[The new, court-ordered directive from Secretary Cortes has now been issued. It's linked below, in the last update at the bottom of this article. - BF]

[Please note several important UPDATES added to the bottom of this article. - BF]

This just in from Pennsylvania... a federal court has found in favor of the NAACP and the 866-MYVOTE1 Election Reform Network, which were forced to sue the state's Democratic Secretary of the Commonwealth, Pedro A. Cortes, after his recent directive that emergency paper ballots need to be given to the voters only in the event that all of a precinct's touch-screen voting machines fail.

Most of PA uses 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems, and many of them broke down across the state during last April's Primary Election, leaving untold numbers of voters unable to cast votes.

As we reported when the lawsuit was filed last week, state law allows county clerks to give out paper ballots if just one machine breaks down on Election Day; Cortes' stunning decree, issued last month, went unchallenged by both the DNC and the Barack Obama campaign...

6 days until Election Day.

A blind voter in Dane Co, Wisconsin, went to the polls hoping to finally be able to vote without assistance from another person. She ended up having to call over an election worker to assist her because the ES&S AutoMark machine only gave her an error message. Then when that was fixed her ballot would not print out because the machine was out of ink. She had to have someone help her to mark a paper ballot. And, this was in the Madison City Clerk's office, not an out-of-the-way polling site. Federal law says there must be an accessible voting machine at each polling place. I guess Congress should have pointed out the obvious: That machine has to work.

This morning, along with the rest of the news, we also have reports of vote flipping on ES&S iVotronic machines in Jefferson Co, Texas. And also from Texas there are reports of ill treatment of voters at some polls in the state. Poll workers are taking it upon themselves to demand photo ID even though state law does not require it. They are also not offering provisional ballots in instances where they are required to offer them....

We've been reporting for the last week or so on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines which are flipping votes from Democratic candidates to others in, so far, at least four states. We've showed you actual footage of it and how even after being "recalibrated" these machines still continue to flip votes.

(See our special coverage page here for links to our many recent stories on this issue, and advice on what to do if the problem happens to you.)

Unfortunately, it's not just the error-prone, hackable, wholly unverifiable iVotronics from ES&S which are failing. Error-prone, hackable, and wholly unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by Hart InterCivic, Diebold, and Sequoia Voting Systems are also having the same problems across the country. And the Democrats, who have the most to lose, continue to do nothing about it...

Guest Blogged by DES

What's the matter with Indiana? Nothing. Unless you want to vote. And happen to fall onto anti-democracy champion, Republican Sec. of State Todd Rokita's hit list...

Guest Blogged by DES

In a response to unprecedented voter turnout, this afternoon Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist ordered the extension of early voting hours...

7 days until Election Day.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist has declared an emergency in the state and has decreed that polling places are to stay open overtime. Polls will now be open for up to 12 hours a day across the state. Now we will wait to see if any county election officials decide to file a lawsuit against the Governor so the poll hours are not extended.

The Brennan Center and VerifiedVoting have sent a letter to 16 Secretaries of State warning them about vote flipping on their ES&S iVotronic DREs. We certainly hope the Secretaries pay attention and accept the suggestions in the letter....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Wait times for voters are reported to be as much as 8 hours at one early polling site in Georgia, and now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers this:

This is early voting. Not all polling places are open so there are only a limited number of polling sites checking in voters. The slow-down and crashing of that system has little to do with high voter turnout. It is once again, as it was during the primary in GA, the ironically-named Diebold "ExpressPollbook" registration check-in computer that is slowing things up.

If the system is already not working with only a limited number of poll sites open, what will happen when all polls are open on November 4th?

UPDATE: All of that comes on top of late news that GA has illegally purged and/or flagged nearly 5,000 voters from their registration databases, incorrectly identifying them as "non-citizens".

UPDATE FROM BRAD: In our continuing desire to try and help bring a smile, even during these difficult times, we offer the ironic, related, very short (appx 1 minute) and amusing "Early Voting" video, as posted at right, just out from our friends who made the great Election Integrity documentary Free For All. Enjoy!

UPDATE FROM BRAD 10/29/08: RAW STORY has video of voters waiting 8 hours to vote in GA. Thank you to those voters who were willing to hang in there! Shame on you to those officials who set up this system that can't even accommodate the limited numbers of early voters! God save us all next Tuesday. Stay strong and brave people!

I was live on the popular Riz Kahn program yesterday on Al Jazeera English, along with Clint Curtis (he in FL, myself in L.A.) to discuss the terrifying new documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story and related concerns about electronic voting in our current general election. AJE, for those who don't know, is a very well respected, and widely viewed worldwide cable/satellite channel, run by former BBC folks like David Frost. Here's what aired live yesterday...

If you'd like your own DVD of the MSVL documentary --- which has been getting rave reviews from all quarters --- I'd be delighted to send you one, signed by both myself and the filmmaker, Patty Sharaf, in exchange for a $50 contribution to The BRAD BLOG.

Alternately, or in addition, if you'd like a copy of the award-winning Uncounted (which I'm also in, but it's still good anyway), signed by filmmaker David Earnhardt, a $50 contribution here will get you one of those as well.

For a $75 or more contribution, I'd be thrilled (and much appreciative!) to have both of them sent to you!

(Snail-mail works for all of the above as well. Send to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028)

Thanks for the support, and onward we go...

Working on a number of troubling stories today, so for the moment, here's a much welcome :30 second comedy diversion for you and me both...

7 days until Election Day.

The NAACP and Advancement Project have sued the VA Governor and the state’s top election officials for failing to provide enough resources to accommodate expected record turnout next week. The suit claims the state is in violation of the US and state constitutions and that a failure to fairly distribute voting machines, poll workers and polling places will result in long-lines in some neighborhoods. The suit asks the state to move voting machines to precincts most like to have long lines; keep polls open longer and to use paper ballots in some cases.

Also this morning is the revelation that some Georgia polling places have had lines with as long as 8 hours waiting time due to their voter registration data base being slow. The state claims that the problem is the turnout but that explanation does not make sense in the real world. The number of poll site computers feeding into the central data base computer dictates how fast that system is; not the number of voters. On election day there will be many, many more poll site computers all feeding into the central computer at the same time. Things will probably get much, much slower and lines will grow longer....

Our friends at VideoTheVote.org were able to capture some early coverage of the vote-flipping incidents on ES&S iVotronic machines in WV. We now have reports of votes flipping from Democratic to Republican (and other) candidates across the states of WV, TN, TX and MO. (See end of article for previous reports, and what you can do if it happens to you.)

Now you can watch the votes flipping on video before your own eyes.

And how, even after an election official supposedly re-calibrates the machine, it still fails to work properly and registers votes incorrectly!...

We wish we were kidding, but it seems that last Thursday, as ES&S iVotronic touch-screen machines were failing across West Virginia (now reported in at least 6 different counties there), Secretary of State Betty Ireland was presenting an "award of merit" to ES&S vice-president Gary Greenhalgh...

8 days until Election Day.

Kim Zetter writes in her “Threat Level” blog on Wired.com [Featured] that while ES&S touch screens in West Virginia were flipping voters votes the Secretary of State was busy giving an ex-official of that company, and a WV resident, Gary Greenhalgh, a “Medallion Award” from the National Association of Secretaries of State. Greenhalgh sold the machines used in the state to the state. While he no longer works for ES&S, his wife is now the companies representative in WV. Secretary of State Betty Ireland, just two years ago, filed a formal complaint against ES&S with the federal Election Assistance Commission, the body that oversees federal testing and certification of voting machines. She called for an audit of the company's contractual performance. She has now turned to a supporter of the company. Not covered by Zetter is that at one time Greenhalgh worked for MicroVote as their national sales director. This NASS “Medallion Award” winner was sued by his employer for what MicroVote says is “trade secret violations”. According to James Ries Jr., the president of MicroVote, Greenhalgh’s actions were “Probably the most damaging, he was actually selling the equipment being released from Montgomery County to our customers on the side. And it violated his working contract with us that he was selling outside of MicroVote's jurisdiction”....

The Charleston Gazette reports still more ES&S iVotronic touch-screen vote flipping in WV, including reports now from Jackson, Putnam, Berkeley, Ohio, Monongalia, and Greenbrier Counties.

Add those to the reports of vote flipping on ES&S machines in at least four different states. We're also trying to find a moment to report on votes flipping in other states (including NV) on the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) systems made by other private companies including Sequoia Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic.

Today's report mentions that these are older ES&S machines. We'll again remind everyone that Dan Rather produced an hour-long investigative report two years ago in which he reported on the touch-screens that ES&S was using and how they were causing these same problems even then. No one recalled those machines and now they continue to flip votes.

The DNC and Barack Obama campaign now tell us they are doing something about these problems "behind the scenes," they just won't tell us what it is they are doing, and the machines continued to be used, and votes continue to flip in WV, so far always from Democratic to Republican, and officials continue to blame the voters...

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

We've been reporting for the past week on what we see as the dismal failure of the DNC/Obama's much-vaunted team of "thousands of attorneys" ready to pounce on any reported problems in the electoral system around the country. In one article after another, we've reported here on votes being flipped on completely unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting machines from Democratic candidates over to Republicans and others. We've so far reported on that occurring in 4 different states, and have since received reports from at least two more on different DRE systems doing the same thing, which we're trying to confirm and/or report here as soon as possible.

We've had to report on Democrats in PA being sued by the NAACP, because neither the DNC nor the Obama campaign was willing to stand up for voters to demand that emergency paper ballots be made available to voters in PA before every machine in a precinct breaks down, as decreed a month ago from PA's Democratic Sec. of the Commonwealth.

We haven't even had time to report that the Republicans have attempted to intervene in the case, to take the side of the PA Democrats to keep paper ballots from being given to voters. (Republicans' Motion to Intervene here [PDF] Note: it's incorrectly labeled as a "motion to intervene on behalf of plaintiffs," but it's actually a "motion to intervene on behalf of defendants," the Democrats.) How far are the state Dems off the mark, when Republicans agree with them on a matter like this? And yet, Obama and the DNC have done nothing over the past month to fight on behalf of the voters who, as we saw during the Primary mess in PA earlier this year, will surely find themselves unable to cast votes at all, in thousands of cases, due to machines that simply do not work.

We've taken no joy in any of that criticism, or in our assertion that the effort appears to be a slightly beefed-up version of John Kerry's 2004 effort. But as an independent election integrity advocate and journalist, supporting the voters rather than any of the Presidential candidates, we've had little choice.

But now, it seems, the Obama/DNC has finally come out of hiding to share what they are doing. Unfortunately, they just can't tell us what that is...