Six more states are voting today (Michigan, Washington, Missouri, Mississippi, Idaho, North Dakota). We’ll have results tomorrow, as we’re still trying to figure out who actually won and lost, in some cases, last week on Super Tuesday, particularly in Texas and California. Nonetheless, today, like last week, has already revealed more problems with electronic pollbooks that resulted in voters leaving without voting, and there is more likely trouble on the horizon in several states set to vote in the next several weeks. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Among the stories covered on today’s BradCast…

• A fire at Venezuela‘s National Electoral Council warehouse over the weekend has resulted in the destruction of 50,000 touchscreen voting machines and 582 computers. We swear we didn’t do it! The unverifiable voting machines in question have been used during questionable past elections and are made by Venezuelan-based Smartmatic…the same company with a dodgy background of failed elections who also made the new touchscreen voting systems which failed so disastrously in Los Angeles County on Super Tuesday last week. But, again, we didn’t do it!;

• Closer to home, voters today in St. Louis County — Missouri‘s most populous — were turned away from the polls for an hour or so this morning from at least 50 of the county’s 400 polling places. Though St. Louis has finally moved to hand-marked paper ballots, they are using a print-on-demand system that uses electronic pollbooks (yes, more computers) to instruct the printers which ballot should be printed. Those e-pollbooks, apparently, were failing this morning until the company that makes them issued an update. In the meantime, there is also a manual print mode that pollworkers could have used to print ballots for voters when the e-pollbooks weren’t working, but many appear to have not known that or just panicked and forgot. Also, in MO, Kansas City’s African-American Mayor was turned away from the polls after his name was not found on the voting rolls. Later in the day, they figured out why;

• Both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden cancelled campaign rallies set for Ohio today (where early voting has already begun for next week’s primaries in the Buckeye State), due to coronavirus concerns, in what may foreshadow still more trouble for this year’s elections, including how to include enough hand-sanitizer for polling places, especially those which use touchscreens. (People can usually bring their own pens to polling places that use hand-marked paper ballots.) We may end up seeing Vote-by-Mail elections for the entire country this November if the virus continues to spread, despite the steady leadership of stable genius Donald Trump;

• Some good news for voters (finally!) out of Georgia today, as the state has reached a settlement with the Democratic party in federal court that requires voters be immediately notified about absentee ballots that are rejected by county officials due to perceived signature mismatch or some other infirmity, allowing them time to come in and cure the problem so their votes may still be counted;

• But there is also less good news out of Georgia, where last week’s “good news story out of Georgia” was the fact that Athens-Clarke County’s Board of Elections had voted to ditch the new, state-mandated unverifiable touchscreen voting systems for hand-marked paper ballots instead. The Board found that the touchscreens on the new Dominion ImageCast ballot marking devices (BMDs) were so large and bright that they violate voters constitutionally-mandated right to a secret ballot, as others could see how they were voting from 30 feet across the room, according to a related lawsuit filed in a separate GA county. But now, GA’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has called an emergency hearing in Athens, charging that the County’s Board is violating state law by not using the new, unverifiable voting systems. Now why would he want do that?;

• Meanwhile, in Texas, ballot scans stored on 44 thumb-drives from the new Ballot Marking Device systems used for the first time during last week’s Super Tuesday primaries in Dallas County apparently were not included in previously reported results. As many as 7,000 ballots could be missing from the current results. The County’s Election Director was required to get permission from a court to “recount” the computer-marked ballots scanned in the county to include those previously left out of the count. A Dallas court, on Tuesday, gave permission to do so, but the order is limited to a computer-scan of the computer-marked paper ballots that were previously not included in last week’s results;

• Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for our latest Green News Report, with news on the coronavirus and an oil price war, both affecting the stock market (and banks and fossil fuel-reliant communities) this week, a new troubling report on air pollution caused by fossil fuels, and some good news as New York state’s disposable plastic bag ban finally kicks in…

The BradCast with Brad Friedman 3/10/2020

Voting Should Not Be This Difficult: ‘BradCast’ 3/10/2020  |  50,000 touchscreens up in flames in Venezuela; E-Pollbooks fail in MO; Coronavirus causing probs for voters; GA must notify voters about rejected ballots; Dallas, TX to 'recount' missing Super Tuesday ballots...   · · · · ·   Voting Should Not Be This Difficult: ‘BradCast’ 3/10/2020  |  50,000 touchscreens up in flames in Venezuela; E-Pollbooks fail in MO; Coronavirus causing probs for voters; GA must notify voters about rejected ballots; Dallas, TX to 'recount' missing Super Tuesday ballots...

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