On Monday, Texas Director of Elections Ann McGeehan sent a letter to all state Election Officials authorizing them to create "emergency paper ballots" in light of statewide failures by Election System & Software, Inc. (ES&S) to provide ballots in time for the state's upcoming May 13 Runoff Elections, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

Early voting begins on Monday for those elections and counties across the state do not yet have ballots and, in many cases, programming for their optical-scan and touch-screen voting machines. ES&S has contracts with more than 140 Texas counties.

McGeehan has instructed officials to create and number their own paper ballots, secure boxes to store them in, and hire additional workers to manually hand count ballots as an emergency procedure to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation.

The letter from McGeehan (posted in full exclusively at the end of this article) --- which does not mention ES&S by name, but refers to the Omaha, Nebraska-based company only as "a certified voting systems vendor" --- was sent in response to complaints from officials around the state that "programming media or, in some cases, your ballots" had not been received yet by officials.

In a statement to the San Antonio's Express-News this morning, Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says, "It sure is exasperating...We are looking at avenues to hold them responsible for this." Bexar County is just one of more than 140 in Texas with whom ES&S has contracts.

"They made their priorities," Wolff says, "and I think Texas certainly wasn't one of them."

The BRAD BLOG has also received statements from officials in other states who were still more direct in expressing their frustration with the company's business practices now being described by some as including "coercion" and "threats."

This most recent embarrassment for ES&S, the country's largest Electronic Voting Machine Vendor, is just the latest in what has now become an epidemic string of failures to meet contractual obligations in scores of states and counties across the country. The BRAD BLOG has reported on many of these troubling problems in a long series of articles in hopes of connecting the dots of those failures to illustrate and warn of the rapidly approaching E-Voting train wreck.

So far, both the mainstream corporate media, as well as many elections officials across the country have --- to the delight of ES&S --- failed to notice the remarkably clear pattern of delinquency and failure the company has demonstrated time and again across the nation in recent weeks and months.

Texas was plagued, during their recent March 7th Primary Election, by a host of failures in voting equipment made by both ES&S and Hart InterCivic, another voting machine vendor certified to do business in the state. Those failures on Election Day led to a statewide Election Contest filed by a former Republican Supreme Court Justice after tabulators failed and electronic ballots were misprogrammed and miscounted.

In Jefferson County, TX officials threatened to withhold payment after the debacle until their machines were fixed by ES&S. The company, however, answered by reportedly refusing to program the machines at all for the state's upcoming Runoff Elections unless payment was made in full. The county, in a bind, was forced to comply with the strong-arm tactics.

And now, with new elections just weeks away, officials all over the state are finding themselves --- like many other states across the country --- without the promised ballots from ES&S and scrambling for alternative solutions. Election Director McGeehan describes the situation as "completely unacceptable." Writing in her letter to Election Officials, she says:

In the letter, McGeehan goes on to explain that officials should crate "emergency paper ballots" by either creating their own, or using "PDF format to print copies of the ballot" in cases were "proofs" had been previously supplied by ES&S.

Instructions are included for number and initializing thousands of ballots by hand:

Further, officials are instructed that they may have to manually hand count ballots that would otherwise be counted by either optical-scan systems or recorded by touch-screen voting machines.

They are also told to create boxes for the ballot storage and find people to count them. McGeehan writes...

They're melting down...

Developing...More shortly...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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George W. Bush's poll numbers continue drop in the newest NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. Americans are now most concerned about gas prices followed by Iran nuclear weapons, illegal immigration and Iraq.

2 out of 3 Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track. 3 out of 4 people polled have lost confidence in the economy. 62% disapprove of the President's handling of Iraq.

Bush's approval rating dropped to 36% in this poll. Katie Couric suggests that the White House might be relieved that the President's approval only dropped one point.

There was also some bad news for Democrats in the NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. When asked who should control Congress, people preferred Democrats over Republicans by 6%. This is down from a 13% margin in the last poll. The overall approval for Congress dropped significantly from 33% to 22% which is considered to be bad news for the Republicans who now control congress. The sinking approval of Congress may lead to low voter turnout for both parties.

Fox "News", of all sites, posts the full lyrics to Neil Young's "Let's Impeach the President" tune to be released this Friday online along with his Living With War album.

[See BRAD BLOG's (p)review of the album as posted last weekend.]

Says Roger Friedman at Fox about the album; "[It's] an incendiary, moving, totally American document of peaceful protest that is going to make a lot of people crazy one way or another."

He calls it "serious and searing" and an "extraordinary and eye opening new recording."

About "Let's Impeach the President," Friedman describes it as "a melodic, rocking, campfire ode" and "the catchiest protest song since Country Joe and the Fish's anti-Vietnam ditty, 'I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die.'"

Enough hype for ya? Okay, then...

While waiting for Friday, be sure to check out Op-Critical's new protest songs (and video contest), which RAW STORY covered a day or two ago, along with Justice Through Music's collection of protest tunes to hold you over.

UPDATE 4/28/06: The complete album --- as well as the single "Let's Impeach the President --- is now released online for your listening pleasure...

BRAD BLOG reader and kick-ass blues man Shannon Williford (that's him at right) sends us a rockin' blues ditty titled simply "Election Reform".

While we're fairly certain it's the first blues tune to include the word "blogs" in the lyrics, we're damn near positive it's the first one to include the words "BradBlog.com" in it. And even "VotersUnite.org" (shout out to our pal John Gideon!) makes the cut for that matter. And others as well!

Shannon posted the lyrics, some observations on playing this song around Nashville and a few other thoughts on the current state of anti-establishment music in this comment on our Neil Young Living With War album review.

The tune certainly makes me smile. Hope it does the same for you. Turn up the speakers and...Give it a listen!

(Here are additional details on Williford's Delicious Blues Stew!)

Special to BRAD BLOG by BTC News White House Correspondent Eric Brewer

Today at the White House I asked Scott McClellan about this bombshell buried near the end of R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer's article on the firing of Mary McCarthy from the CIA in last Sunday's Washington Post:

Now why would the White House care about whether a CIA intelligence officer was a Democrat or a Republican? Has Dick Cheney decided that the only way to avoid future embarrassments like Plame and Pillar and Drumheller is to make sure all employees at U.S. intelligence agencies are plugged into the Borg mind? I asked Scott:

Naturally, Scott knew nothing:

As David Corn and Dan Froomkin have noted, we need to get some better answers.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Regular readers will remember the last time we discussed Summit County, Ohio and the failure of their E-Voting vendor, Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), to get anything right. First they discovered that 30% of the memory cards, which store vote totals and other vital information, had completely failed. Later, they were able to get the number down to 10%. And then, as reported by THE BRAD BLOG the Director of the Board of Elections, Brian Williams, had announced that he had no confidence in ES&S and was predicting failures in the primary election that will be held next Tuesday, May 2.
Bad enough? Not for Train Wreck '06!

Today the county announced that they have completed all testing of their ES&S optical-scan voting machines and another 17 memory cards suddenly failed. These are cards that had previously been tested over and over again with no problems.

But never fear. If there are problems on Election Day, ES&S has a plan!

They've now announced that their technical team for on-the-ground assistance will be made-up of 19 university students from the University of Akron. The students will get training on Saturday. Yes, one day of training and they will be expected to represent ES&S for all technical matters in Tuesday's primary.

And, on top of all of that, two-thirds of the ballots needed for primary day have still not been received from the printer, an ES&S hired contractor.

Full speed ahead!

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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It looks like the conservative Fox News host, Tony Snow, will be the new White House Press Secretary. Snow is probably one of the more mature right-wing pundits. He has often been very critical of President Bush. In November of 2005 after Republicans lost Virginia's Governor race, Snow wrote, "His wavering conservatism has become an active concern among Republicans, who wish he would stop cowering under the bed and start fighting back... The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment."

It's an interesting PR move by the White House. Fox News predicts that Snow will command more respect from the White House Press Corps. Will the reporters go easier on Snow? NBC's David Gregory says that he will not change his aggressive style.

Here are a few more quotes from Snow (compiled by MSNBC):

• "[President Bush has] lost control of the Federal Budget" - 03/17/2006
   
• "No president has looked this impotent this long..." - 09/30/2005
   
• "The English Language has become a minefield for the man. whose malaprops makes him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan but Norm Crosby... At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette's" - 08/25/2000
   
• "The newly passive George Bush has become something of an embarrassment." - 11/11/2005

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Let's also not overlook Snow's mountain of irresponsible and inaccurate "reporting". A few examples here and then more here. Plus MediaMatters has some suggested questions for Tony's first snow job day.

Did you know that if your state took any funds from the federal government to purchase voting machines you have the legal right to file a complaint? And that you must be given a public hearing in the bargain if you ask for one?

According to the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Section 402 any person who believes that there is a violation of any provision of HAVA Title III (including a violation which has occurred, is occurring, or is about to occur) may file a complaint which must then be dealt with in 90 days time.

Title III of HAVA is the section that includes such things as the accessibility mandates of voting devices for disabled-voters, the ability to verify the votes selected by the voter on the ballot before the ballot is cast and counted, the requirement for warning voters of overvotes, audit capacity of voting systems, provisional voting, computerized statewide voter registration lists, and other issues.

Part of this right to file a complaint is the right to request, and be granted, an on-the-record public hearing of your complaint. This cannot be denied to you according to federal law.

Realizing that I had this right, I spoke with some attorneys who are working on voting technology issues and I was told that actions that I took by filing a complaint would not hurt their work in any way and it might be helpful as it will help to build a public paper record. I then composed my complaint, which is now posted at VoteTrustUSA in full, and filed it yesterday.

We'll see where it goes, but I wanted to mention this to BRAD BLOG readers who might consider doing the same thing. HAVA mandates that every state must create a process for such complaints to be filed by voters. Check with your Secretary of State's office to see what might be required in your state.

If "6 or 7" of us do this in each state, who knows what might come of it? Since all the states have different procedures, please feel free to share your experiences for others here in comments, along with any tips for filing in your own state as you may find them.

Feel free to use my complaint as a template if you like, or drop me an email if you have any specific questions

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Ex-CIA Analyst, Ray McGovern, is part of the group "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" which has been critical of the Bush Administration for the political use of National Security intelligence. McGovern also happens to be a friend of Mary McCarthy. McCarthy was recently fired by the CIA for allegedly leaking classified information to reporters.

The opinion of the intelligence community is unanimous. In general, leaking of classified information is a firing offense, possible criminal and can pose a danger to America's national interests. Ray McGovern agrees that leaks are dangerous and should not be condoned but he says that actions by the Bush Administration have created an "exceptional situation" where leaking may be the only choice for exposing illegal activities.

Ray McGovern says that the "war of aggression" on Iraq, the secret "black" prisons, torture, rendition and other activities are "war crimes". The American people deserve to know when crimes are being committed by their government. McGovern says:

This video contains about 10 minutes of clips from the interview with Ray McGovern. See PBS Newshour for an entire transcript.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Lawyers for fired CIA Officer say that she did not leak classified information to reporters. They claim that the fired officer, Mary McCarthy, did not even have access to the classified information about secret "black" prisons. MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell breaks the story.

Keith Olbermann interviews Ex-CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle. Mahle maintains close contacts with CIA insiders and has written a book titled "Denial and Deception." She says that the leak investigation is considered to be a "witch hunt" by many inside the agency.

This playing time for this video is about 8 minutes. MSNBC has not published the transcript yet.

We've truly enjoyed watching the contortions of Bush's GOP dead-enders who spin each and every new poll showing Bush at his lowest approval ratings yet, by trying to say that the numbers have "bottomed out", "can't get any lower" and therefore "have nowhere to go but up."

We (not so) respectfully disagree.

On the heels of last week's Fox News Poll showing Bush at 33% (which also revealed Republican voters as desperately out of touch with mainstream America,) followed by today's CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll just out showing Bush at an all-new new low of 32% with Republican support dropping off precipitously, we see no reason why numbers in the 20's (and falling) shouldn't be far behind.

Do you?

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Better late than never, CBS News' 60 Minutes details how the Bush inner-circle misused dubious intelligence to convince the American people to back a preemptive war on Iraq.

Ed Bradley interviews Tyler Drumheller, a retired CIA official who saw first-hand evidence of how the Bush team used selective (and discredited) intelligence to support war plans which had already been set.

This 13 minute video is the complete broadcast from Sunday night's edition of 60 minutes.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: First, thanks David for getting this up, since I only caught the last part of the report when it aired last night. Secondly, please see Josh Marshall's comments on this story, as he posted additional information last night to advance the story. His report includes new details from Drumheller last night that he'd been interviewed by the two Senate committees supposedly investigating the Bush Administration's pre-war use of intel (the Silberman-Robb committee and the Pat Roberts Senate Intel committee), but in both cases the folks working on the reports seem to have completely ignored Drumheller's testimony. Josh's reporting would seem to suggest that both reports should now be viewed as extremely suspect at best, a completely unreliable white wash at worst.

MORE... TPMMuckraker has more, this time showing how the White House's own WMD report conflicts with the information from 60 Minutes and Drumheller. And how the White House report seems to have twisted the facts to place blame on the Intelligence Communities for their own policy "failures" in selling the horseshit about Uraniam, Iraq and Niger to the American public in the mislead up to war.

Ralph De La Cruz writes today in his South Florida Sun-Sentinel column titled "Could a sharp eighth grader swing Florida election?":

As Mr. De La Cruz writes for a South Florida paper, and includes his email address and phone number at the bottom of his column, perhaps a few of you may wish to thank him for his coverage of Ion's story, and suggest to him that he cover Clint Curtis' story in a future column as well.

After all, in Curtis' affidavit, he says he was told that the vote-rigging prototype Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to create was meant "to control the vote in South Florida."

For those unfamiliar with Curtis' amazing story, a good primer is always available at this address: www.BradBlog.com/ClintCurtisSummary.htm.

While we're on the topic, please remember that Curtis is now running for Congress against Feeney and his massive DeLay/Abramoff/Top-Tier-GOP Money Machine and your support is needed if he is to stand a chance of beating Feeney in the very "conservative" district which Feeney carved out for himself when he was Florida House Speaker. See below for more details on how you can help him take on one of Congress' most corrupt Friends-of-the-Bushes...

Koo-Koo-Ka-Choo...

(Hat-tip Justice Through Music for being the first, of about twenty places, that I found linking to this song over the last 24. Check out JTM's anti-war, anti-Bush song collection page, btw.)