First, Brad, as covered in Ed Kemmick's article, it's Montana that is coming along pretty well, not Wyoming. As the following article, also published in the Billings, MT, Gazette shows, Wyoming is still stuck in the all electronic voting, all electronic recounting mode.

{ED NOTE: Thanks, Steve. I've corrected the Wyoming/Montana error in the original article, and concur with your point about the ongoing mess in Wyoming! --- BF}

Secondly, as THIS Gazette article shows, Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson and Montana State Representative Brady Wiseman (D-Bozeman), have been very instrumental in making powerful changes that have helped make Montana one of the states held up as a good example by verified voting activists nationwide.

Montana Rep. Brady Wiseman is a Democrat and Secretary of State Brad Johnson is a Republican, but the two are in agreement on the need for secure, reliable elections.

Their shared background has something to do with it. Wiseman is a software engineer for RightNow Technologies in Bozeman, an Internet technology company, and Johnson used to work there as an account manager.

"The point is, he has the technology background, and so do I," Wiseman said. "We saw eye to eye immediately on touch-screen voting machines."

They didn't like what they saw, which is why they worked together on a bill Wiseman introduced during the 2005 legislative session to require all voting technology in the state to use paper ballots. The law easily passed in both chambers of the Montana Legislature.

(Also, a rule change implemented by Brad Johnson on October 15 of this year was brilliant. He required that all counties do an election-day random 5 percent test of the election machines to ensure that there were no election day-activated programming "surprises" cropping up.)

I'd add that I wasn't too excited by Brad's comments on election day registration, (and it may be more in response to the overwhelm that many election officials reported with election day lines that were three- and four- hours long at county courthouses), but I want to make sure that all his great work on making Montana's elections fair is not submerged by one comment.

Why doesn't anyone do a chart that shows the actual numbers where there's PROVEN voter fraud ? And one showing LOST votes (Fl. 18K to start) how about all the memory cards that go missing, all the people that get turned away when machines are down ? Maybe the MSM would be interested in numbers, supported by facts. Or not...

Brad Johnson is one of the election officials that actually "get it" as far as voting machines and procedures.

He is a Republican so he is following the party line on VoterID issues.

I'm not excusing him just stating facts.

It does not matter who wins or how much vote fraud. Unfortunately it took segregationist Governor Wallace to reveal the truth that "there's not a dime's worth of difference between" Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protestors, banning books like "America Deceived' from Amazon, America Deceived (book) stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason. Look at the bright side, when we have to vote the Democrats out, we'll have no choice but to vote for a Third Party.

Steve, #1 - walking the party line on Voter ID may be good for Johnson politically, but it's long past time for Secretaries of State to stop catering to their party masters and start putting the voters first 100% of the time.

Because you and Gideon (#3) vouch for his good intent in other aspects of the voting process, and for his good works so far, I will give him my personal benefit of the doubt (not that I'm anybody, but you get my point, i hope), but I don't live in Montana and thus will not be subject to his rulings to come. Thanks for sharing more info on Sec. Johnson.

But the insidious, invidious scheme of Voter ID is a poison eating away at the foundation of equal access, and IMHO we gloss over and excuse it from otherwise "good guy" officials to our collective peril. I guess I just want to see somebody, somewhere, take a stand that is truly independent of their party line, esp. when that party is dead wrong to keep selling that bill of goods.

The Voter ID canard is like Whack-A-Mole --- it will continue to show it's butt-ugly face in the Republican Party Machine until it is eradicated for the pest that it is.

Donna #2 --- you can find the Election Assistance Commission's formerly-buried report debunking the lie of voter ID --- with real statitics ! --- here ,on BRAD BLOG, from October 16th. A chart comparing verified incidents of voter fraud to the thousands of other "mishaps" and "glitches" from electronic voting systems would be very instructive, methinks.