushing on Democracy Now about his experiences serving at CENTCOM at the start of the Iraq war. In addition to sending over a Hollywood set designer to build a platform costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, Washington sent political operative Jim Wilkinson, who ran the media operation like a political campaign. According to Rushing, Wilkinson is also "credited with coming up with the line about Gore having invented the Internet," had his hand in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" during the 2000 Florida election recount, and was the guy handing George W. the bullhorn at Ground Zero on September 14, 2001.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Hapless Democratic strategist Bob Shrum's comments on this morning's Meet The Press are fascinating in their own right but have added resonance considering U.S. House candidate John Russell's Guest Post early today, concerning last November's Florida elections. Shrum believes (and allegedly Gore too) that Gore won Florida and the 2000 election. He also tells an interesting story about Gore joking about Bush getting caught cheating the day before the election. Cheating, elections, Florida, seems like an epidemic.

After more than two years of banging the drum here at The BRAD BLOG, it looks as if the national MSM have finally picked up on the fraud perpetrated by Missouri's White House operative Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and his high-level, democracy-hating GOP scammer pals in Missouri, at the Department of Justice, and in the White House.

In a McClatchy article just out today, reporter Greg Gordon correctly identifies Missouri as "Ground Zero" in the Republican attempt to establish phony claims of Democratic "voter fraud" in order to institute new restrictions at the polls as part of an insidious ploy to Democratic-leaning voters from being able to cast their vote.

Gordon reports on a number of issues out of Missouri that we've covered here over the years, including; the unsubstantiated claims of "voter registration fraud" against ACORN filed just prior to the '06 election in the Show-Me state; the unsuccessful lawsuit brought by the DoJ against MO SoS Robyn Carnahan alleging more voters on the rolls than actual eligible voters; and the unconstitutional Voter ID law as pushed through the MO legislature as drafted by the slime-ball Hearne.

As well, McClatchy finally outs the supposedly "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), as created by Hearne and RNC Communications director, Jim Dyke. We began reporting on ACVR just three days after they went public on March 22, 2005 to testify before then-Rep. Bob Ney's (R-OH) House Administration Committee on Democratic attempts at "vote supression" during Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election.

Gordon finally exposes the ACVR in the mainstream media for what it actually was: Little more than a well-coordinated, (and still-mysteriously-funded) scam to produce public propaganda to support the GOP's insider push in swing states for voter suppression legislation and tactics by Republican officials.

Though the ACVR claimed tax-exempt 501(c)3 status from the beginning (despite their inability to show evidence of same), their "non-partisan" status was neatly embellished several months after they formed when they added "Democrat" Brian Lunde as their Executive Director. As Gordon writes...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Wolf Blitzer asks Florida's new Republican Governor Charlie Crist if there could be a replay in 2008 of the "2000 election fiasco?" Crist believes that his budget recommendation, which calls for $32 million to be spent implementing a "paper trail" system (in actuality, he's called for the replacement of touch-screen systems with paper ballot-based optical-scan systems) will cure Florida's election problems. He also offers up this gem:

However, when Wolf questions Crist about the 18,000 missing votes in "Orlando" from the 2006 election (he meant Sarasota in the still-contested FL-13 U.S. House race), Crist answers that his concern is "going forward." Thus, it seems Florida has felt very strongly about democracy for about three months now (who was running the place before Crist?). Not to be outdone, Wolf "presses" by holding his feet to the fire... asking a softball question...unrelated to Orlando Sarasota, about whether Florida will be "ready" by 2008.

Meanwhile, one would think that Americans would be a little more concerned about getting Florida elections right after experiencing the last six years of Bush. Yet, despite statistical evidence that all but guaranteed her victory in FL-13, Christine Jennings remains on the outside looking in. At least with Al Gore the mountains of evidence that he won Florida did not surface until after the Supreme Court gifted the election to Bush. With Jennings we do not have the luxury of such an excuse and it is inexcusable.

ADDENDUM BY BRAD: Wolf Blitzer is a complete and utter, unmitigated moron of indescribable proportions. Rivaled only in his utter and embarrassing cluelessness by Chris Wallace...And meanwhile, I have to beg for milk money. Amazing.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

AP reports the following comments made Tuesday by the unimpeached Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia concerning his decision to overthrow American democracy in the 2000 Presidential Election:

We wonder what other decisions by the SCOTUS that Americans should "get over." We wonder if the voters of Florida who were denied their expressed intent to elect Al Gore should also "get over it." Doubtless, the more than 3000 U.S. troops killed by George W. Bush's unnecessary war have no choice but to "get over it."

Deceptively attempting to justify his wholly incorrect and unconstitutional decision by playing the unequally applied "Equal Protection Clause" card once again, Scalia reportedly added, "Counting somebody else's dimpled chad and not counting my dimpled chad is not giving equal protection of the law."

Interestingly enough, Scalia and the SCOTUS have stood by and allowed all forms of un-Equal Protection in Elections ever since --- from the myriad different voting systems and "standards" now used, to the myriad ways in which votes by voters in the very same county are counted differently and at different times. In other words, the repugnant democracy-hating Scalia is full of shit.

As pointed out --- though somewhat cryptically --- in the AP piece by Mark Sherman, subsequent study of the actual ballots in the state of Florida in 2000 showed that, in fact, had all of the them actually been counted (we know, it's a quaint idea) Gore would have won [PDF] the state, and thus the Presidency.

Speaking of which, Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson says: Run, Al, Run. We concur, and offer John Lennon's "(Just Like) Starting Over" as our suggestion for the campaign's victory song.

(Hat-tip Michael Roston at RAW STORY.)

At the risk of stoking conspiracy theories which I have no interesting in doing, I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. Though it seems worth putting out there nonetheless. Make of it what you will...

From the FEC's 2000 Connecticut Senate Election Results...

From CNN's 2006 Connecticut Senate Election Results...
(as of 11/11/06, 4:26pm PT)

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG Emailer Nigel E.)