Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today has been another busy day in the news. Building on top of the California reports from Friday and Monday and the Florida report on Tuesday we now have an important report from the Brennan Center just released today. This new report discusses audits and why they are needed and points out that states are not doing enough to ensure their vote count is accurate. On top of all of this one county in Utah has decided to buck the trend in that state and they are returning to hand-marked paper ballots and optical scan machines this November. Also in a town election in one small South Carolina town, 149 voters voted on the town’s provided ES&S iVotronic machines. The election was to select a person to sit on the city council. The machine broke down once during the day and 15 voters had to use paper ballots. The 149 votes could not be retrieved from the machine until the next day due to a problem with passwords. It is not good to use a DRE for any election but for an election with only one race and a small expected turnout it is insane. What are these people thinking?...

Blogged by Brad from somewhere in TX...

We've been largely off the grid for the last 24, and will likely continue to be over the next two or three days. At least. (On the road, with frustratingly spotty net access and several article deadlines looming.) So for now, we're happy to point over to AlterNet's coverage of the story listeners may have heard us cursorily break during a phone call from Ohio's Paddy Schaeffer on the air the Friday before last while we were Guest Hosting the Peter B. Collins Show from Houston.

Here's the lede...

Read Steve Rosenfeld's excellent report in full for much more detail and reminders of the raft of apparently fraudulent cases which these missing ballots may have helped to explain one way or another. Such as the "10,000 voters from several Bible belt counties who voted for Bush and voted in favor of gay marriage, if the results are true," along with the "dozen rural counties, [where] virtually unknown Democrats at the bottom of the ballot received more votes than Kerry."

As well, we're given a few jarring reminders of where else these missing ballots might otherwise have filled in so many still-unexplained gaps (all, of course, completely ignored by the corporate mainstream media for years)...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon, VotersUnite.Org

In a recently released report, New York Attorney Andrea Novick, Esq., tells members of New York state government and now the world that the vendors of the voting machines that most of us use are NOT responsible citizens and why. This report was written for, and addressed to, Governor Spitzer, the State Board of Elections and the State Legislature.

In her report Novick explains that New York state has laws that should bar any of the vendors from doing business in the state.

New York State Law states the following about corporate integrity...