Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The lion's share of the news is still about California. The tentative ruling by the judge in Alameda County, the report from the ‘Blue Ribbon” Committee in Riverside County, and the ruling from the state “Supremes” that they won’t hear the complaint regarding the Busby-Bilbray ruling from San Diego County....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

August 11 is the date for the Iowa GOP presidential "straw poll." In this "straw poll" Republican voters from all over Iowa will walk, drive, or share a bus to the campus of Iowa State University where they will be allowed to pay $35 each for the honor of casting a ballot for their choice for President.

This "poll" is semi-important within the world of Republican politics. Both McCain and Giuliani have decided to pass and will not participate. However, for the candidates who are lower down in the polls this "straw poll" may be all important. The supporters of Dr. Ron Paul, for instance, claim that he has thousands of supporters within the state and that they are going to do all they can to get them to Ames.

With all of that the supporters of Paul have got another gripe and concern that sounds much like the same concern many in the Election Integrity community have; the poll, which used to be done on paper ballots, hand-counted in public, will be conducted on Diebold Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines. The Ron Paul group is very concerned that the machines will be gamed in order to make their candidate's showing less than what it should be and in order to inflate the results for those whom the Republican National Committee (RNC) want to have a good showing.

The following email was sent by a member of Paul's support group to a large list of Election Integrity groups:

Guest blogged by DES

It's high summer and the movers and shakers got back to movin' and shakin' without delay after coming back from the 4th of July holiday week. Brought to you by our intrepid Guest Bloggers and the Travelin' Brad, the biggest stories this last week ranged all over, but our BIGGEST story bar-none was the victory of dogged citizen activists in their battle to dump disenfranchising DRE (basically, touch-screen) voting machines in their home county of Riverside, CA. Be sure to read the story of how unflagging dedication to election integrity and sheer stick-to-it-iveness can overcome bureaucratic stonewalling and stupidity...

In other election integrity news this last week, the big cajones award goes to the California judge who ordered a RE-VOTE after county election officials destroyed the evidence from a 2004 race, depriving plaintiffs of a recount... PFAW continues their disingenuous campaign to keep those dangerous DREs in every county in the nation... the notorious Election Assistance Commission finally un-gagged researcher Tova Wang, author of a study proving the "myth" part of the Republican Myth of Voter Fraud... Rep. Dennis Kucinich dropped his support of Holt's HR811.... plus the other biggie story of the week: the stunning revelation of discrepancies in the code ES&S submitted to the state of California --- which could have national implications!

In other big stories this last week, BRAD BLOG DC correspondent Margie Burns analyzed the politics of leaks and pardons by presidents, past and current... the Guts of Michael Chertoff told him bad things might happen to the U.S.... revelations of Vote Caging by Republicans in Florida in 2004 (aren't you shocked?) and the release of the escort service client phone list of the "DC Madam", already netting one Republican representative senator (aren't you shocked?) in just the first 24 hours...

From tireless Guest Blogger Alan Breslauer, we have multo must-see video: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s inspiring speech during the Live Earth concerts, NYC firefighters exposing Giuliani's actions in the aftermath of 9/11, and the er, unusual eavesdropping of a conversation between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and a very entertaining smack-down delivered by RFK, Jr. to the hapless Glenn Beck...Plus a revealing debate between Wolf Blitzer and Michael Moore over his newest film, "Sicko"!

Check out the newest pro-Net Neutrality video released this last week, and sign up to tell the FCC to PROTECT YOUR INTERNET from corporate raiders! They aren't playing fair, kids --- they never do --- and it's up to us to save it --- the deadline is July 17th, so spread the word!

Even more awaits after the jump...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Rebecca Mercuri, in an article on OpEdNews, reminds us that Avante International has a lawsuit against Sequoia, Diebold and ES&S for patent infringement:

She also reports, “In a one-two punch, Avante's key patent, #7036730 'Electronic Voting Aparatus, System and Method,' also includes claims that pertain to 'a Braille device,' 'an aural device,' and 'voice recognition apparatus.'"

That story, and today's other notable voting news, all linked below...

Guest Blogged by Tom Courbat of SAVE R VOTE

ED NOTE: Courbat and his band of intrepid Election Integrity advocates are owed a huge debt of thanks and enormous congratulations for their effort. This recommendation, and indeed the creation of the "Blue Ribbon" commission itself, only came about due to the dogged, week-in, week-out, year-in, year-out persistence of Tom and the Riverside County advocates of SAVE R VOTE. We're happy to run his first-hand, guest blog contribution on this tremendous victory, as Courbat's group and efforts serve as a role model for citizens in every county in the nation. --- BF

Dump the DREs and Minimize Additional Outlays To Go To Paper Ballots

Next Tuesday, July 17, 2007, the Riverside County, California Board of Supervisors’ hand-picked “Blue Ribbon” Elections Review Committee will present the Board with recommendations to “Move as quickly as possible to a hybrid voting system…on paper ballots…counted by optical scanners.”

For Riverside County, the first in America to move to touch-screen electronic voting systems, the importance of their findings cannot be overstated.

With the exception of omitting the words “Digital Imaging” from the term “optical scanners” (aka “DIOS”), this is exactly the recommendation made to the committee by Finnish Computer Voting expert Harri Hursti to the Elections Review Committee in Palm Desert, CA, on March 30th of this year. Hursti came to Riverside after Supervisor Jeff Stone laid down a "1000 to 1" challenge, as covered in detail by The BRAD BLOG, that we'd be unable to manipulate the county's Sequoia touch-screen voting system. Hursti was happy to take up the challenge, but Stone demurred.

(It should also be noted that Stone and the Board of Supervisors failed to respond to requests to allow Mr. Hursti to address them and answer any questions they might have --- even after he flew 17 hours to testify before them and the "Blue Ribbon" committee.)

The committee's findings also match the recommendations made by SAVE R VOTE (Secure Accurate Verifiable Elections Require Voter Observation of Touchscreen Equipment) to both the "Blue Ribbon" Elections Review Committee (ERC) and the Board Of Supervisors (BoS) earlier this year.

The ERC reports that “…factors should minimize the additional capital outlay necessary to transition to a hybrid system.” The question now becomes: will the BoS reject the recommendations of their own hand-picked committee, who spent thousands of hours laboring over evidence contained in reports, interviews, presentations by expert witnesses, City Clerks, citizens' opinions, news articles, DVDs, conference calls, and SAVE R VOTE members? The full report can be found here.

Who Is On the Elections Review Committee (ERC)?

The "blue ribbon" ERC committee, again, hand-picked by the BoS, consists of a former County Supervisor, Kay Ceniceros; two former judges, Rob Taylor and Jim Ward; retired Press Enterprise newspaper editor and publisher Marcia McQuern; and an independent businesswoman who also serves as the president of a local chamber of commerce, Lynn Baldi. On April 24, Rob Taylor told the BoS in an interim report that, due to such a diversity of opinion, the committee might be submitting “five minority reports.” By July 11th, however, the entire committee issued a unanimous series of 17 recommendations.

Supervisor Stone 'Surprised' By Commission Findings...

We didn't pay attention or speak up, until after it was too late to save our democracy. Let's not make the same mistake when it comes to saving the world's greatest democratizer ever, the Internet, for the people.

Several weeks ago we ran a "Net Neutrality" video by SaveTheInternet.com. It explained the sitch, as we asked you to guess at the voices of the two characters in the amusing JibJab-style video. Nobody guessed correctly, so we'll disclose that now. The voices were performed by yours truly (Brad Friedman), and Mimi Kennedy of both Dharma & Greg and Progressive Democrats of America fame.

Now, an FCC deadline of July 16th is quickly approaching. The latest video from SaveTheInternet.com, while not nearly as funny as the previous one, gives you marching orders on how to take action. You can send your opinion to the FCC right here.

We already lost democracy, and will likely be fighting for years to get it back from the private corporate interests who have claimed ownership of it. Let's not let that same thing happen with The Internets...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

During the "Live Earth" concerts this past weekend, in one of the great speeches (both video and text transcript here) in recent American history, activist and radio host Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (his other sites here and here) called Glenn Beck and other right wing pundits "flat-earthers" and "corporate toadies" for continuously lying to the American people about global warming. Tonight, RFK, Jr. appeared on the "Face-Off" segment of Beck's CNN Headline News show and (in a heavily edited interview, see "UPDATE" at end of this story) continued to call out the host, stating at one point, "Your sentence should be that you should have to read the IPCC Report from cover to cover and I don't mean this with any particular disrespect, but I don't believe you have a long attention span."

The "IPCC Report" referenced by Kennedy is a report on global warming, recently issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body which "assess[es] on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation," according to their website.

Beck then followed up with a clever retort about Kennedy's "even shorter attention span" because the longtime environmental advocate-turned-media critic had failed to define "fascist" for the host. Kennedy quickly replied:

After more Beck antics, RFK Jr. closed by prescribing that Beck "Go back to journalism school, number one" and "number two, that you read the IPCC Report with somebody standing over your shoulder to help you."

UPDATE FROM BRAD: I spoke with someone from RFK's office late yesterday, who said the interview with Beck was originally much longer, but that it was greatly edited by air time. Indeed, the version of the video posted by Alan above reveals a number of uneven cuts where, clearly, the interview had been edited. Big time.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are caught on tape today at the NAACP Democratic presidential candidates forum seemingly making anti-democratic comments about shrinking the democratic field in future debate settings. (Video available at left.)

Fox "News", who filed the report during Brit Hume's Special Report on Thursday, included sub-titles for the "overheard" post-forum conversation between Clinton and Edwards. They also managed to get in several cheapshots against a number of other Democratic candidates, including Barack Obama.

As subtitled by Fox during the video clip, the exchange between Clinton and Edwards purportedly went as follows:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an excellent article posted at OpEdNews, Andi Novick has this to say

And from the PhillyBurbs blog comes the following:

Those stories, and today's other notable voting news items, all linked below as usual...

In Breaking News late this afternoon, we find yet another reason why Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems are incompatible with democracy: When an election held on them is contested, the machines themselves --- which are said to hold the ballots internally --- cannot be used in another election until the contest is settled.

Late news this afternoon, sent to The BRAD BLOG moments ago, reveals that a judge in an Alameda County, California election contest is set to rule that a contested ballot measure election from 2004 must now be reheld since the county destroyed data from the election when they sent the Diebold DRE voting systems back to the company in Plano, Texas.

All but 4% of election data, records and audit logs was overwritten in subsequent contests, according to the following release from Americans For Safe Access (ASA) who were the plaintiffs in the contest.

In 2004, Alameda was the same county where it was found that Diebold had installed uncertified hardware and software in the county's voting system. The illegal action by the company eventually led to the decertification of certain Diebold systems in California.

The judge's unprecedented decision to re-hold an election after plaintiffs were denied their right to a proper recount after the county's failure to preserve election records on the Diebold touch-screen systems could have reverberations around the country.

The ASA release explains the astounding details and background in this tale, along with the judge's tentative findings in full...

More from the press release, including background on this incredible story, the ballot measure, the long fought election contest, the overwriting of the data on the Diebold voting machines --- in violation of the law --- and the judge's tentative ruling itself, follows below...

RAW STORY has the shameful report and video of Bush's press conference and latest failure of the mainstream corporate media...

Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite

In a just released letter [.pdf] dated July 5, the Election Assistance Commission's (EAC) Deputy General Counsel, Gavin Gilmour, wrote to Tova Wang's attorney and clarified prior communications. Tova has now been un-gagged by the EAC and is free to speak about her Voter Fraud report that was commissioned and then hidden by the commission when it found the opposite of what they had hoped to find. As it turns out, the massive epidemic of voter fraud the Republicans had been claiming, didn't actually exist. Who knew? (We did.)

Regular readers will recall that Tova Andrea Wang, a Democracy Fellow at the Century Foundation --- co-author of the report that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) attempted to bury --- had announced that the federal commission of Presidential appointees had refused to allow her to speak directly about her report and the action taken by the EAC to alter its findings and hide her original report from public view.

We reported on the following day that new EAC Commissioner, Rosemary Rodriguez, made a statement calling on her fellow commissioners to release Wang from the gag-order and allow her to talk about the report and the altering thereof.

Hopefully this long-overdue action by the EAC, releasing her to speak freely, will now lead to some revelations into why the EAC buried the Wang/Serebov report. Only time will tell. But we have a feeling there will be much more to come, now that Wang's shackles have been removed...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The use of the county’s new DRE voting machines means that this year’s municipal elections will cost Salt Lake Co Utah three times more than past elections. New technology has increased the amount of training and wages for election workers. Palm Beach and Sarasota Co’s have both made a decision to fund for new voting machines....

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Harold A. Schaitberger, the General President of the International Association of Fire Fighters does not pull any punches in his smackdown of GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani (see video). Discussing a video released by the Fire Fighters PAC today, Schaitberger says that fire fighters are dead today because of Rudy and that the former Mayor was far more concerned about recovering gold at Ground Zero than he was missing fire fighters.

Also see the Rudy Giuliani Urban Legend Site

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave one of the great speeches in recent history at Live Earth where he spoke truth to power to our "rotten politicians" who are "nothing more than corporate toadies" for "villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of American interest and ahead of the interest of all of humanity."

RFK jr. also offered a couple of ways to combat the corporations, politicians, "slick public relations firms and their phony think tanks" and "crooked scientists" including getting involved in the political process and boycotting the companies that advertise on programs where the corporate toadies consistently lie about global warming. Specifically, RJK Jr. suggests:

This mashup is produced entirely from the July 9th Hannity & Colmes and provides consumers with a list of corporations to avoid as well as evidences a number of typical Sean Hannity lies.