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Latest Featured Reports | Saturday, December 7, 2024
Fox 'News' and GOP Get Their Hateful War on Trans Kids at SCOTUS: 'BradCast' 12/5/24
Guest: Law Dork's Chris Geidner; Also: 7.0 quake, tsunami warning in CA; Island nations fight for survival at U.N. High Court...
'Green News Report' 12/5/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
U.N. court to rule on landmark climate case; NC town sues Duke Energy for climate deception; S. Africa blocks new coal plants; PLUS: Global warming driving drought in U.S. West...
Previous GNRs: 12/3/24 - 11/21/24 - Archives...
'The Mind Boggles at Potential for Corruption' in Trump Tariff Scheme: 'BradCast' 12/4/24
Guest: Financial journalist David Dayen of The American Prospect; Also: Final U.S. House seat called in CA; '2000 Mules' filmmaker apologizes for film's fraudulent 'fraud' claims...
In Defense of Democracy from S. Korea to N. Carolina (and Beyond): 'BradCast' 12/3/24
Also: Control of MN House hangs on incredibly close race and tossed ballots; WI's 13-year old anti-union law found 'unconstitutional'...
'Green News Report' 12/3/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
U.N. plastics treaty negotiations collapse in S. Korea; U.N. COP29 climate talks end with weak agreement in Azerbaijan; PLUS: Extreme drought is an immigration issue, study warns...
Previous GNRs: 11/21/24 - 11/19/24 - Archives...
Hunter's Pardon:
'BradCast' 12/2/2024
Also: Biden-Harris 2020 cybersecurity chief questions 2024 results; Trump's latest corrupt appointments; Listeners ring in...
Sunday 'First Things First' Toons
THIS WEEK: Religious 'Freedom' ... The Felon-Elect ... Tariff-ied ... The Great Xcape ... and more! In our latest collection of the week's most prayful toons...
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THIS WEEK: A Cabinet of Crooks, Kooks and Corrupted Curiosities...and more! In our latest collection of the week's most toxic toons...
How (and Why!) to 'Extend an Olive Branch' to MAGA Family Members Over the Holidays: 'BradCast' 11/21/24
Guest: Leaving MAGA's Rich Logis; Also: Bibi's 'war crimes'; Hegseth 'assault'; Gaetz out!...
'Green News Report' 11/21/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
Back-to-back killer storms in NW; Huge cache of 'rare earth' elements discovered in U.S.; Climate change worsened every hurricane; PLUS: NY revives congestion pricing...
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Former Federal Prosecutor: Trump Must Be Sentenced in NY Before Taking Office Again: 'BradCast' 11/20/24
Guest: Randall D. Eliason; Also: Repubs cover for Gaetz; FCC nom threatens censorship...
'Bullet Ballot' Claims, Other Arguments for Hand-Counting 2024 Battleground Votes: 'BradCast' 11/19/24
Also: PA Supremes order votes tossed before Senate recount; Gaetz files reportedly hacked...
'Green News Report' 11/19/24
Trump nominates fracking CEO, climate denier to head Dept. of Energy; Winters warming quickly in U.S.; PLUS: Biden heads to Amazon Rainforest to offer hope...
Trump Already Violating Law (He Signed!) During Transition: 'BradCast' 11/18/24
Guest: Former Dep. Asst. A.G. Lisa Graves; Also: Flood of unqualified, corrupt Trump noms for top cabinet posts...
Sunday 'Into the Gaetz of Hell' Toons
THIS WEEK: Pyrrhic Victories ... Cabinet Clowns ... Blame Games ... Sharpie Shooters ... And more! In our latest collection of the week's sleaziest toons...
'Green News Report' 11/14/24
NY, NJ drought, wildfires; GOP wins House, power to overturn Biden climate action; PLUS: Very high stakes as U.N. climate summit kicks off in Baku, Azerbaijan...
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2014 5:41pm PT  

Just so you don't miss this part, since it's at the very bottom of the letter, let's run it up top and add a red arrow to it:

That's from the letter included inside of this very scary envelope being sent to Kentucky voters (at least some of them) by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), in his sleazy re-election campaign against challenger Allison Lundergan Grimes (D):

Click the graphic above to enlarge and see the whole thing. The letter sent inside the scary envelope, as published by Sahil Kapur at TPM today, follows below (and is also enlargable by clicking)...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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State troopers leave Kaci Hickox' house after court ruling, despite Maine Governor's claim they were there 'to protect her'...
By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2014 1:02pm PT  

One of America's dumbest governors (Maine's Paul LePage) and one of its most dishonest, corrupt obnoxious (New Jersey's Chris Christie), both received a fairly stinging rebuke from a judge in Maine today, who thoroughly rejected the idiotic and dangerous attempts to quarantine medical aid worker and badass Kaci Hickox, after she recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.

"The court is fully aware of the misconceptions, misinformation, bad science and bad information being spread from shore to shore in our country with respect to Ebola," Judge Charles C. LaVerdiere, the chief judge for the Maine District Courts said in his ruling, according to AP. "The court is fully aware that people are acting out of fear and that this fear is not entirely rational."

Before rejecting LePage's legal attempt to restrict her movements, LaVerdiere "thanked Hickox for her service in Africa and acknowledged the gravity of restricting someone's constitutional rights without solid science to back it up."

Hickox, who does not have Ebola, has never had Ebola, is not infectious with Ebola and is symptom-free of Ebola, "said she is following the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation of daily monitoring for fever and other signs of the disease," since returning home from her important work in West Africa.

She had been ordered quarantined by Christie in NJ upon her return, before being allowed to travel home to Maine earlier this week, where LePage has also been attempting to restrict her movements --- because both Governors are cowardly and dangerous imbeciles.

One more interesting point here...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Same voting systems fail year after year in the state; But officials have a terrible plan to deal with it...
By Brad Friedman on 10/31/2014 7:35am PT  

Via KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas...

The Pulaski County Election Commission has received a dozen reports claiming voting machines are changing people's votes. Three of the 12 reports came from North Little Rock voters who voted at Laman Library.

Bryan Poe, Pulaski County's Director of Elections, said the commission is asking voters to be extra cautious.

"We're not the only ones that have experienced something like this. I've heard reports from Lonoke County, Franklin County, and I have also heard reports from Maryland, Illinois, Tennessee and Texas," Poe said. "They would go to select one candidate and it would select a different candidate for them. That's generally an issue that occurs with the calibration of the machine."

It's also "generally an issue" that occurs in Arkansas...on voting systems made by ES&S...year after year after year, as The BRAD BLOG has reported, continuously, over the past decade and as we quickly summarize below.

Are this year's votes flipping from R to D in Arkansas? From D to R? The story doesn't say, and, frankly, we're delighted about that. Because it doesn't matter!

Over the past decade or more, reports of touch-screen votes flipping from D to R have been far more common across the country, but it can go the other way as well (and/or to and from third parties). The point is that even when these god-forsaken 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems work as designed, there is still no way to know that any vote ever cast on one of them during an election for any candidate or initiative on the ballot was ever recorded as per any voter's intent!

As to the Pulaski County Election Commission's reported "plan" for dealing with this problem as they move forward between now and Election Day, it's a disaster in the making...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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50k 'missing' registrations in GA; Millions of voters threatened by GOP database scheme; That 'non-citizen' voter 'study' at WaPo...
By Brad Friedman on 10/30/2014 9:04pm PT  

The pace of GOP voter suppression stories and scams is now cascading in faster than we're able to fully check out or report in detail. So, for now, here are a few very important stories that are likely to become even more relevant in the coming days, even as we've only time for quick coverage here at the moment...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 10/30/2014 4:04pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 'Sit down and shut up!': Superstorm Sandy recovery stalled, 2 years later; The Weather Channel repudiates its climate change-denying co-founder; PLUS: 'It's not too late': the stark yet hopeful message in the UN's final climate science report... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Toxic chemicals skyrocket near fracking sites; Solar energy to hit grid parity in U.S. by 2016; Libertarian 'think tank' sues White House over climate change video; Did Nuclear Regulatory Commission secretly alter earthquake standards?; Nuclear industry failing to address climate change; Monsanto targeting Millennials; Hope fades for trapped coal miners; CA: electric car chargers mandated for new construction ... PLUS: The Red Cross' Secret Disaster: Superstorm Sandy response was definitely not a success ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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By Ernest A. Canning on 10/30/2014 9:35am PT  

The Politicus USA headline typified MSM coverage of what Brad Friedman often refers to as the "horse race" --- "Democrats Surge As Michelle Nunn Leads Georgia Senate Race In Third Straight Poll."

For The BRAD BLOG, and for a good many election integrity advocates and computer scientists, that narrow focus ignores "the track conditions," which, in Georgia entails the continued use of touchscreen voting systems courtesy of a 2009 determination by the Georgia Supreme Court that "unverifiable elections are just fine."

Where horse race coverage focuses exclusively on the here and now, this site feels it helpful to look back a dozen years to what took place in Georgia shortly after Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox signed a May 2002 contract with what was then known as Diebold Election Systems Inc....

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By Brad Friedman on 10/29/2014 8:50pm PT  

With the latest KPFK/Pacifica Radio fund drive behind us, it was great to be back on the air live today with The BradCast!

Just in time for Election Day next week, we got everybody up to date on all of the terrible SCOTUS rulings in regard to GOP voter suppression from over the past several weeks --- in OH, NC, WI and TX (and an important Photo ID ruling by the state Supreme Court in AR) --- for those who may have missed our coverage during the fund drive. Now it's up to the voters to try like hell not to be disenfranchised, particularly in TX, where it won't be easy this year.

Plus, our musical tribute to touch-screen vote-flipping now taking place all over the country --- yet again! And, the latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen as the future of climate change is on next Tuesday's ballot.

Enjoy!

Download MP3 or listen online below...

* * *
You are the only one who pays us to continue our independent blog and broadcast coverage of election issues and other stuff that actually matters and is often covered nowhere else. If you haven't contributed in a while, or ever, please consider doing so below so we can keep going --- especially right now! Thank you!

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The first state, along with GA, to install Diebold's 100% unverifiable systems in 2002 are still forcing them on voters in 2014...
By Brad Friedman on 10/29/2014 6:05am PT  

As we told you recently, after 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems reportedly began flipping votes from Democratic to Republican in Texas, and from Republican to Democratic in Illinois, and then from "NO" to "YES" on an anti-choice measure in Tennessee, there would be more. There always is, as we discussed on Thom Hartmann's TV show earlier this week.

Now it's reportedly happening in Maryland. Again.

Yes, there are still many states and counties out there that have so little respect for their voters that they force them to use these horrible, completely unverifiable electronic voting systems because, clearly, they don't give a damn whether votes are recorded accurately or, more to the point, whether any voter can ever know that any election result actually reflects the will of the voters. Whether these systems fail (as they often do), whether they are hacked (as they easily are), or whether they work accurately, voters can never know one way or another --- and that is the core problem with them.

Nonetheless, these machines are still in use across the country in 2014. One of the very first states to foist them on voters back in 2002 was Maryland, when they installed 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting systems across the entire state.

Those systems are still being used there today and --- whaddaya know? --- they are flipping votes, according to the state Republican Party which is now demanding an investigation after receiving complaints from "about 50 voters in 12 Maryland counties"...

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With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
Climate change on the ballot.
By Desi Doyen on 10/28/2014 3:34pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Climate Change and Election 2014: High stakes on energy, the environment, and global warming ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Australia breaks heat records - again; BP oil spill left big oily 'bathtub ring' on seafloor; Shell wants 5 more years to drill in the Arctic; How can we get power to the poor without frying the planet?; More storms mean more sewage overflows in Wisconsin; Japan town votes to re-start nuclear plants; Amid CA drought, bruising battle over water ... PLUS: U.N. climate change draft report warns risks of 'irreversible' damage... and much, MUCH more! ...

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By Brad Friedman on 10/28/2014 12:31pm PT  

It occurred to me on the way over to the studio on Monday, when I was worried I might be running late, that if I didn't make it, Thom could just re-run the almost identical conversations we've had about virtually the same damn thing from back in 2012 or back in 2010 or back in 2008 or back in 2006, etc...

For much more on the above, please see these stories from Friday:

"E-Votes Flip D to R in Texas, R to D in Illinois: More Trouble With Touch-Screens (2014 Edition)"
"Touch-Screen Votes Flip 'No' to 'Yes' on Abortion Amendment to State Constitution in TN"

...and whatever other similar stories we may have to run between now and Election Day next Tuesday.

* * *

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State's chief election official stands to benefit from unlawful new process in re-election bid against Dem Maggie Toulouse Oliver...
By Brad Friedman on 10/28/2014 6:05am PT  

No doubt this is precisely the sort of thing that Chris Christie, New Jersey's governor, chair of the Republican Governors Association and 2016 Republican Presidential hopeful, was talking about last week when discussing the need for Republicans to be in charge of the "voting mechanisms" in 2016.

New Mexico, certain to be a key swing state once again in the 2016 Presidential election, currently has both a Republican Governor, the popular Susana Martinez, and a Republican Secretary of State, Dianna Duran. Both are up for re-election this year. Duran is in a neck-and-neck race against her Democratic opponent Maggie Toulouse Oliver.

Duran is one of those GOP "voter fraud" fraudsters who likes to pretend there is a massive epidemic of voter fraud that needs correcting via polling place Photo ID restrictions, even though such measures prevent far more legal (largely Democratic-leaning) votes from being cast than fraudulent ones --- and even though she's been able to find next to none since taking office four years ago.

At the same time, Duran appears to be slow-walking thousands of perfectly legal new voter registrations from being processed by the state Motor Vehicle Department (MVD), despite a 2010 court order issued after a settlement with the federal government requiring New Mexico to comply with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, the so-called "Motor Voter" law.

On Monday, the Santa Fe New Mexican offered this distressing report from Brian Sweeney, a state voter, or, at least, someone who has been trying to be one for months without success...

When I moved to Santa Fe this summer, one of the first things I did was apply for a New Mexico driver's license. At the same time, I registered to vote using a paper form. This week, I learned from the secretary of state's registration information website that my voter registration was never processed. I received no notification of any problems with my registration.

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Rutgers finds Christie's unilateral, illegal voting experiment resulted in tens of thousands of unauthenticated votes in 2012...
By Brad Friedman on 10/27/2014 3:01pm PT  

In the run-up to the 2012 Presidential Election, as Superstorm Sandy was bearing down hard on the East Coast, we wrote quite a bit (both here and at Salon) about how flooding and, specifically, power outages in several states that rely almost exclusively on electronic voting systems, could cripple the integrity of elections in a number of them.

Ultimately, among the hardest hit of those northeastern states was New Jersey, which, shamefully, still forces almost all of its voters to cast their ballots on 100% unverifiable electronic touch-screen systems.

On the weekend before Election Day, as water was rising and power was out across much of the eastern part of the state, NJ's Gov. Chris Christie and Lt. Governor Kim Guadano issued an unusual, emergency order, allowing for the use of early voting to ease the crush on Election Day in areas where some polling places would be shut down to due flooding, and for the use of paper ballot voting in precincts where power was still likely to be out as of Election Day.

We applauded those emergency measures at the time, particularly as the chances for voters to actually have their votes counted accurately and transparently could only increase with the use of hand-marked paper ballots in a state which has had nothing but disasters over the years with their oft-failed, easily-manipulated touch-screen voting system.

However, at the same time Guadano was announcing those emergency measures, she also --- without bothering to consult with election officials around the state --- tossed in one other emergency order [PDF] which, as we warned at the time, was likely to be a terrible mistake.

Guadano ordered emergency Internet Voting --- of a sort --- by allowing for voters displaced by the storm (and it would be left up to election officials' discretion to determine which voters were or weren't "displaced") to cast their ballots via email or fax.

We now know, thanks to a new report from the Rutger's School of Law [PDF], that, indeed, NJ's experiment with voting over fax and the Internet was a disaster, one that led to tens of thousands of unauthenticated votes in 2012, and which hasn't hasn't been reported by the media...until now...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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By Brad Friedman on 10/26/2014 7:58pm PT  

We could really use your help. Now is a good time. If you can afford it, please lend a hand...

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By Brad Friedman on 10/24/2014 2:39pm PT  

Just after this morning's official start of our regular biennial coverage of votes flipping on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems around the country, this report comes in right on cue from the great state of Tennessee...

"I honestly sort of slapped my head and said, 'Why me? Why did this happen to me?'" said Bernie Ellis, of Santa Fe.

Ellis said he voted "no" on Amendment One Thursday. Before he submitted his ballot, he noticed a problem.

"Sometime between when I cast my vote and when I got to the review page, the machine had changed my vote to a 'yes,'" Ellis said.

Beverley Turner, of Columbia, experienced the same issue last Friday when she tried voting "no" on the same position.

Both Ellis and Turner voted at the Maury County Election Commission.
...
Tennessee's 95 counties use touch screen election machines.

Amendment 1 is a TN ballot measure that would amend the state constitution to allow the legislature to "to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother."

Ellis, who explains what happens in the video posted below, happens to be a long-time election integrity advocate in Tennessee. He was very instrumental in helping the state legislature pass, nearly unanimously, the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA), a 2008 law to move to all of their 95 counties to paper ballots. Shamefully, after TN Republicans took over the legislature later that year (via the statewide touch-screen voting system, in a year when the GOP got trounced literally everywhere else in the country), they fought and then eventually repealed the reform which would have done away with the state's 100% unverifiable e-voting system.

The Republican fervor to continue the use of such unverifiable voting systems in the state may have been best reflected by a comment offered directly to us in 2007 at a meeting of the Davidson County (Nashville) election commission. After Tennessee election integrity documentarians David and Patricia Earnhardt (filmmakers of the award-winning Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections, which both Ellis and I happen to appear in) reported seeing their own votes flip on touch-screen systems in Davidson County during Early Voting for the 2008 Presidential Election there, we explained:

In 2007 we had the displeasure of attending a meeting of the Davidson County, TN, Election Commission ourselves. While the Democrats on the committee were in the majority, the three hapless Democratic members were run roughshod over by the two Republicans who virtually ran the entire meeting themselves.

The Republican who seemed to be in charge of things, Commissioner Lynn Greer, while the actual Chair Eddie Bryan did almost nothing, actually told us after the meeting --- and after we'd spoken during it, to warn about the troubles they would have with their touch-screen systems --- that "paper ballots are the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on America."

It seemed as though he actually believed those words as they came out of his mouth.

Greer later became Chair of the county's Election Commission after Republicans took over the state legislature that year for the first time since Reconstruction.

For much more on the issue of touch-screen vote-flipping, what you need to be concerned about, what you don't need to be concerned about, and what you can do about all of it, please see our earlier detailed story today on votes now reportedly flipping Democratic to Republican on Diebold touch-screens in Texas and flipping Republican to Democratic on Sequoia touch-screens in Illinois.

The systems reportedly flipping votes in Maury County, TN are the infamous iVotronics made by ES&S, the nation's largest voting machine manufacturer and the one with, perhaps, the longest and most spectacular history of election failures in the U.S.

* * *

Here's the video report on the Maury County vote flips from WSMV...

* * *
Please help support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system --- now in our ELEVENTH YEAR! --- as available from no other media outlet in the nation...

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By Brad Friedman on 10/24/2014 6:05am PT  

And so begins our traditional, biennial (if not more frequent) coverage of partisans understandably freaking out when their 100% unverifiable touch-screen votes are seen flipping on screen from a candidate or candidates of their preferred party to a candidate or candidates from a different party.

Historically, over the past decade since we've been covering it (and related issues), this issue has occurred far more often for Democratic voters seeing their votes flip to Republicans. Nonetheless, the opposite phenomenon (as well the scenario involving third party or independent candidates) is not entirely uncommon. And, in all cases, voters should be concerned, election officials should be embarrassed and elected officials who continue to allow the use of these unverifiable secret vote-counting systems --- antithetical to American democracy and public elections as they are --- should beg forgiveness from their constituents, rather than begging for more money and more unverifiable votes.

As Early Voting is now under way in much of the country, we are, predictably, beginning to receive our first reports from voters seeing their votes flipped before their eyes on touch-screen voting systems. One such case involves a tip we received about straight-party Democratic votes reportedly flipping to Republican straight-party votes in Collin County, TX. Another case, reported widely on Thursday in the rightwing media, concerns a similar incident in Cook County, IL, where a GOP candidate says that his attempted Republican votes flipped before his very eyes to Democratic ones on that county's unverifiable touch-screen voting systems.

There is good and bad news here. And there are a number of myths and truths about these systems and these sorts of incidents which we've documented almost non-stop over the past ten years at The BRAD BLOG. So let's review a few key points about what actually occurred and didn't, what you should be concerned about in both the TX and IL cases and what you should do if it happens to you, as these occurrences are almost certainly going to continue between now and Election Day on November 4th...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

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Brad is an independent investigative
journalist, blogger, broadcaster,
VelvetRevolution.us co-founder,
expert on issues of election integrity,
and a Commonweal Institute Fellow.

Brad has contributed chapters to these books...


...And is featured in these documentary films...

Additional Stuff...
Brad Friedman/The BRAD BLOG Named...
Buzz Flash's 'Wings of Justice' Honoree
Project Censored 2010 Award Recipient
The 2008 Weblog Awards



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