Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"It is through the Constitution that we control the reins of government and insure that it remains the protector of individual, unalienable Rights - i.e., the servant of the People.

"Therefore, it behooves the People to show the Government that the People know what their Rights are and what Government's obligations are, that the People are watching Government as it exercises its delegated powers and that the People are prepared to act if the Government steps outside the boundaries drawn around its power by the Constitution." --- We The People Foundation

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) works for the People. It doesn't work for special interests. It doesn't work for the voting system vendors. The EAC has an obligation, spelled out in its past advisories, public statements and, most importantly, in federal law, to carry out oversight of the voting systems we, the People, use in our federal elections. It does not matter that the EAC commissioners are not elected to their positions. They are still servants of the People.

Not long after being created by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, the EAC published, on June 8, 2004, "Chairman Soaries' Remarks about Electronic Voting Security Strategy for the November 2004 Presidential Election." The comments, by then EAC Chairman DeForest "Buster" Soaries included recommendations "to insure election integrity and promote voter confidence in the administration of the 2004 federal election," and stated, in part: "[The] EAC should solicit information about suspicious electronic voting system activity including software programming and should request aggressive investigative and prosecutorial responses from the U.S. Department of Justice Elections Crimes Branch in the Criminal Division."

The above was restated in a July 13, 2004 "Commission Advisory Letter" [PDF].

It's clear that if there is to be any federal body to recommend investigation and/or prosecution to the DoJ, in regards criminal violation of federal law concerning voting systems, it is to be the EAC, the body charged with testing, certifying, and performing as the "national clearinghouse...with respect to the administration of federal elections" (42 U.S.C. § 15322) and the electronic voting systems employed across the country.

And yet, the EAC has continued to utterly fail in those duties, as a particularly maddening chain of inquiries and emails --- back-and-forth and round-and-round --- that we'd sent to the EAC commissioners and their spokesperson over the past three months illustrates all too well. All we were trying to do was get a simple answer to a very simple question...

Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning

I am a California attorney. After 31 years of practice, I find myself in the enviable position of semi-retirement. As my practice winds down, I have had the luxury to follow the Coleman election challenge closely, both reading court filings and watching a good deal of the proceedings. I consider The BRAD BLOG the most extensive and thorough source of the dangers of E-voting. I felt, however, it would be useful to provide a legal analysis of the present state of the Coleman challenge.

Brad Friedman's described the latest effort by team Coleman to challenge absentee ballots it had previously agreed were properly opened and counted, as a "flip-flop,". While accurate, the term does not begin describe the deep legal dilemma now faced by Norm Coleman's attorneys in the U.S. Senate election contest in Minnesota...

-- Brad Friedman

Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) is preparing to drop a new version of the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" legislation which met so much resistance during the last Congress from both Election Integrity advocates and those opposed to any reform whatsoever alike.

A recent draft of the new legislation [PDF], as obtained by The BRAD BLOG, is an improvement over last session's controversial HR 811 bill (which we covered, at the time, in exhausting detail, as indexed on this special coverage page) in that it would ban the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting devices by the 2012 general election. However, the new bill fails to ban all forms of computerized touch-screen voting and, indeed, encourages it through federal funding to help jurisdictions move from DREs to similar, but non-tabulating, Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs).

We could well jump out of the frying pan, and into yet another frying pan, if the legislation passes as currently drafted.

BMDs, which often use touch-screens to allow voters to make selections, offer many of the same flaws and dangers that DRE voting systems do, such as: the possibility that votes may be flipped on the touch-screen to selections other than those chosen by the voter (as seen in state after state on DREs over the last several election cycles); failures to boot up and power outages which keep citizens from being able to vote at all; machine shortages which cause long lines, discouraging voters from waiting to vote; and the requirement for voters to attempt to verify the accuracy of their ballots on three separate occasions, before the computer-marked version of the paper ballot is actually cast.

Holt has offered The BRAD BLOG a fairly puzzling response to our concerns, at least as we read it, which we'll share in full below.

Moreover, in addition to encouraging the use of troublesome, expensive, and hackable electronic BMDs, the new bill would federally institutionalize the ability of private election companies to keep their hardware and software from public review by requiring that anyone who wishes to examine the systems and source code for integrity, must show cause, get "approval" from a governmental body (largely, only scientists, academics, or election officials need apply) and sign a non-disclosure agreement before being allowed to do so.

While the bill offers some improvements over previous versions, the major flaws still inherent in the legislation --- as it's currently drafted --- will fail to ensure the security, accuracy, and transparency that American democracy requires and deserves. As a sweeping piece of (much-needed) federal reform, we'd better make sure that we get it right this time, since it'll be years, perhaps decades, before we get another bite at that apple should this legislation actually be signed into law this time...

Two quick updates to the Coleman/Franken Election Contest/Mini-Series playing out in Minnesota, both via TPM's Eric Kleefeld, since we're on another deadline today...

1) All of a sudden yesterday, the trial began rapidly picking up pace for some reason. A record "nine and a half" officials were "sworn in, direct-examined, cross-examined, re-direct-examined and excused"

2) Coleman may be setting an all-time flip-floppery record, as he has changed positions, yet again, on originally rejected absentee ballots that he agreed should be counted during the post-election hand-count. The counting of those ballots resulted in a 176 net gain for Franken, leading to his final 225 vote lead over Coleman at the end of that hand-count. As Kleefeld, who details the back-story here, describes it: "Coleman was originally against counting them, then for it, then against it, then for it, and now against it, in that order."

While the new position seems nearly insane (both on a legal, and practical level), the method to the madness is becoming clearer and clearer: Coleman, and his top legal hatchet-man/arsonist, "Swiftboat" Ben Ginsberg, are setting up the case for an appeal to higher authorities, to argue that the election was simply too close to call, the results within the "margin of error", beset with "illegally" counted ballots, and otherwise "fatally-flawed", and the election contest trial itself "a legal quagmire". All in hopes of asking somebody, anybody, (SCOTUS please?) for a do-over election.

We discussed that gambit, and its likelihood of success in this previous article. All of Coleman's moves, of late, seem to support that same general legal strategy.

Amusingly and ironically enough, it was Franken who the nutty Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) recently described as "desperate". Go figure.

In today's Tim Dickinson interview with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Rolling Stone, it sure seems like she's leaning towards accountability for the criminals in the Bush Administration. Many of her words sound like the correct ones, even if she's a bit too enamored of Leahy's "Truth and Reconciliation Committee" proposal, which, among other "shameful" things, would likely results in a whole bunch of immunity, to a whole bunch of folks who deserve no such thing.

But she says she supports what Conyers is doing in the Judiciary Committee, in continuing to pursue Rove, Bolten and Miers. She says she can foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Administration are actually prosecuted. She says "The American people do not want wrongdoing to go unaddressed." She even said similar words to Fox "News" two days before the Inauguration.

So why does it always feel like she's still sitting on a fence? And, if she really believes these words she says, as House Speaker, can't she do more to make them happen?

Here's the snippets of note from Dickinson's interview. You tell us what the inscrutable Speaker really means. Or does she even know herself?...

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It's our second edition of the Green News Report on the web! Both of us are still celebrating by still getting over colds.

In today's report we discuss hamburger Hummers, killing killer whales and pushing back at wingnut anti-environmental disinfo experts (yes, we're talking to you, Rush, Fox and friends!)

Got thoughts for us? Wanna help sponsor the GNR? Wanna run it on your favorite local radio station? Let us know at GreenNews@BradBlog.com, or leave comments below.

More info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Al Sharpton has described Sean Delonas' outrageous editorial cartoon, published in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post, as "stunning". We'd have to agree.

UPDATE 2/19/09: Protests grow outside of Murdoch's NY Post building in NYC. Details...

LATE UPDATE 2/19/09: NYPost issues unusual apology (they usually do no such thing), and it's also an unusual non-apology apology. And a fairly obnoxious one at that. We post it here in full so you don't need to give your clickage to that particular rag:

UPDATE 2/24/09: And now Rupert Murdoch himself, issues his own personal apology. RAW has it...

[Updated at end of article.]

While God may have chosen him, if not the voters of Minnesota, evidence is growing that former Sen. Norm Coleman may be preparing for a "do-over" gambit. We'd offered speculation on this front a week or two ago, and yesterday, following another slog of a day at the U.S. Senate Election Contest court in St. Paul, the Republican's top legal spokes, Ben Ginsberg, described the election as "fatally-flawed" in his post-trial presser. The freshly floated phrase has re-ignited speculation about Coleman's longer-term legal strategy...

It's our premiere edition of the Green News Report on the web!
So we celebrate by both of us having a cold!

In today's report we discuss the green in the massive stimulus bill, the undoing of last minute Bush administration EPA regulations, birds flying north for the winter, and dirty nuts!

Got thoughts for us? Wanna help sponsor the GNR? Let us know at GreenNews@BradBlog.com, or leave comments below.

More info/links on stuff we talked about on today's episode follow below...

Today we have three "Featured" articles. Regular readers will note that we have been warning about the recent call for Internet voting and the fact that the Internet is not secure for elections use. The first two articles clearly bring this concern to the forefront. If the Internet was secure, the New York Times wonders, why would scientists be designing a newer, better Internet?

The second "Featured" article says, "Reported cyber attacks on U.S. government computer networks climbed 40% last year, federal records show, and more infiltrators are trying to plant malicious software they could use to control or steal sensitive data."

If the Internet is so insecure why in the world would any responsible election official even suggest using the it to transmit completed ballots? One has to wonder what is really behind this new Internet voting push. That brings us to the third of our "Featured" articles...

Guest blogged by Steve Heller of VelvetRevolution.us

The New Vision (which bills itself as "Uganda's leading website") is reporting under the headline, "Election thieves to be imprisoned", that the Ugandan Electoral Commission is advocating several reforms to Uganda's election laws, and a number of them are excellent ideas which the United States would do well to emulate.

Among these reforms are:

Sounds like a great idea! And in America, we'd also like to extend that law to any and all election officials and even private citizens who are convicted of violating election laws. This would include issuing disinformation about voting or registration, illegal purges of the voter rolls, and ignoring state laws regarding the certification of election results.

It seems that Uganda understands what many American election officials and even many American voters don't --- that the accuracy of the results and the importance of counting every vote are more important than speed. Waiting a few days or even a few weeks for election results is well worth it if the extra time will lead to correct, every-vote-counted-and-counted-accurately results.

American politicians and election officials could learn some lessons from Uganda!

On several deadlines and fighting some server probs. So...please talk amongst yourselves (if you can, one of the probs is in the comments routines!), and I'll otherwise be back shortly. Thanks for your patience, as ever...

If the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA) ever had any actual legitimacy, self-respect, or credibility as a professional organization --- and I think they used to have all three --- they have now, officially, thrown any last pretense of any of that down the drain, and have come out of the closet as hard-right, conspiracy theory-based, propagandist loons.

On the day that presumptive Senator-elect Al Franken (D) won a huge victory during former Senator Norm Coleman's (R) election contest in Minnesota, the RNLA issued an hysterical email with the subject line: "Al Franken Loses Legal Battle, He Is Very Desperate."

See below for the embarrassing email that the once-respectable-now-whack-job RNLA sent out via their equally looney-toons "media arm" partners at HumanEvents.com this past week, in hopes of raising funds to "Stop Al Franken From Stealing The Election"...

[Updated several times at bottom of article.]

A late Friday finding from the 3-judge panel presiding over the Coleman/Franken U.S. Senate election contest in Minnesota has limited the number of previously rejected absentee ballots that may be reviewed for possible counting.

The 17-page order [PDF], issued late today, will likely come as a blow to former Senator Norm Coleman's (R) chances of overtaking presumptive Senator-elect Al Franken's (D) current lead of some 250 votes out of approximately 2.9 million ballots cast last November...

With the entire state of California facing a massive budget crisis, and most, if not all, of its counties facing shortfalls this year, Riverside County's Registrar of Voters, Barbara Dunmore, is refusing to collect at least $160,000 from Sequoia Voting Systems for the cost of manually counting paper trails produced by their touch-screen voting systems last November.

California counties which choose to use touch-screen voting systems to serve disabled voters are required to tally all of the so-called "paper trails" by hand after elections, as per requirements for their use as imposed by Sec. of State Debra Bowen in 2007, due to security concerns with such systems.

The cost for that tally is to be covered by the voting machine company, as per Bowen's certification documents, which state: "Elections officials are required to conduct the audits, and the vendor is required to reimburse the jurisdiction."

Nonetheless, Dunmore, who has an extraordinary history of failure during her tenure as Registrar, in both the distant and recent past, has failed to seek reimbursement. And her office now seems to now be fighting, on behalf of Sequoia, to keep the beleaguered e-voting supplier from having to pay the costs, despite clear terms of use for such systems in this state...