Climate crisis woven into 2024 DNC; 99% of Americans affected by extreme weather since May; PLUS: 2024 second only to 2023 for billion dollar weather disasters so far...
Guests: Heather Digby Parton of Salon, 'Driftglass' of The Pro Left Podcast; Also: A problem worth noting after FL's Congressional primary elections on Tuesday...
Catastrophic flooding in CT; Climate change dramatically increased record wildfires last year; PLUS: As DNC gets underway, climate groups endorse Harris-Walz...
Ernesto takes down Puerto Rico grid, again; Wealthy beachfront property owners cost taxpayer dollars; U.S. Forest Service tells freeloading bottled water company to beat it...
CO election clerk 'guilty' of vote software breach; NY rules RFK Jr. used 'sham' residence for ballot; Musk, Trump charged with labor complaint after disastrous Twitter chat...
Hurricane Debby releases tons of raw sewage across FL; July 2024 was hottest ever; PLUS: Repubs' Project 2025 aims to delete all govt references to 'climate change'...
THIS WEEK: Rs Get Weird and Weirder ... Ds Try Something New ... RFK's Bear Bones ... and more! In our latest collection of the week's best political toons...
Debby isn't done with the East Coast yet; Hottest oceans in 400 years threaten Great Barrier Reef; PLUS: Dem VP candidate, Gov. Tim Walz, is a proven climate champion...
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...
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...
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...
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...
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...
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...
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...
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...
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...
In one of our ‘Featured’ articles CBS Evening News has raised the “Red Flag On Purging Voter Rolls”. This article reports on a just released report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law on voter roll purges. The report “provides troubling new insight into the process. There are no national standards and as a result, the cleaning up of voter rolls is not as precise as it should be and eligible voters are often wrongly removed. The Brennan report calls the nationwide process 'chaotic,' 'shrouded in secrecy', 'riddled with inaccuracies', 'prone to error' and 'vulnerable to manipulation'."
Our second ‘Featured’ article is a report done by USPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) in which they blow the whistle on nineteen states that are violating federal law in their handling of voter roll purges.
Neither of these articles should have been necessary. State election officials should be carefully following the law and carefully ensuring voter rolls are properly purged and not in such a way as to deny legally registered voters their right to vote. Any election official who does not feel the need to ensure due diligence should be replaced and, if they violated federal law, they should be investigated for that violation. ...
Click for links to all of the above-mentioned stories and many more...
[Ed Note: This DVN item has been elevated to the main index of the front page. "Daily Voting News" is published every day, and the latest edition can always be found on the right sidebar of every page, in the special "Daily Voting News" box.]
By the our count, at least twelve Ohio counties have split the presidential contest over two columns on their paper ballots for this November's election. This "column split" often confuses voters and results in double voting in the presidential race and an uncounted vote. Today the Brennan Center urged election officials and advocates in Ohio to make sure that voters are aware of the split, and to make sure they vote only once for president.
...
As a quick glance will show, it's no surprise that many voters cast two votes for president when the contest is listed across two separate columns
A sample of the split ballot follows below, and looks like it could result in a lot of spoiled ballots from overvotes, and folks writing in their choice for President in addition to filling in the bubble on the first column. More details from Larry Norden at the Brennan Center here...
I'll be Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show tonight through Friday, from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Hope you'll tune in!
Tomorrow, we'll be running the Veep Debate live for the first 90 minutes (or until Palin breaks down in tears), followed by a Blogger Roundtable with some world class bloggers (Marcy Wheeler from Empty Wheel, David "dday" Dayen from Digby's Hullabalo and Calitics, Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger from Winds Of Change, Pamela Leavey from The Democratic Daily, and maybe a few more --- even some Righties --- if we can get 'em!)
But tonight is looking pretty good as well, and is currently scheduled to include the following:
MURRAY WAAS, investigative reporter at ABC, National Journal and elsewhere, on the new (and under-reported) IG report on the U.S. Attorney Purge.
Ohio attorney CLIFF ARNEBECK on big new developments (including a possible subpoena for Karl Rove!) in his long-standing Ohio 2004 Election Fraud lawsuit.
Tonight's CBS Evening News finally covered what may well be the November Surprise that we've been trying to warn about for months here at The BRAD BLOG: Massive voter roll purges being done in secret, with little or no oversight, and often under federal Justice Department cover, in states and counties around the country.
And the Democrats, who likely have the most to lose via such secret purges, are doing little or nothing about it.
The CBS story, posted below (appx 2 mins) starts with an elderly New Jersey voter who was suddenly removed from the voting rolls after thirty years, for apparently no reason whatsoever, before launching into findings from a new non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice study on "Voter Purges".
We've yet to read this Brennan report, but the brief coverage from tonight's Evening News notes 10,000 voters purged in Mississippi, 21,000 in Louisiana and "to top it off, another new study discovered 19 states are ignoring federal law (the National Voter Registration Act), banning systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election."
Among those 19, are a number of battleground states. The report lists: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Masachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, as places where massive purges have recently taken place.
CBS ends by noting that their New Jersey voter has now been restored to the rolls, but they warn, "come Election Day, don't count on thousands of others being as fortunate"...
CBS' coverage doesn't even note that many states have now contracted the same private companies who did such a crappy job on their voting machines (companies like Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia) to manage, with the same lack of oversight, entire newly computerized state voting rolls. Names will be dropping from rolls this year by error or by evil...
Expectations for Sarah Palin continue to plummet in advance of the Veep Debate Thursday night. From NYTimes today...
"I think she has pretty thoroughly — and probably irretrievably — proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview.
At this rate, all Palin should have to do on Thursday is show up, and not pass out in the middle of the debate, and she'll be declared "the winner". For more background, please see Quayle '88, Bush '00 and Bush '04.
[Note: We'll be Guest Hosting The Mike Malloy Show this week, Wed - Fri, including during the debate on Thursday night. We'll be carrying it in full, starting at 6pm PT (9pm ET) followed by a world-class "Bloggers Roundtable". To hell with Chris Matthews and the professional spinners! We'll be talking with the folks who have been right, instead, for years! Scheduled to be with us so far: Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel, David "dday" Dayen of Hullabaloo and Calitics and more to be announced soon. Hope you'll tune in!]
Congrats to David Earnhardt and company on winning "Best Documentary" at last weekend's San Diego Film Festival, for Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections! I'm quite sure the win was due to my appearance at the Q&A following the Saturday night screening down there.
Uncounted continues to screen on Starz through Election Day, and can be purchased from their website. DVDs, signed by Earnhardt, are also available here for BRAD BLOG donations of $50 or more.
And...If you missed it in the flurry of recent posting here, the terrifying new documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story --- which also tells our own story in breaking and reporting the Curtis/Tom Feeney vote-rigging exposé over the last four years --- is also now available (andplaying on LinkTV!) We offered more details, video preview, review quotes, etc. on that one over the weekend here.
The MSVL DVD is also available as a premium here to readers --- signed by both myself and filmmaker Patty Sharaf --- for BRAD BLOG donations of $50 or more.
And finally...if you'd like a copy of both great documentaries (I'm in both, but they're really good anyway!), a donation of $75 or more will get 'em both shipped straight to ya! (Snail mail also works for all of the above: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028)
Congrats and thanks all around! People are getting the message because you are making noise!
[Ed Note: Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case discussed below, will be joining me Wednesday evening to talk about the case, when I sit in to Guest Host The Mike Malloy Show, which I'll be doing Wed-Fri this week, from 9p-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) - BF]
A recent flurry of activity in the long-standing King Lincoln v. OH Sec. of State lawsuit concerning voting rights violations in the state during the 2004 election has resulted in the judge lifting the stay to allow depositions to be taken of key GOP tech-guru Mike Connell, and potentially others, such as Karl Rove.
A subpoena has now been served to Connell, who was recently described by the attorneys working on the case, as a 'high-IQ Forrest Gump...at the scene of every GOP crime.'
Federal District Court Judge Algenon Marbley's brief order [PDF], agreeing to lift the stay, was quietly issued on September 19th. It reads:
On motion of the plaintiffs and agreement of the defendant Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the stay in this matter is lifted for the sole purpose of permitting the plaintiffs to take the deposition of Michael Connell and any other witnesses whose testimony, in the judgment of these parties, may be warranted based upon the deposition of Michael Connell.
The BRAD BLOG had learned about the latest court action, which could soon entangle Rove as well, some time ago, but we were asked by parties involved in the case to embargo the information until such time as they were able to serve Connell with his subpoena...
Wow. These CBS/Katie Couric interviews on the economy with Sarah Palin are breathtaking. Cafferty's response afterwards is, on the other hand, a breath of fresh air in the corporate media.
If any serious John McCain supporter can claim, with a straight face, to actually have no problem voting for this woman for President, as that's what she's ostensibly running for, I'd sure like to hear it.
As it seems very few saw these when they originally aired (during the bailout panic last week), perhaps they need a bit more play. My god. Seriously, take a look at these...
Little wonder, then, that even rightwingers, after looking at this stuff, are starting to face reality, and call for Palin to be dropped from the ticket.
On CNN, Jack Cafferty was at least as alarmed by the interview as I was, noting on air that "If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should." Take a look at his reaction...
"After the Florida Election in 2000, one man found himself on the wrong end of a smoking gun." That's the tagline for Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story, the brand-new documentary film by Patty Sharaf which has now finally been released!
Kansas City Star is among the first out of the box to review the film, calling it a "Must See!" and declaring that it "plays like a high-tension political thriller."
The terrifying feature-length documentary, shot in high-definition video, details, for the first time, the complete Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises vote-rigging scandal, in all of its, yes, sometimes very gory detail. It also tells a tale of the media, as it details my attempts to tell the story over the last four years, to a corrupt, detached, and too-often frightened corporate media. The BRAD BLOG broke the Curtis story originally in late 2004, and we've been investigating and reporting on it ever since.
The DVD of MSVL is finally available for purchase at VotingLies.com and will also be premiering beginning this weekend on LinkTV, for those of you lucky enough to get the satellite TV channel. See LinkTV's main Murder, Spies page for air dates and times, as well as an extended five-minute preview of the film. Sharaf has been kind enough to offer the DVD --- signed by herself and myself --- available as our newest, and perhaps most appropriate, BRAD BLOG premium ever! An online donation of $50 or more gets you your own copy! (And just in time for Halloween!) Snail mail works as well, if you prefer to send a check to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028. The support is greatly appreciated and very much needed.
LinkTV narrates their own 60-second preview of MSVL below...
For those who aren't familiar with the remarkable Curtis/Feeney story of the Florida software programmer who says he was asked by a powerful Republican to create vote-rigging software, where have you been? See this summary version for the quick details.
For those who are familiar with the story, you will learn details in MSVL you never knew, along with new interviews on the case from Gore Vidal, reporter Bob Fitrakis, computer security expert Harri Hursti, whistleblower Steve Heller, Curtis co-worker Mavis Georgalis, and many more!
While the Curtis story has been told, often beautifully, in a number of other documentaries, such as Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections and Stealing America: Vote-by-Vote, this is the first to go all the way into all of the frightening details underscoring this case, including the mysterious death of Florida's Inspector General Raymond Lemme while investigating the allegations, and the bizarre case of the convicted Chinese spy, Hai Lin "Henry" Nee, who worked at the firm with Curtis.
A few quotes from some of the early reviews:
"Must see!...Plays like a high-tension political thriller...Amazingly elaborate and detailed...Want to get hoppin' mad? This'll do it...Let's hear it for paper ballots." - Bob Butler, Kansas City Star
"Alfred Hitchcock would have chosen this, if the fact that it's true didn't scare him too much...The crime that dare not speak its name: Election Fraud." - Mimi "Dharma & Greg" Kennedy, National Chair of PDA
"Well done, covers so much well, and airs unexplored aspects of our election nightmare. Definitely one of the best of the genre." - John Ennis, filmmaker Free For All
The film is also screening at a number of upcoming film-festivals around the country, including the New Jersey Film Festival this weekend. See the MSVL website for dates & times.
Four years later, I'm happy to still be here to see the release of the film, quite frankly. There were some pretty scary days back there. It's regrettable that nobody's yet gone to jail, but maybe we're getting closer. For many of you who found this blog because of the Curtis story back in 2004, thank you for all of the support throughout the years! I hope you'll get the film, enjoy it, and continue to spread the word.
In Swing States, Coordinated Disinformation is Sent to Student Voters, Challenges Being Made to Eligibility of Low-Income Voters Who've Lost Their Homes
The Democratic/Obama Response to the Assualt on Voting Rights Remains Nowhere Near What is Needed...
As you'll note by the increase in items in John Gideon's Daily Voting News, coverage of election concerns is again reaching a fevered pitch. When it comes to election machines, most of those reports come far too late to effect any real change (other than perhaps to help encourage election officials to ensure there will be plenty of paper ballots on hand, to make sure they tell voters and poll workers about them, and then to finally count those damned ballots!)
It's clear, however, that while most election officials likely do their job honestly, there are a great number of them around the country who have little interest in voters --- certain voters --- being allowed to excercise their franchise at all.
While there is little time to do much about the machines, as they prepare to melt down, there is still time do something on the front-end voter suppression issues. Yet sadly, despite a few spotty efforts around the country, it seems those parties that do have an interest in voters actually voting (such as Obama and the DNC) have little clue about what they are facing. At least from what I've been able to learn about coordinated plans --- or lack thereof --- to combat the Republican assault on voting.
And, all the while, as Democrats dither, the well-coordinated Republican War on Democracy continues apace around the country, with new and disturbing reports coming out almost by the hour, revealing the national extent of the GOP's anti-democracy campaign.
The effort, by a number of election officials in so-called "swing states" around the country, meant to keep Democratic-leaning voters, such as students and minorities, from casting votes this year, is remarkable and growing. It is, of course, also appalling...
Americans - most notably right-leaning Americans - used to issue dire warnings about sliding down "the slippery slope" on any number of hot-button political issues. From the slippery slope of same-sex marriage to the slippery slope of gun control to the slippery slope of abortion rights to the slippery slope of immigration and on and on, various political interest groups in America guarded that slope, with no small amount of zeal, lest any of us find our God-given rights or once-vaunted rule of law lost for good before we even noticed.
Bad news. We've lost our God-given rights, at least our constitutional ones, and certainly the rule of law. The US is now in full-plummet down the slippery slope, due, in no small part, to a lack of courage, willingness, interest and imagination of those who might have kept it from happening long ago.
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Brad Friedman
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About Brad Friedman...
Brad is an independent investigative
journalist, blogger, broadcaster, VelvetRevolution.us co-founder,
expert on issues of election integrity,
and a Commonweal Institute Fellow.