Republicans in the Senate are refusing to allow an up-or-down vote on nominations to the FEC, which means that at the end of the year when the terms of four current appointees end --- including previously recess-appointed GOP "vote fraud" zealot Hans von Spakovsy --- there will not be enough commissioners to even hold a vote. An interesting, if troubling, notion for a Presidential Election year.

But, as the GOP would not allow votes on the three other nominees (two Democrats and one Republican) after a block had been put on von Spakovsky by Senators Obama (D-IL) and Feingold (D-WI), and as Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) plans to hold pro forma Senate sessions to keep Bush from making another inappropriate recess appointment to the committee, and as Bush also refuses to send up a replacement nominee for von Spakovsky...it looks like that's where we're headed.

TPM Muck has the story, and Reid's statement on the floor today.

So it looks like another GOP vote fraudster goes down for now, now that Democrats have chosen to stand up a bit, for a change. But like all of these guys --- and like any good Bond villain --- they may not stay "dead" for long.

RELATED: Speaking of which, our DoJ Voting Rights section sources tell us John "Minorities Die First" Tanner has still not left the office, as we originally reported in a late-night posting on Tuesday! That, despite having supposedly "resigned immediately" as of last Friday! What's going on here? Is he deleting files on his computer? Was his whole resignation, and supposed reassignment to another job in the Civil Rights Division, just a hoax to get Congress off the DoJ's back? We're trying to figure it out.

Writes one of our sources to The BRAD BLOG this evening: "Tanner is obviously having problems letting go. He's in the office every day. Since his office is in a corner of the building, nobody can be exactly sure what's going on."

Another Voting Section source also writes to say, "Tanner is still there." And adds, "Its awkward. His co-conspirators dine with him."

PSSST... Could someone on the House Judiciary Committee please call the DoJ Office of Legal Affairs and find out what the hell he's still doing in his office?! What is he waiting for, Christmas (of 2008?)

More when, and if, we can learn anything...

UPDATE 12/21/07: He was still in the office today, Friday, a full week after resigning last Friday "effective immediately". A staffer in the voting section, when we called to check, said she expected that he'd be back next Wednesday, after the long holiday weekend.

-- By Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The BRAD BLOG spoke on Wednesday, by telephone, with Ohio's Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, for an exclusive in-depth interview following the release of her state's unprecedented "Evaluation & Validation of Election-Related Equipment, Standards & Testing" (EVEREST) review of e-voting systems.

While the bi-partisan, multi-teamed, scientific testing carried out, by a unique combination of both corporate and academic computer scientists and security experts, has won praise from most, if not all (see, predictably, here and here) quarters, the specific recommendations for changes to Ohio's voting system in its wake, as made by Brunner, have garnered a fair amount of criticism and concern from Election Integrity and Administration experts. Indeed, The BRAD BLOG has reported a number of our own concerns about those recommendations, as detailed last Friday upon the release of the report.

One thing is clear: the view from EVEREST is a mountain of "critical security failures" in Ohio's electronic voting systems --- the very same systems which will also be in use in other states and counties all across the U.S. in 2008. The question now is what can be done to mitigate the chances of yet another Ohio election meltdown next year, given the short time before before the state's primary in March, and the rapidly-approaching November general election when many eyes, no doubt, will again be on the Buckeye State.

In our interview --- the first of its kind to be published post-EVEREST --- we challenged the state's new Democratic Secretary, a former state judge, to answer to a number of growing concerns about her '08 recommendations, and whether she may be open to changing them in light of concerns. As well, we asked her about the criticism leveed against her by on-the-ground citizen Election Integrity advocates in the state, who have been critical of her for not having done enough to bring accountability following the J. Kenneth Blackwell regime, under whom Ohio's election system was so infamously gamed in 2004.

Our in-depth, exclusive interview with Ohio's new, and already embattled Secretary of State, follows in full...

Newly missing e-voting chips isn't the only election news to break out of the People's Republic of San Diego County today.

The sunny Southern California enclave, which has succeeded in making an infamous name for itself over the last several years by running some of the most poorly administrated and least transparent elections in the nation, is now suing California's Sec. of State Debra Bowen for her new security mitigation mandate requiring a hand audit of a random 10% sampling of ballots, in elections where the final result margin is less than one-half of 1%.

The full complaint may be downloaded here [PDF].

Deborah Seiler, the former sales rep for voting machine companies Diebold and Sequoia, who was recently named Registrar of Voters for San Diego County, believes Bowen's mandate is onerous in that it would "create extra work and delays" for her office following elections, as the North County Times described it.

Seiler and the county are "alleging that Bowen overstepped her authority in requiring new recount procedures in close races beginning in February," according to the paper, which quotes a spokesperson from Bowen's office defending the legal right of the Secretary to issue such directives as she sees fit.

Bowen's spokesperson, Nicole Winger, confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that the office is confident the Secretary of State may issue such "use procedures," along with voting system certification, which must be followed by counties that choose to use those particular systems. She adds that prior administrations have issued similar use procedures along with system certification, and that their statutory right to do so has held up in past court cases.

According to Winger...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Now that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has followed state law and found that nearly every voting system used in the state has problems resulting in decertification or conditional certification of those systems, he wants the laws changed to make voting system certification easier.

He claims he doesn’t want to change requirements for security or accuracy but, on the other hand, he thinks a change to state law to allow the vendors to install software patches following an abbreviated certification process, with no federal testing or certification, would be good.

He also doesn’t want to be bothered with state certification testing, looking instead to other states for their test results. Of course this would allow him to pick and chose between states.

California decertified Diebold/Premier voting systems and recertified them with conditions. Colorado did not decertify their Diebold/Premier machines. Perhaps Coffman would rather look at testing done by Washington state where there is next to no testing other than an acceptability test done on vendor provided equipment with vendor provided test ballots? He clearly doesn’t like the results of his own testing so he is searching for a test that will give him what he considers to be acceptable results.

Links to that story, and all the other notable voting news today, follows below as usual...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Two shipping tubes sent from the California Secretary of State's office in Sacramento to the San Diego County Election Office arrived without their contents. The tubes left the SOS Office with more than 174 memory chips, or Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM), containing firmware for the county's Diebold/Premier central-count optical scan voting machines. UPDATE: Precinct-based op-scan chips confirmed by the SoS to be missing as well! See update info at end of article.

The tubes arrived in San Diego but they were empty. The chips are now considered to be either lost or stolen.

WIRED's Kim Zetter reports today...

According to Zetter, the new firmware was being sent to San Diego following software and security modifications made following the state's recent "Top-to-Bottom Review" of e-voting systems. The packages were sent from the Secretary of State's office after being packaged by Diebold/Premier employees with SoS personnel standing witness. The Secretary of State's office confirms that Diebold/Premier regularly uses Fed-Ex as their preferred shipper.

New chips will now be sent and the state says the February primary will not be delayed by the issue. The California Highway Patrol and Sacramento Police are now investigating.

But the story gets worse, in this LATE UPDATE (FROM BRAD):

It looks like the now-resigned but newly-reassigned former chief of the Voting Section in the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, John "Minorities Die First" Tanner, may be having trouble letting go.

The BRAD BLOG received the following email from a DoJ insider who has requested anonymity. We've confirmed the details with another insider DoJ source...

In a follow up note, the source added some detail that the lingering Tanner "had all weekend to pack," but "had very very little actually to pack as he only has one file cabinet in his office."

No doubt, that file cabinet is chock-full of letters to Ohio election officials telling them they did a swell job in 2004.

A second DoJ source confirms the sorry tale. That source told The BRAD BLOG, that Tanner "has been in his office for the last two days" and "he has not been talking to anybody."

"He is ostensibly packing his office, but he has been there," the source told us, before both offered still more insight on the very different way that others were forced, by Tanner, to leave the section in a hurry when their time was up, and on the fete being held tonight by staffers, current and former, in his dishonor...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

I always thought that “sleepovers” were beyond the limit of good security. In a court election contest in Wilkinson Co Mississippi the county Circuit Clerk pled the fifth amendment to several questions. One of the questions was “Is it true you had a pre-election party that voting machines were taken to?”

The results of the Ohio study are stunning with regards to the ES&S iVotronic DRE. The study found that a voter or poll worker can easily recalibrate the touch-screen; access control can be defeated by someone with a small magnet and a PDA or cell phone; and there is a back door entry that can be gained bypassing password requirements.

The Colorado SOS is now telling the media that they may be able to use some of the decertified voting systems by patching the software. Patches require testing and certification. Is he getting nervous?

Links to those stories, and the other notable voting news today, all posted neatly below as usual...

Guest Blogged by Michael Bryan, Esq.

Judge Michael Miller, in a carefully reasoned and balanced opinion, today ordered the release of the final Diebold GEMS tabulator database files from the contested 2006 Regional Transport Authority (RTA) election 2006 primary and general elections . The judge denied, without prejudice, full public access to every MDB and GBF database file for the 2006 elections in the possession of Pima County until and unless the plaintiffs can address remaining security concerns which might arise from that larger release.

[CORRECTION: Several correspondents point out correctly that the databases for the 2006 Primary and General elections have been released, but not those of the RTA election, which was a mid-year election. Sources near the case speculate that perhaps the judge believed that the RTA election may have been tampered with and did not want further controversy around the results of that election.]

[UPDATE: For a detailed analysis of the judge's ruling see my post on BlogForArizona.com.]

The BRAD BLOG has been following this case closely because unsecured tabulation systems like GEMS are widely used in American elections and completely open to insider manipulation. For background and detailed commentary about the case see my 12/8/07 wrap-up post on the trial.

The immediate goal of the Democratic party --- to be able to look closer at the final election databases for the 2006 election --- is fully satisfied by the ruling. But the broader goal of being able to look at a time series of backups for discrepancies or discontinuities that could indicate manipulation, as Arizona Election Integrity advocates have feared, is stymied for the moment...

More good news out of Florida, where a judge has tossed out an outrageous anti-voter law which, critics charge, could well have disenfranchised thousands of Sunshine State voters (again) just in time for the 2008 Presidential Election. We spoke just last week with Ion Sancho, Leon County (Tallahassee)'s legendary Supervisor of Elections, who expressed grave concerns about this very law, even as Republican's promise to appeal the judge's decision, and continue other anti-voter related efforts about the country.

According to the Miami Herald's breaking coverage this morning...

The article goes on to report that FL's appointed Republican Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, says the state will appeal the ruling, about which he says, "in my view the Legislature appropriately enacted this important anti-fraud provision as part of Florida's Election Code."

Browning's comments, unfortunately, come as little surprise for a number of disturbing reasons...

MSNBC's Live with Dan Abrams special week long series, "Bush League Justice" has been extended. It continued yesterday with a bonus installment covering John Tanner's resignation as voting chief in the DoJ Civil Rights division, and his shuffle over to a different position within the same Civil Rights department. The video of the segment is posted at right.

Abrams was outraged at the lateral move for Tanner, and his attempted re-writing of the history of his shameful record, in his "farewell email" to colleagues. Guests David Becker, a former DoJ Civil Rights Division attorney, now of People for the American Way (PFAW) and Washington Post's Dana Milbank, both concurred that Tanner's comments, as video-taped, and originally reported by The BRAD BLOG were instrumentally in his "demise".

The extension to the investigative series shores up Abrams' promise which concluded last week's "final" episode...

Abrams once again showed a clip from our video, and this time with proper credit (Thank you!). He initially reported on the Tanner controversy, using a clip from our video, in the opening episode of the series last Monday.

As well, we heard yesterday from a producer on the show who told us they felt there would likely be much more to come in what may now be a now-continuing series. In the bargain, we were able to discuss a number of other BRAD BLOG stories which may be of interest to them in future shows. So, stay tuned...

(Hat-tip to Alan Breslauer for both the above video, and the original video-tape of Tanner which started it all, from last October's National Latino Congreso here in Los Angeles, where he made his now-infamous remarks!)

Guest Blogged by Daniel Borchers of Citizens for Principled Conservatism

After consecutive Coulter controversies and embarrassments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2006 and again in 2007, many conservative bloggers and sponsors of, arguably, the most important conservative national annual gathering, beseeched CPAC not to invite her back in 2008.

BRAD BLOG readers will remember Coulter’s deliberate attack against John Edwards – using the F-word (faggot) – having garnered literally worldwide attention and precipitating a rare response from the CPAC, after she uttered her slur at last year's conference on March 2, 2007.

So bad was the coverage, and so offended were so many of the sponsors and bloggers who covered the event, Coulter's appearance was scrubbed from the commemorative post-conference DVD collection of speeches.

Eschewing honor, CPAC has chosen deception instead. For almost a year, people wondered whether Coulter --who has been exposed, as well, as a felonious vote fraudster during that same period --- would be invited back for the 2008 edition set for this coming February in Washington D.C.. CPAC's website conspicuously failed to list any invitees, even though in years past, they posted lists as early as possible to promote their event.

Would CPAC risk losing sponsors and the support of conservative bloggers by inviting Coulter to speak at CPAC 2008? Or would CPAC risk the wrath of Ann Coulter, Inc., and withhold that invitation? Who would win out: principled sponsors and bloggers or the controversial pundit, arguably the conference’s biggest annual draw, who stole the spotlight in previous conferences?

Faced with a moral and political dilemma, CPAC chose duplicity over integrity…

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A very busy day today. There are still articles about the EVEREST report completed in the state of Ohio. Based on that report, recommendations were made to Cuyahoga County to change their voting system and vendor from DREs by Premier to central-count optical scan by ES&S. It appears that the county is going to do the correct thing and not make any rash decisions. They should probably make some changes but not a wholesale change of vendors and certainly not when that vendor is ES&S. A final decision will be made later this week.

This afternoon the state of Colorado announced that they were decertifying all voting machines and peripherals from ES&S as well as the Sequoia Edge II and Edge II Plus and optical scan systems provided by Hart Intercivic. Voting systems from Premier, optical scan and peripherals from Sequoia and DREs and peripherals from Hart were conditionally certified.

Also two amicus briefs were filed today in the NY v. DOJ case....

Colorado's Republican Secretary of State, Mike Coffman, has announced that a number of Colorado's e-voting machines have failed state certification testings, and will not be allowed for use in the 2008 election cycle. The announcements came at a news conference in Denver which completely just minutes ago.

Describing the state's testing of four major voting machine companies previously certified in the state, Coffman explained to reporters at the presser that there were "over 3000 tests on each vendor['s systems], and over 40,000 pages documenting the tests."

"This has been an extensive process," he said, after detailing several remarkable findings from each of the systems testing. For example, test results showed that paper-based optical-scan systems made by Hart InterCivic "could not accurately count ballots." While Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) systems made by ES&S, the world's largest supplier of voting systems, could be disabled by "denial of service" attacks at the polling place with a device as simple as a magnet.

"If you were to put a magnet in close proximity or inside the port," Coffman said at the press conference today, "that would, in fact, disable that particular voting machines and it would have to be literally reprogrammed...to bring in back into circulation for that election."

While virtually all of the systems tested were found to have major vulnerabilities, a number of them were "conditionally certified" for use as long as new security mitigation requirements are met. Notably, both op-scan systems and DREs made by Diebold (now known as Premier) were given conditional certification for use, despite Diebold systems having been banned in several states previously, including California, Ohio and Florida, due to a long list of critical vulnerabilities.

A summary of the decertified and conditionally certified systems follow (links to more information on each, at the end of this article):

• All voting systems made by Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), both paper-based optical-scan and DREs, were completely decertified. Their op-scan systems tested, according to Coffman, "both failed because of an inability to determine if the devices work correctly and an inability to complete the testing threshold of 10,000 ballots due to vendor programming errors." Their ubiqutous, and fatally flawed iVotronic DRE system "failed because it is easily disabled by voters activating the device interface, and the system lacks an audit trail to detect security violations."
• Paper-based optical-scan systems made by Sequoia Voting Systems were conditionally certified, while their DRE systems were completely decertified for use, as they "failed due to a variety of security risk factors, including that the system is not password protected, has exposed controls potentially giving voters unauthorized access, and lacks an audit trail to detect security violations."
• Paper-based optical-scan systems made by Hart Intercivic were decertified "because test results showed that they could not accurately count ballots"(!), while their DRE voting system was conditionally certified.
• And finally, both optical-scan and DRE voting systems made by Diebold/Premier were conditionally certified for use in Colorado.

Coffman's announcement comes today, months after the state had hoped to have the results available, due to sluggish participation by the voting machine companies, many of whom delayed supplying required information, such as voting system source code, as requested by the Secretary of State's office.

All of Colorado's electronic voting systems were decertified just prior to the November 2006 election when a state judge ruled, in a lawsuit brought by state voters, that testing and certification procedures for e-voting systems in the Centennial State were inadequate, largely non-existent, and in violation of state law. As the judge's decertification order came just prior to that years' elections, the systems were allowed for use, but decertified immediately thereafter. The state was forced to begin the certification process from scratch thereafter...

Guest Blogged by Howard Beale of Fired Up! Missouri...

In an irony of ironies, the man famous for fabricating --and then suddenly disappearing-- an organization expressly for purposes of spreading misinformation about "voter fraud" in order to suppress Democratic vote counts, is now hitting classrooms to teach Missouri lawyers about campaign finance laws and lobbyist disclosure.

Thor Hearne is apparently set to headline an event next week sponsored by the Missouri Bar which is titled "Then and Now: Update on Campaign Finance and Lobbying Laws."

Perhaps Hearne will lovingly detail all the steps that one can take --hypothetically, of course-- to concoct front organizations that serve as proxies for partisan interests and then lobby legislatures for needless statutory changes that will strip away rights from legal voters and provide their party with structural electoral advantages.

This appearance by Hearne seems to be the latest in a series of contrived efforts to re-enter the public sphere after several months in hiding. Hearne largely disappeared from the scene after he became a touchstone of the actions of a corrupt and politically motivated Department of Justice --- who brought "voter fraud" prosecutions timed to coincide with elections, in violation of written DoJ procedures, etc. --- and suffered well-deserved beatings at the hands of Congressional investigators.

Hearne has recently surfaced, comically, as an election "expert" in a silly piece from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Jo Mannies and as the author of an amicus curiae brief on behalf of 41 Congressional supporters, including Missouri GOP nuts Sen. Kit Bond and Rep. Roy Blunt, of Indiana's anti-voter voter identification law which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. Presumably, Hearne believes that people have somehow forgotten that he was proven to be a charlatan and laughingstock just a few months ago. Neither FiredUp! Missouri nor The BRAD BLOG has forgotten.

The one saving grace of the Missouri Bar's seminar may be that Hearne's anti-rights ranting will be balanced out by one of his co-presenters, attorney Rob Heggie, who possesses a long record of standing up in favor of protecting the rights of Missouri voters.

For more information on the "non-partisan" tax-exempt ACVR "Voter Fraud" scam and the snakeoil salesmen who invented it, Bush/Cheney '04 National General Counsel Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke, please see BRAD BLOG's full Special Coverage of the "American Center for Voting Rights" at https://BradBlog.com/ACVR.

9/11 changed everything. Except for all the stuff the Bush Administration was planning before 9/11 anyway.

Via RAW STORY...

Democrats in Congress have a plan to not take decisive action immediately in regard to this most disturbing news!