Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today the Daytona Beach News Journal reports that 25,000 Diebold optical-scan machines used across the country may have a defect that causes failures in the memory cards. Apparently Diebold has known about this problem for some time. One election official claims that she THINKS no votes have been lost. Diebold says that around one percent of the memory cards are affected but the News Journal has found that some counties have reported over nine percent failure. There will be an election in Florida next week but the state is not requiring any beefed-up audits to ensure there are no lost votes. Diebold says they will inspect machines outside of Florida on a “case by case basis.” In other words, they are not going to warn their customers, and they won’t inspect anything unless a customer forces their hand. This is just another reason to recall all voting devices qualified by NASED and inspected by ITAs paid by the vendors to look the other way. It is time to “Rage against the machines”....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

In an article in today’s Alternet, Steven Rosenfeld has said, more eloquently, what we have been saying for awhile now:

It’s just that simple. The vendors know they are selling defective, poorly designed, and insecure voting systems and previous attempts to inspect and qualify them for use have been nothing more than rubber stamps to get these systems out to unsuspecting customers. We need to support groups like VoterAction who are in the forefront of this “rage against the machines.”

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

The latest e-vote mess with Texas...

So how many more such cases are we going to see in next week's elections, and more notably, in next year's elections? Hope you're ready for the meltdown to come.

In the above matter, it looks like the Travis County Clerk was more than happy to lie to the reporter so she could continue using her democracy-busting e-voting systems:

That is, of course, complete and total bullshit.

Only one disabled accessible voting device (and it needn't be a DRE) is required per polling place, as per the federal Help America Vote Act. If Texas has some state law requiring that every voter use such systems, we are unaware of it. In other words, if the reporters quote was accurate, County Clerk DeBeauvoir was lying.

It's a shame the reporter on the piece, like so many at local papers who cover this beat on rare occassions, didn't know enough to call her on it.

-- By Brad Friedman

After months of being told over and over by Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) office, People for the American Way (PFAW), and many of the other most ardent supporters of Holt's flawed Election Reform Bill (HR811) that "there is no support in Congress for a ban on DREs," it looks like they must have been wrong. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and co-sponsor Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) filed such a bill today.

Here's the complete bill [PDF] which we've yet to read in full. But note this item from page 41, Line 7:

A ban on such machines, finally? Yes! By 2012? Unfortunately, yes. But let's overlook that last point for a moment.

In a statement issued by Nelson today, pointing out that DRE (often referred to as "touch-screen") voting systems are "unreliable and vulnerable to error," the senator says, "The bottom line is we have to ensure every vote is counted – and, counted properly...Citizens must have confidence in the integrity of their elections.”

The new language banning DREs was added today to a previous version of the same bill which Nelson had introduced originally in early Summer. This version "would be the first [bill] to seek a ban on electronic touch-screen voting machines in federal elections nationwide," according to his statement, which adds that the language was updated after a recent meeting with Florida's Republican Secretary of State Kurt Browning, once an ardent support of DRE voting systems.

When Nelson's original version of the legislation was introduced some months ago, it was largely a "clone version" of Holt's original HR811 introduced in the House, but with a number of extra provisions addressing concerns of voter intimidation and suppression.

Little attention had been given to Nelson's bill at the time, since the Rules Committee was regarded as having jurisdiction for any Election Reform bills in the Senate, and the committee chair, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), had made clear she intended to introduce her own version of Election Reform as the Senate counterpart to Holt's. She eventually introduced S. 1487, which has been subsequently criticized by Election Integrity advocates as being even more flawed then Holt's much-criticized bill.

(FULL DISCLOSURE: We were invited to work on the Holt bill prior to its introduction, and succeeded in adding several much-improved provisions. Yet the bill, as currently written --- and far more so since being drastically watered down throughout the committee process --- has failed to garner our support.)

DREs: "Not a Reasonable Voting System"

Neither Feinstein's nor Holt's bill had called for a ban on DRE voting systems, however, despite an outcry among Election Integrity advocates and a host of computer scientists and security experts who argued that DREs were vulnerable to hacking, non-transparent, prone to error, antithetical to democracy, and thus simply could not be used safely in elections. With or without a so-called "Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail" (VVPAT) printer attached.

Johns Hopkins computer professor Avi Rubin testified earlier this year that "after four years of studying the issue, I now believe that a DRE with a VVPAT is not a reasonable voting system."

Stanford professor and VerifiedVoting.org founder David Dill, arguing in favor of the Holt bill, admitted, "I would personally prefer to see optical scan machines used nationwide."

And former legislative director of VoteTrustUSA.org Warren Stewart, now also of VerifiedVoting, had told a Senate panel earlier this year that while there were disagreements among some in the EI movement, most had agreed that touch-screen systems must not not be used. "While this broad based movement embraces a wide range of proposals and positions," he testified, "it is unified in the conclusion that the direct electronic recording of votes to computer memory is inimical to democracy."

And yet, all three of the above advocates, along with many others, continued to argue --- while failing to offer any actual evidence for the claim --- that there was simply no support for the idea of a DRE ban in either house of the U.S. Congress.

All the while, The BRAD BLOG had maintained that they, and the other Holt supporters, had fallen victim to a hoax by People for the American Way (PFAW). The popular public advocacy group had long pushed the unsupported notion that there was no congressional support for such a ban, in order to see the bill passed specifically without such a ban. It was one of several false notions being forwarded by the group in favor of the bill, as we argued both here and at Alernet early in the year.

A careful examination of PFAW's on-the-record statements, and numerous on and off-the-record conversations with their Executive Director and legislative leaders by The BRAD BLOG over many months, revealed that PFAW (almost inexplicably) has actually been advocating in favor of the use of dangerous DRE voting systems in American elections. It's fair to say that Holt's bill had thus been held hostage to ensure that such systems would not be banned.

But then came the fallout from the failed 13th Congressional District election last November in Nelson's home state, followed by California Sec. of State Debra Bowen's landmark scientific findings, Rep. Susan Davis's (D-CA) amendment this past summer, and a killer editorial from the New York Times as the tide began to slowly turn...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Last Nov. 55% of the voters in Sarasota Co Florida spoke with their votes for optical scan voting and for a meaningful audit of the ballots. Before the measure went on the ballot the county and state went to court and argued that the charter amendment would result in a violation of the state constitution. The court disagreed and the voters won. Yesterday a state appeals court decided against the will of the voters and for the county Supervisor of Elections and the SoS. The ruling was partially moot because the county is going to optical-scan machines, as is the state due in part to the pressure from passage of the amendment. However, the voters lose the ability to have an audit that will mean anything at all. They voted for an audit of 5% of all precincts. Instead the state is working on an audit of 1 to 2% of the precincts in each county and one race on those ballots AND this audit cannot happen until AFTER the election is certified....

Last week we reported that a CBS poll finds Al Gore trailing Hilary Clinton by just 5% in the Presidential Primary race and is ahead of all of the others, even though he's not officially on the ballot.

Last month we reported that a Zogby "blind bio" poll of Republicans found that some unknown guy --- Ward Casscells --- who's not even running, led the Republican candidate field among GOP voters when no names, just summarized resumes, were given for each candidate polled.

Yesterday, Zogby released the results of their Democratic "blind bio" poll, showing that Al Gore is, hands down, in front of the pack with 35% support. His closest rival was Hillary Clinton at 24%.

Also in the poll, 60% of Dem voters would consider voting for someone other than the current slate of candidates, based on dissatisfaction with the positions on the Iraq War by the current official crop. 65% said they'd be open to supporting a new candidate based on the current candidates' global climate change positions...

More details...

After announcing last night (video here) that would not file to be on the Republican ballot, due to the exorbitant $35,000 filing fee ("I am not willing to write a $35,000 check to the Republican Party. ... I understand you have to keep a club exclusive but I paid less for my black-market liver"), Stephen Colbert said that he had filed the $2,500 required to be on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina's Presidential Primary.

The decision about whether the S.C. Dems would then allow him to be on the ballot was to be announced during tonight's broadcast. Politico beats him to the punch, however, with their report today that the S.C. Dems have rejected his application.

Though ABC snubbed us previously by referring to the John "Minorities Die First" Tanner video as "widely circulated on YouTube," we made last night's Nightline broadcast, if only for our logo on the original video they used showing his objectionable (and inaccurate) remarks explaining his approval of a Georgia Photo ID law, on behalf of the DoJ Civil Rights Voting Section, which later was struck down as an unconstitutional, Jim Crow-era poll tax.

Jake Tapper's take on the story last night was to look at "How Public Figures Apologize --- or At Least Pretend To." A text version of his report is here. The text version doesn't credit anyone, which is fine by us. The story's not about us. But if your going to attribute someone for the original report, it's appreciated when it's done accurately.

The quick broadcast version, which ran last night on Nightline follows. FWIW. (Video courtesy of Alan Breslauer, who taped the original, and now-infamous Tanner comments made in Los Angeles several weeks ago)...

P.S. A reminder: If you haven't seen WaPo's wicked cool video coverage of Tanner's hearing, please take a few minutes to do so! It's right here and well worth the 5 minutes!

UPDATE: Additional fallout from the entire ugly brouhaha. Bill Cavala at California Progress Report writes, in reference to Tanner, "Only George Bush could put a man with such sensitivity into such a sensitive post!" before pointing out why all of this, including Tanner's approval of the Georgia Photo ID law against the advice of career staffers, actually matters to everybody...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Are bloggers journalists? More importantly, should bloggers receive the same privileges the government bestows upon “professional” journalists including, in most states, protection from the forced disclosure of confidential sources of information by way of journalist shield laws?

These are some of the questions congress has been considering over the last month as part of the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2007.” As The BRAD BLOG often relies on confidential and whistleblower sources we have been tracking the issue closely.

With this backdrop, The BRAD BLOG jumped at the opportunity to interview the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject, D.C. constitutional law attorney Scott Gant. Released in June, We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, has enjoyed favorable reviews and led to appearances by Gant on C-Span's BookTV and The McLaughlin Group, where the host commented that the book was “A great read, an easy read and it breaks new ground, quite groundbreaking.”

Part 1 (7:32) of our interview above covers all things related to the shield law. Part 2 (8:30) of the interview above concentrates on access privileges and other benefits that journalists receive from the government that may be important to bloggers. Both follow below...