Obama wins for the D's, Huckabee wins for the R's. Consider this an Iowa horse race Open Thread, as you wish...

For my part, I'll take the opportunity to open it up with a few bragging rights, along with a simultaneous warning to those who think Huckabee will be easy for the D's to beat if he were to win the nomination.

Back in January of '07, after seeing Huckabee interviewed for the first time (on The Daily Show), I wrote:

I stand by that prediction, and think Dems would be foolish to misunderestimate Huckabee. Period. Discuss.

Speaking of Ohio, and Franklin County, and their corrupt election officials (such as Matt Damshroder, all noted in today's earlier piece), and the ridiculous continuing notion that we should, for some reason, trust in election officials...and the dubious symbiotic relationship they have with private election vendors...This just in from the Ohio Ethics Commission...

The complete press release follows below in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

While we have been critical of Ohio SOS Jennifer Brunner’s push to change the voting system used by Cuyahoga Co voters before the primary election on March 4, we are encouraged today that Brunner has issued a statewide “Paper or Plastic” edict. This is a smart decision that will allow voters to not use DREs if they don’t feel comfortable using them.

Good news from Northampton Co Pennsylvania today. Even though the state is going to give the county $2M to buy voting machines to replace the Advanced Voting Solutions machines that have been decertified the county is going to continue with their lawsuit which was filed last Friday. The county is claiming breach of contract and warranties, failure to provide promised services and a claim for damages to pay for using other machines. Unfortunately Lackawanna Co seems to be happy they got taxpayers money from the state so they are now talking about dropping any plans to hold AVS responsible. The taxpayers should have the opportunity to voice their opinion.

People ask so here is the list of states taking part in Super Tuesday on February 5: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia.

As usual, all of today's notable voting news stories are linked below...

Me, on the Stephanie Miller Show this morning, with Guest Host Bree Walker, talking about the Iowa Caucuses, and various concerns thereof.

(Appx. 15 mins) Download MP3, or listen online here...

{Broken audio link now fixed. Sorry about that. --- BF}

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner issued a short, unambiguous and to-the-point directive [PDF] last night, to all 56 counties in Ohio still employing unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines, that they must make a paper ballot available at the polling place to any voter who wishes to vote on one.

Brava!

Her directive even goes so far as to require those paper ballots actually be counted "on election night as part of the unofficial canvass."

Brava again! The requirement to actually count those paper ballots before unofficial results are release to the public and media is a key component that has been missing from the various federal legislative efforts, including Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) latest bill as currently drafted, as well as his previous one (HR811), that would begin to put paper back into the polling place.

Every state in the country should follow suit! As well, we recommend that, at the very least, Brunner issue a further directive that signs shall be conspicuously and clearly posted in each polling place to inform voters of their right to vote on paper, if they wish. Better still, a directive that requires every voter to be asked by voting officials, before they vote, if they wish to vote on paper. We have previously recommended such a "paper or plastic?" requirement for any jurisdiction in America that still allows for the use of horrible DRE systems (including those with or without a useless, so-called "paper trail").

Until then, Democracy advocates in the Buckeye state will need to launch an important, and potentially expensive (but crucial), education campaign to inform voters of their right to vote on paper!

With the very good general news from Brunner, let's hope she soon realizes the underlying reasons for serious concerns about, and the great dangers of, not counting and posting precinct voting results at the precinct, before they are sent back to county headquarters for central tabulation.

Brunner's recent independent testing of Ohio's e-voting systems (known as EVEREST) led her to recommend the abolishment of all DRE systems in the state, although she did not issue a binding directive to that end. At the same time, her recommendation to ban precinct-based counting, in favor of central-based counting, has drawn a great deal of criticism from Election Integrity advocates. Rightly so, in our opinion, even if she came to her recommendation through well-meaning advice from some of the folks who advised on the study, including computer security experts, and election officials of the sort who would be inappropriately entrusted with complete control over that dangerously centralized counting process.

(You can read our direct challenges to Brunner on that point, and her explanations for the decision, in our recent exclusive interview with her, just after the release of EVEREST.)

One quick note to Mark Niquette and Columbus Dispatch concerning their coverage of this issue in this morning's paper...

On the eve of the caucuses in Iowa, Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appeared this evening on NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno, claiming not to have understood, according to AP (the show has yet to air out here in the West), that he was crossing a picket line to do so, as writers for the show continue to be on strike.

Most of the other late-night talkers also returned to new broadcasts tonight, but only David Letterman on CBS, along with Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, which follows him, did so under an agreement with the striking writers.

AP has more coverage of all of the returning late-night shows tonight. If we can get the video from Huckabee's appearance, we'll update this item.

UPDATE FROM ALAN: Video now available below...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Here we are back at work. It appears that the mainstream media are waking up and beginning to do their normal pre-election questioning of voter registration data bases and voting machines. We’ll be keeping our eyes on what is being reported and then passing those articles on to you. Counties across the nation should be getting their paper ballots and ballot programming soon and we will then begin to hear about all of the misprints and incorrect programming. One of the big questions will be how many ES&S customers will end up threatening law suits for failure to provide ballots, software, and memory cards. It is going to be a busy and interesting year right through the elections.

Today's many notable voting stories, are all linked below as usual...

Reports of hundreds dead in violent riots following Kenya's recent Presidential election continue. In the contested race, the incumbent President Kibaki was announced the winner, despite "pre-election opinion polls and early media tallies" which suggest that the challenger, Odinga, should have won.

Of particular note however, was this instructive graf, from AFX News Limited's coverage over the holiday, which caught our eye...

Got that? Because results were announced at the polling place before being sent away, it was possible for there to be checks and balances by election observers against the official central count as released, and possibly gamed, by the centralized election officials.

We'd hope the above point will be carefully noted by folks like Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner, who has recently recommended against decentralized precinct-based counting, in favor of central county-level counting (see our recent exclusive interview with her on those points); those who have been pushing for all Vote-by-Mail elections of late; and those folks who are monitoring Iowa's caucuses on Thursday.

As expected, the barrage of stories in the national media concerning problems with e-voting systems --- as usual, too late to make much of a difference before the next election cycle --- continues...

RAW STORY has the video...

Richard Wolfe of USA Today, needs some new sources in his Rolodex.

In two decenti-ish and important stories today about massive failures and inaccurate voter purges in the new voter registration databases mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Wolfe quotes two discredited operatives:

1. U.S. Elections Assistance Commission executive director, Thomas Wilkey, the man who has failed miserably in his job of overseeing e-voting system certification on behalf of the EAC (or, more accurately, on behalf of America's voting machine companies), and
2. Our old friend, the discredited discredited (to all but the corporate mainstream media, apparently) chief GOP voter suppression operative, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne of the exposed and defunct Republican front group, "American Center for Voting Rights".

To the substance of the two stories, both running today...The first, on legal voters being tossed off voting roles all across the country, Wolfe reports:

Wolfe then goes on to close the story with a comment apologizing for the federal government's failure in all of the above, by quoting Wilkey, the federal government's man who oversaw the failures, on behalf of the EAC, on all of the above...

The Election Integrity advocate gets quoted in graf 3 of an AP story on Election Integrity. Go figure...

Nice. That, as opposed to the EI expert showing up, maybe, in the penultimate graf, only to be finally countered at the end by the voting machine company spokeshole or election official who then lies: "Everything's just fine! Our machines work great!"

What runs via AP matters, as its picked up by, um, everybody. So it's good to see them covering this issue finally, with our buddy John Gideon getting the featured prominence he deserves, in a story which will likely be widely read.

And now to be both beggar and chooser: there's a minor error or two, a couple of dubious points in the story, and, most notably, a quote or two (one from the CO SoS) that underscores the failure of AP, and the rest of the corporate media, to adequately report on this issue, at least up until now...

Here's to hoping that the coming year will be far better than the last. But no matter, we're glad to be going through it with you. Thank you for all of your kindness and support throughout 2007. We'll see you on the other side...

Previous BRAD BLOG New Year cards: 2005, 2006, 2007.