Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As hard as Sequoia must have had to search they actually found a way to blame the problem found on their machines in New Jersey on the poll workers. I am duly impressed. They even appear to admit that they stopped looking after they were able to figure out a way to blame the poor poll workers for the problem. “We identified a way in which poll worker error can result in the party turnout totals to be reported incorrectly.”

Did they look for any other potential answers for the problem? They don’t say.

Remember that the problem was the vote counts were correct, as far as anyone can know from a DRE, but the party totals did not match between the internal memory and the internal paper record. There were one or two Republican votes registered as being Democratic votes or vice versa. This only happened on 59 machines in 6 counties. Sequoia claims there were some special machinations poll workers used inside the control panel that allow them to select the R or D ballot for each voter. How did these machinations result in a different report in the electronic memory from the paper memory? Also, why did it only happen once or twice on each machine? If a poll worker was making an error in the process why didn’t that error happen much more often??

I have, again, requested that the EAC do their jobs and notify any potentially affected jurisdictions outside of New Jersey of this problem. They will ignore this problem as they have all previous problems with voting systems. Election officials in Pennsylvania counties that use these machines need to be made aware of the issues. Please pass on the word.

Late this afternoon it was reported that the first two pretests of Cuyahoga Co Ohio’s new ES&S optical-scan machines were failures. The computer showed error messages during the first two tests. The third test was successful. What? Me Worry?...

I spent most of yesterday and today on the phone with attorneys and officials trying to sort out the continuing, disastrous mess concerning the "Double Bubble" ballot fiasco from Los Angeles County's February 5th Democratic Primary.

That, despite what we see as this week's premature declaration of "Victory!" on Tuesday from our friends at the Courage Campaign, followed by their "We won!" email on Wednesday, as they celebrated after the county's acting Registrar announced his plan to count some (though by no means all) of the 50,000 or so still-uncounted ballots cast by Non-Partisan (NP) voters who had attempted to vote in the open Democratic Primary on "Super Tuesday."

During a late-night phone call from a local Election Integrity advocate last night, however, I was told that situation is even worse than previously reported or even known --- even by the county's elections officials --- to date, as another set of thousands of legal ballots may go uncounted, even under a new tabulating scheme being implemented by county officials...

Bad news and/or good news, depending on how you wish to look at it...

First this...

Followed by this reassuring(?) update to the same article, posted 57 minutes later...

Why must it always come down to Ohio?

MSNBC's Dan Abrams continued, for the third day in a row, on the Don Siegelman beat today. The former Democratic Alabama Governor, who still sits in jail pending an appeal for his non-violent crime, is alleged to have been railroaded by Karl Rove and political operatives in the state while running for re-election in 2006.

In 2002 he had won his election, according to the announced results on Election Night, only to wake up the next morning to find that a Republican election director claimed to have discovered a "glitch" (sound familiar, regular BRAD BLOG readers?) in the electronic vote counts overnight, resulting in Siegelman's loss. He was never allowed a recount after the vote tallies somehow changed on the electronic voting machines due to the "glitch," as it was described officially, by court probate officers.

In this rarely seen, 2004 video interview with Siegelman (see approx. half-way through that linked article), he alleges: "Somebody electronically manipulated the election results…This election was stolen…There is no other kind, or sugar-coated way to say it."

Neither the 60 Minutes report on Siegelman from Sunday, nor any of Abrams' reports so far this week (here's Tuesday's and Wednesday's) including today's, as posted at the end of this article, have yet delved, with any depth, into that aspect of what seems clearly to have been a well-run political frame-up --- or, yes, a conspiracy --- to do away with the one Democrat who had been able to win statewide elections in an otherwise very Republican-leaning state.

We hope to have more on that aspect of the case soon.

On today's MSNBC "Bush League Justice" report, Abrams spoke with both Siegelman's attorney, Vince Kilborn, as well as Grant Woods, the former Republican Attorney General from Arizona who has been among the most outspoken of the 52 former Republican and Democratic Attorneys General who have called on Congress for an investigation and a special prosecutor to be named in the case.

Abrams repeated his call, from yesterday, for the immediate release of Siegelman from prison, pending appeal of his case, as would be customary in other similar, non-violent cases. Abrams enumerated his chief concerns about the prosecution and the trial as run by federal judge Mark Fuller, as follows...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Florida Secretary of State has found someone to take the state’s Direct Recording Electronic voting machines and “de-manufacture” them. ES&S iVotronics will be resold, if possible. The state’s Sequoia machines will be scrapped for spare parts and recycle.

In a not surprising announcement today Secretary of State Coffman of Colorado announced that he is recertifying the state’s optical scan machines to go with the state’s DREs that he has already recertified. Essentially the state lost a court decision and had to recertify all voting systems used in the various counties. Coffman hired test labs at great expense to the tax payer to test the machines. They found problems with every system they tested. Coffman, after taking many positions, finally decided to recertify the DREs last week, even though they were decertified for good reason. Now, today, he has ignored the test labs, again, and recertified the optical scan machines. This includes the Hart Intercivic eScan that was decertified because it read stray pencil/pen marks on the ballot, even reading the mark and ignoring a correctly made vote. The tax payers in the state of Colorado need to ask, “Why did you waste our tax money to test machines and then ignore the tests and recommendations of the testers?” The state has come no where since the court found that they had not legally certified voting systems in the first place. Now they have the same machines and nothing is better now than it was in the past.

Those headlines, all the rest of the notable voting news stories, all follow below...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Dan Abrams once again tackles the Don Siegelman case in his stellar "Bush League Justice" series on MSNBC. Tonight's guests included Scott Horton of Harper's, former Alabama GOP operative Dana Jill Simpson, and Governor Siegelman's daughter, Dana Siegelman.

Abrams and Horton opened the segment discussing the remarkable 60 Minutes blackout of the Siegelman story in Alabama on Sunday. According to the local CBS station the blackout occurred because of a faulty receiver. An incredulous Abrams then proceeded to make a mockery out of the laughable excuse:

After playing more of his interview with Karl Rove accuser Simpson from yesterday's show, Abrams made his first of many calls for Governor Siegelman's release from prison:

Amazingly, Siegelman is unable to appeal his case because the government has failed to produce a transcript of the trial which was completed over 18 months ago.

Later Dana Siegelman tries to answer some of the many unanswerable questions regarding her father's case before flat out telling Abrams that the judge is "trying to keep her dad hushed as long as he possibly can" and that her father "knows Karl Rove is behind this."

Part 1 (9:49), Part 2 (2:08)

RELATED: Note that part of The BRAD BLOG's encounter with Karl Rove on Monday appears at the beginning of the segment. You can also catch two former "Bush League Justice" installments about the Siegelman case here at The BRAD BLOG: In the most recent, posted Tuesday Abrams called on AG Mukasey to open an investigation into the case and in the other, back in December, Abrams was the first in the mainstream corporate media to cover the Siegelman case.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today Election Assistance Commission (EAC) commissioners met before the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee to answer questions about how they have been spending taxpayers' money. One Congressman, Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), asked the commissioners about their HAVA mandated duties as a “clearinghouse.” The commissioners who responded, again, denied their responsibility to warn anyone of voting machine problems. They claimed that they just don’t have the staff or funds to do the job. I need to point out to the commissioners, some of whom read DVN, that I am the compiler, writer, editor, and publisher of DVN and it doesn’t take a dime of taxpayers’ money to do what I do. All they need to do is to forward DVN out to election officials across the country and their mandate would be met. If that’s too hard, I already send them reports of voting system failures every time they appear and ask them to forward them on to others who may need the information. All they need to do is to pass on the information as I request. Job done and the taxpayers don’t pay anything for warnings that voting machines may have failed in one state and that failure may happen on the same machines used elsewhere in the nation. I guess it is easier to ignore problems and hope they just go away. It’s easier, anyway, until you have to go before Congress and Congressman Hinchey begins demanding answers.

That story, and the rest of today's voting news, all linked below (at no expense to the tax payers)...

As you'll recall, a local Alabama affiliate blacked out last Sunday's 60 Minutes report on the railroading of former AL Gov. Don Siegelman, who still sits in jail today (even if The BRAD BLOG has proof that Karl Rove, who evidence suggests helped put him there, now wants him "Free"!) The only segment of the show that didn't make it to the AL viewers, when 60 Minutes originally aired Sunday, was the Siegelman segment. The local station then lied about the reasons for the blackout, initially claiming a "transmission problem" from CBS. The network has denied it, and the local station has recanted that explanation and come up with something equally thin. (We covered it all in detail, along with the full video of the 60M report, back here.)

The following interesting point comes from a New York Times editorial today covering the boondoggle...

[UPDATED 2/27/08 2:00pm PT, after speaking with Bowen's office about this. The update, which includes her current response to Logan's proposed counting scheme, is posted at the bottom of this report.]

I hate to counter the adulation of so many of the good groups out there claiming "victory" and "a happy ending" today in the "Double Bubble" ballot dispute in Los Angeles County, but I must. The "victory" they are now referring to, with the best of intentions, as "Great news!" is much less than it appears. Though if you don't look closely, it might otherwise look like a "victory." Unfortunately, it isn't.

Unless something changes, and quickly, Los Angeles County's acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan is preparing to disenfranchise thousands of voters who cast legal ballots in the Super Tuesday Democratic primary election.

In the 3-page letter [PDF] sent by Logan to CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen yesterday, the recently-arrived, but still-befuddled, county clerk details how he now plans to potentially toss out thousands of votes, while inappropriately awarding disproportionate votes in favor of only some candidates, in response to the "Double Bubble" ballot debacle reported by The BRAD BLOG (most recently here), in great detail previously...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Colorado Secretary of State Coffman has done it again. Every time he makes a decision; it ends up being the wrong decision. Can’t this guy get anything right? Now Coffman has certified a host of DRE voting machines that have been sitting in limbo for many months awaiting a decision. However, he has made no decision on any of the optical-scan systems that had been decertified. The problem with all of this is that the Governor and Legislative leaders filed legislation today that will require that paper must be an option in the November general election. Vote by mail will also be an option for all voters.

At least half of the estimated 49,500 uncounted nonpartisan ballots from the Feb. 5 presidential primary election will be tallied after all, acting Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan told county supervisors today. ...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

I got a chance to meet Karl Rove before he spoke at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles last night. Here's the awkward video (33 seconds, below left) of my brief encounter, which was followed by a Q&A with Rove, in which he denied recent charges made against him by a Republican operative in Alabama concerning the prosecution of Alabama's former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

While activist eyes will be watching Ohio next Tuesday I am going to be watching Texas. The March 4 primary is one week from tomorrow and some Texas counties are just now deciding that turn-out is going to be huge and that they are not prepared. El Paso Co. is leasing 100 voting machines to help. Fort Bend Co is leasing 200 machines from Dent Co. to get them through the primary. Readers will recall that Fort Bend is the county that recently accepted the resignation of their election director because he warned that there would be long lines and he wanted to solve the problem with paper ballots. Now the county is leasing paperless voting machines in hopes of keeping the lines short.

Those stories, and the rest of today's notable voting news, all linked below as usual...

Kudos (for a change) to AP for their report today into what happened during the Super Tuesday Democratic Caucus in New Mexico, where thousands of long-time registered Democratic voters were knocked off the rolls, leading to some 17,000 provisional ballots being cast (11% of all votes, up from 4% four years ago.)

What has changed since 2004, just four years ago? For a start, the private, constantly failing voting machine company ES&S has taken over management of the registration rolls. At the same time, Secretary of State Mary Herrera's office seems to be in complete denial of the problem, which could drastically affect the ability of legally registered voters to cast proper ballots in the state come this November, when the race could be as razor-thin in New Mexico as it was in 2004.

The AP report picks up on one of our own, covering the privatization of NM's (and several other states') voting rolls, as filed here just after Election Day, when the mess first began to emerge.

Get a load of just a few of the disturbing details, on the thousands of voters knocked off the rolls and the SoS-in-denial, from the surprisingly good AP coverage by Heather Clark...

Hilarious...If a little too on-the-money, in too many regards. A MUST VIEW.

Congrats in advance, Mr. McCain. Enjoy...

(P.S - The company name is correctly pronounced DEE-bold, as opposed to DIE-bold. Just so's ya know. Since it drives us crazy. Beyond that, hat-tip John Gideon of VotersUnite.org.)