Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty compares the paperless Direct Recording Electronic voting in Maryland to the potentially auditable and verified electronic voting in California. Guests were Dan Wallach of Rice University and California State Senator and Secretary of State candidate Debra Bowen.

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Joy & Todd Williams

Representative John Conyers (bio) has served in the U.S. House of Representatives for over 20 terms, having represented the 14th Congressional District in Detroit since 1964. For all those years he has fought for our democracy. From his website: “In his role on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Conyers has introduced and endorsed legislation to advance civil liberties, ensure equal protection and access to the voting booth and combat violence against women.”

In July of last year he led a citizens' movement to deliver 500,000 signed petitions to the White House which questioned George Bush about his attempt to “fix the facts around the policy” as revealed in the infamous “Downing Street Memo”. This “fixing of the facts” eventually led to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Additionally, he held hearings about the Ohio voting irregularities during 2004, and published What Went Wrong in Ohio which enumerates most of the irregularities and abuse of the election process in that state. He has now published a new book, Constitution in Crisis, which documents the Bush administration’s violations of the Constitution in over 26 different categories, and in many cases multiple violations within each category.

You can support Representative Conyers' Campaign here as he will become the chair of the powerful U.S. House Judiciary Committee if the Democrats, by some fluke of nature, take the majority this November.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of weeks ago while he was en route to the airport to return to his constituents during the Congressional break. He’s a very gracious, experienced and thoughtful representative of the 14th district and for all Democrats everywhere.

Our exclusive interview with the good congressman follows...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Unconfirmed reports suggest that one Brad Friedman, the partially well-known investigative blogger, staunch Election Integrity advocate and all-around good-guy, (also allegedly "proprietor" of this very blog), may have met with "representatives of several prominent organizations" at a series of events "sponsored" by the DNC in Chicago last weekend.

We have additional "photographic evidence" of these alleged meetings: four photos which, according to usually reliable sources, were made by Friedman's putative girlfriend, Desi Doyen.

The "authenticity" of these photos has not yet been verified, and it may never be. The "chain of custody" appears to have been broken, several "security mitigation procedures" appear to have been ignored, and the "security seals" on three of the four photos appear to show signs of possible tampering. But we will post them below, since they may be of interest to the usual gaggle of conspiracy theorists who have nothing else to work on at this time.

You can click on the small photos below to see larger images.

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

It is important to note that the Cuyahoga Co. Ohio County Commission contracted with Election Science Institute (ESI) to investigate the counties voting system and the results of how it was used in the May primary. It is the Board of Elections (BoE) who selected and purchased the Diebold voting machines used in the county. It is the BoE that has joined with Diebold to question the ESI report. The County Commission still seems to be supporting ESI....

Guest Blogged By John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco, California was paid $341,000 by Cuyahoga Co., OH to investigate why the county had so many problems with their voting system in the May 2006 election. Were the problems really all human or were the machines at fault? ESI finally issued a report last week that had plenty of blame to go around between poll worker training problems to voting machines that could not add votes, counting devices that didn't match up on the same machine and, in several cases, machines that registered no votes at all.

Of course Diebold Elections Systems Inc. immediately denied that there were any voting machine problems at all as they blamed all problems on voters, poll workers, and election administrators. As reported earlier on The BRAD BLOG, Diebold also received nearly instantaneous assistance from "outside" sources who obfuscated in their reporting of the problems, singling out the issues concerning the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and ignoring everything else that was in the report.

Now county elections officials seem to have decided that they don't like the results from the investigation they paid for, as done by ESI, so they are throwing ESI under the bus while they run to defend Diebold. Suprised? Apparently they don't want to have to explain why they spent millions of dollars for a voting system that is flawed. Or perhaps Diebold applied pressure to their partners in crime at the Cuyahoga Board of Elections.

In either case, Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday morning that Diebold and the County have worked everything out, and it's all just fine after all...

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

ES&S denies any wrong-doing for it's failures in Indiana while agreeing to pay $245,000 to the state and provide other services such as training through 2007. Total cost to ES&S $753,130. Sounds to me like they are admitting they were wrong. / Cuyahoga Co. Ohio paid $342,000 for an investigation into the failures of their May primary. The report from the investigators, ESI, is scathing and shows an error riddled, difficult to administer voting system (Diebold TSx). The county didn't hear what they wanted to hear so they are now joining with Diebold to attack ESI. / Teton Co. Wyoming reported a ballot programming error. Another ES&S failure. / Diebold machines failed in Alaska requiring hand counting and manual uploading of results....

Blogged by Brad from the still-long and still-winding (and still very hot) road...

"They're dumb as shit."
-- Donna Brazile to Rolling Stone for an article this week, discussing her frustration with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and making the party understand the need to be vigilant during Election 2006.

"Fuck you."
-- Donna Brazile to an Election Integrity Advocate at the annual DNC gathering last weekend in Chicago after being asked where the party was in Ohio after Election 2004.

Such were the contradictions and dysfunctions on parade last weekend in Chicago where I was invited to address a panel on Electoral Integrity at the DNC's annual gathering of state party chairs. What a mess.

The Rolling Stone piece referenced above, by the good Tim Dickinson, is not currently online. But it's from the Aug. 24 issue of RS on newsstands now. It asks "Will Democrats Fight Back?" The answer, as Dickinson reports, is a decisive maybe, probably not, things don't look so good, we hope so but kinda doubt it.

While it'd be nice to give you an encouraging report from the DNC meeting of how the Dems have finally figured out what the hell is going on here --- how they are going to get out in front of this electile dysfunction thing, take the offensive, become proactive and lead the way in becoming the party which stands for vigilance, Electoral Integrity and the assurance that every vote will be counted and counted accurately --- I can't give such a report.

Yes, there are some good things going on there. One of the most notable being Greg Moore who is now the Director of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute. He gets it. Moore was responsible for all of the Election Protection-related events over the weekend. It seems he's been fighting heroically from inside the power structure to wake the Dems up as to what is going on. He's the one responsible for the historic DNC statement a few weeks ago calling for a full handcount in the illegally administered Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election in California's 50th congressional district. But it's clearly been a difficult fight. And last weekend's events made that crystal clear...

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As The BRAD BLOG reported two days ago, a new Zogby poll has revealed that a stunning 92% of Americans want their vote counted transparently and not by secret vote counting machines. That overwhelming majority crosses all political, social, religious and economic demographics.

Today, Zogby has released their official statement and numbers from the poll. Their statement quotes attorney Paul Lehto, who is busy fighting the election contest down in San Diego's Busby/Bilbray CA50 challenge in which voting machines, using secret software to count the results of that election, were compromised when they were sent home with poll workers on overnight "sleepovers" for days and weeks prior to the election, as we have been reporting since that special U.S. House election on June 6th.

Here's a quick snippet from Zogby's official release...

The survey also says that some 60% of respondents "have heard news reports of flaws in new electronic voting equipment." So I guess someone is doing the job of getting this information out to the American people.

Apparently the news hasn't yet reached the DNC, however. More on that, and my personal experiences addressing folks at the DNC's annual gathering last weekend, in a report to come shortly today...

UPDATE from WP: Zogby has released more data in a PDF format. Just click here. There's a press release for Zogby too, and it's here.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco California was hired to investigate and report on problems with the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The 240-page report was just released this month (August), and some in the elections community have ignored a large majority of the report and zeroed in on a single aspect that supports their thesis that voters don't need any paper, even when voting on a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine.

Daniel Tokaji is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and the Associate Director of Election Law at Moritz. He has testified against a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to a US House committee and the Election Assistance Commission..

In his paper on the ESI report, Tokaji ignores many significant findings of the report and distorts the overall findings by highlighting only the compromised VVPAT. As pointed out by VotersUnite.Org in their analysis of the ESI report, there was much more substance from ESI than just VVPAT printer problems:

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

An enormous investigation continues in Great Britain, where eight people were charged with conspiracy to murder on Monday and lesser charges were laid against three others. All eleven of the suspects who were charged Monday appeared in court on Tuesday.

From Monday's account in the Mirror: 11 Charged Over Airline Bomb Plot, police described the alleged evidence as follows (with my emphasis):

As for the charges...

Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon

Is someone murdering people who know too much about NSA wiretapping overseas?

Two whistleblowers --- one in Italy, one in Greece --- uncovered a secret bugging system installed in cell phones around the world. Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of the Bush administration.

Last month, Italian telecommunications security expert Adamo Bove either leapt or was pushed from a freeway overpass; he left no note and had no history of depression. Last year (March, 2005), Greek telecommunications expert Costas Tsalikidis met with a similarly enigmatic end. Both had uncovered American attempts to eavesdrop on government officials, anti-war activists, and private businessmen.

The Bove case relates to the long-standing controversy over the CIA's kidnapping of cleric Abu Omar, who was flown to Egypt and tortured. The post-Berlusconi government of Italy is attempting to arrest and try all of the CIA personnel involved. Bove used mobile phone records to trace more than two dozen American agents.

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

Unlike some California counties who have chosen to remove themselves from a law suit against the use of Diebold TSx voting machines by choosing to use optical-scan systems, Nevada Co. have decided, today, to go the opposite way. They are spending $250,000 to RENT machines for Nov. / ES&S has agreed to give Arkansas counties credit for $388,000 of the vendors mistakes in the state primary. / A new paper on Independent Verification has been released today. /...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty Pilgrim reports that Pinellas Co.'s voting machines passed Logic and Accuracy (L&A) Tests until a Sequoia Voting Systems technician changed some software. A subsequent test failed so the county changed the software back and re-did the test successfully. There was no report as to what caused the problem or why Sequoia tried to install software that was, very apparently, unnecessary; or was it?

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Thus writes Michael Collins in his most recent article, a masterful presentation of the study and its results.

The graphic you see at the top right corner of this post shows how overwhelmingly Americans insist on seeing how their votes are counted; click on it to see a full-sized version. Respondents were asked to choose one of the following:

A: Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes.

B: Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain information about how elections officials count votes.

The blue area represents respondents who chose option "A", the red represents those who chose "B", and the grey area represents those who were not sure. As you can easily see, the blue position was extremely popular for the survey overall. Below we have extensive charts and numerous graphs which show beyond any reasonable doubt that the blue position was extremely popular for every segment of the survey group!

But first things first; here's Michael Collins:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight, Dobbs reporter and stand-in Kitty Pilgrim interviews Professor Avi Rubin about his new book and about the dangers of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Video in Streaming Flash format...

The video is also available on Rubin's new blog.

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...