Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Clint Curtis needs your help. The computer programmer who says he wrote a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000, at the request of Florida Congressman Tom Feeney, has a chance to oppose Feeney in November's general election. The prospect of such a race --- and the publicity that would flow from it --- has election-integrity advocates all over the country licking their lips in anticipation, but it won't happen unless Curtis wins next month's primary.

His opponent, Andy Michaud, has been virtually invisible. He hasn't really been campaigning; he's hardly even been raising any money! But Curtis takes no comfort in these odd facts. He knows he's vulnerable --- to the machines! (Do you want to see how a vote-rigging program works? Click here to download one; try it yourself and see how easily our democracy can be subverted.)

There is reason to hope for a fair outcome, however. And the reason --- believe it or not --- is at least as ingenious as the vote-rigging software Curtis prototyped for Feeney six years ago.

Curtis has set up a website where voters can register their intention to vote for a particular candidate. Using this system, if a candidate can collect enough information about how many people intend to vote for him, and where they live, he will be in a position to tell whether the numbers from any given precinct have been flipped in favor of his opponent. And if such flipping occurs, the "losing" candidate would have reliable evidence to support a challenge.

Some voters have already registered, but many others don't yet know about the system, and they will have to be contacted by phone. Here's where you come in. Curtis needs volunteers to make phone calls. He can give you all the details; he can even arrange things so you can make the calls for free.

All in all, it sounds like a much more convenient way to support your democracy than waiting for another election to be stolen, going out into the streets, and trying not to be shot at.

As Curtis phrases it: "The democracy of this country and possibly the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. You can actually do something about it."

But here's the big question: WILL YOU? Will you help? Will you donate a few minutes of your time? Will you make a few phone calls in support of transparent, verifiable elections?

Did you say "Yes"? Good! I thought you would!

Please click here and offer Clint Curtis some support. It's really the least you can do for your country, and for your children, and for my children too.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

In the past few weeks the 9/11 Truth Movement has continued to move forward, propelled by a gentle nudge from a mainstream news source, a solid bump from the publishing arm of a major American church, and a full-fledged jolt from Air America.

The Nudge: CNN's Lou Dobbs Wakes Up To 9/11 Lies

In this short clip, Lou discusses the new book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, written by 9/11 Commission co-chairmen Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, who claim that the commission was lied to, not once but consistently, by the FAA and NORAD.

Please watch this video. Among other comments, you will hear the following from Lou Dobbs:

The Bump: Official Presbyterian Publisher Issues 9/11 Conspiracy Book

Blogged by Brad from the road...

Apologies in that normally this would have been a siren-worthy item on the day it broke (last Thursday) here at BRAD BLOG had I not been on the road and looking the other way for the most part (as I still am). Particularly since we've been following Diebold's financial malfeasance closely for some time, including breaking the original report of both the Securities Fraud Class Action suit against the company last December, and the SEC's original "informal" (now formal!) investigation of Diebold in May.

Hat-tip to Warren Stewart of VoteTrustUSA.org for picking up news of the now-formal investigation late last week (and to John Gideon who, naturally, noticed in last Thursday's 'Daily Voting News')...

More at VoteTrustUSA...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

As always, the news you get depends on where you go looking.

Here's some from the BBC: Violence flares in south Mexico

No kidding? Rigging the 2004 election to gain office? Who could imagine such a thing?

Blogged by Brad from the road...

We've been "off the grid" for the last three days, so we're a few days late in reporting that...The BRAD BLOG congratulates George W. Bush for outlasting former President Richard M. Nixon in office!

Despite proven crimes against both his country and the U.S. Constitution which he swore to protect and defend (not once, but twice), Bush has managed to out-trick Tricky Dick as BRAD BLOG readers have likely noticed while our countdown clock (formerly posted in our right hand sidebar, a screenshot of which is now posted at left) had been tracking for many months.

It has been no easy feat to out-slick Tricky Dick, but with the help of a compliant rubber-stamp congress and a castrated roll-over media, Bush has managed to get away with a contempt for his country in a way that Nixon could only have dreamt of. As the legendary and mysterious Freeway Blogger has previously pointed out, we're all wearing the blue dress now.

Thanks to all of the parties involved, Bush has faced no accountability whatsoever as self-proclaimed Commander-in-Chief up until now. That, despite an administration of unprecedented corruption. So a hearty congratulations is due The Decider! Nixon would be impressed, Joseph Stalin would be in awe-filled appreciation and The BRAD BLOG extends its "thanks" to Bush for supplying us with not a single day since we've been in "business" in which we haven't had something to write about.

Would that thousands of more Americans were still alive, but for Bush's loathesome, irresponsible, deadly and illegal policies, to give him that same "thanks."

Blogged by Brad from the road...

UPDATE: Trageser sends us a one line reply to the following article (instead of bothering to return our call): "Thanks for the traffic bump!" was all that he wrote. To which we replied: "Thanks for not giving a damn about your country." We also realize we neglected to post Jim's contacts previously so you can thank him yourself. As posted with his "column", you may contact staff writer Jim at: (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com. Letters to his editor may be sent to: letters@nctimes.com, though that's likely the same editor who allowed his factually incorrect and evidence-free article to be published in the first place, so who knows how much they actually give a damn about such things at The North County Times.

I've been completely off line for nearly a week, only to return briefly enough to find Jim Trageser's sad attempt at a column from Wednesday in the North County Times wherein he bashes the Busby/Bilbray election contest as nothing more than "a political stunt."

The evidence for his conclusions? Apparently he has none. Other than the "facts" he has simply made up out of whole cloth without, seemingly, bothering to speak to a single source involved in the contest.

Add to that several pieces of out-and-out incorrect information (he says that Bush beat Gore in 2000 and that "every post-election recount...all upheld Bush's narrow win in Florida" --- Here's the actual numbers from the studies you cite, Jim. Don't bother to read them, we'd hate to destroy your rich fantasy life) and you've got the perfect picture of everything that is wrong with today's lazy, faux media.

At one point, Trageser actually has the temerity to hunt and peck the following words out of his keyboard...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

From BREAKING: McKinney Pursuing Legal Challenges to Elections in Georgia (with a few links added):

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Mexican sit-ins demand vote recount

Please read more.

Could something like this happen here?

Only if YOU want it badly enough!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

In just a month and a day it'll be the 11th of September. That's an important date, somehow. Our friends at Raw Story had an item up the other day that said 30% of all Americans don't know what year we're talking about when we refer to "September 11th".

Maybe they're thinking of 1973, when a coup-d'etat, backed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and some of their CIA friends, caused the death of Salvador Allende and wiped out the democratically elected government of Chile.

Or maybe they're thinking about some other year. I don't know.

How about you? What are you thinking about today?

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The Republican Spin-And-Noise Machine has shifted into high gear since Tuesday's Democratic Senatorial Primary in Connecticut, where the moderately anti-war Ned Lamont defeated the rabidly pro-war and pro-Bush "Democrat", Joe Lieberman, in a very close race.

What does this mean? Has the Democratic party eaten itself? Or has it been torn in half? Is this a victory for the liberal bloggers? Or a defeat for the pro-Israeli lobby? Is it a repudiation of everything the Bush administration has ever done or said? Or maybe ... just maybe ... did the Democrats of Connecticut look at the two candidates and decide they liked one just a bit more than the other?

If you listened to the words coming out of Republican mouths lately, you'd never even imagine that the result of the primary could possibly have been a reflection of the wishes of the voters:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A very revealing article was published this week in the Arcata Eye, a weekly newspaper, in Arcata, Humboldt County, California.

The article, headlined "County's new voting machines may be flawed", was published on August 8, one day prior to the hearing in Sacramento about the Vote-PAD that was reported yesterday by The BRAD BLOG.

Reports from the hearing indicate that even hearing officials were questioning Bruce McDannold, the Secretary of State's Interim Director of the Office of Voting Systems Technology Assessment, about how he came to some negative conclusions about Vote-PAD; questions he could not answer; questions that, according to eye-witnesses, made him look rather foolish.

Yet, according to the Arcata Eye article, McDannold seems to have been carrying on a vendetta against Vote-PAD for a while. It seems that late last month McDannold spoke about Vote-PAD at the annual conference of state's clerks and elections officials in San Diego:

It needs to be mentioned that Carolyn Crnich spoke in favor of Vote-PAD and pointed out problems with the testing procedures to the hearing panel in Sacramento. This testimony, on top of the testimony of Vote-PAD President Ellen Theisen, should be enough to prove that McDannold has lost grip on reality.

It is also important to note that an understanding of confidentiality was entered into by all who participated in the testing and evaluation of the Vote-PAD, including Bruce McDannold. When McDannold spoke to the counties in San Diego, he violated the same agreement that he demanded that Vote-PAD maintain.

Why is it that McDannold is overseeing a process that welcomes unreliable, error-prone, insecure electronic voting machines with open arms while it unfairly tests a voting device that is truly accessible to the community it was designed for? What does McDannold gain by his misinforming county election officials based on data gained from unscientific and shoddy testing? I, for one, hope that Vote-PAD seeks redress for the grievances heaped upon the company by McDannold. It's beyond time that the disinformation from the Secretary of State stop.

UPDATE: It has been pointed out in a comment to "'Daily Voting News' For August 10, 2006" that McDannold did not adress the counties as a whole. Any mention of Vote-PAD was done in casual conversation. Of course this does not absolve him of keeping a confidentiality agreement and certainly not of bad-mouthing any voting system that has not yet had any hearing within the state.

Disclosure Statement:
In the interest of full disclosure: Ellen Theisen was the founder of VotersUnite and its Executive Director before I took over the helm from her. She resigned from her position upon founding Vote-PAD, Inc. I have no stake in Vote-PAD in any way except as Ellen's friend.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

As reported here last Friday, General John Abizaid, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, sent shock-waves through the administration and the press when he admitted to Congress on Thursday that "Iraq could move toward civil war".

This nearly frozen blogger filled in a few of the missing details, explaining that there is already a civil war in Iraq, and that it is happening largely because the Pentagon has been so busy setting up death squads there. The Iraqi death squads are modeled after the death squads set up in El Salvador in the early 1980s, in what has been described --- I am not kidding --- as our "democratization" of that unfortunate Central American country. And now Iraq is unfortunate enough to be the newest victim of our so-called "democratization".

The administration is not about to admit that creating a Civil War in Iraq was part of the plan, nor will it admit that it never had any intention of winning a war in Iraq. But actions speak louder than words, and now it has become abundantly clear that their goal all along was to become embroiled in a long and difficult war there. In case you hadn't noticed, this is exactly what has happened.

Blogged by John Gideon

As reported previously the state of California unfairly treated voters with disabilities in the testing of the Vote-PAD, a voting assistive device designed specifically for use by voters with disabilities and successfully tested and used by those voters across the country. The fact that the staff of the Secretary of State of California used shoddy test procedures and then recommended denial of certification, based on those test procedures, of the Vote-PAD is certainly questionable. Why haven't other voting systems, that purport to be accessible, been tested by the disabilities community at all?

As reported earlier, today is the public hearing for the Vote-PAD. Ellen Theisen, President and Founder of Vote-PAD has testified about the problems with the test procedure. In her testimony she referred to accompanying testimony from Valerie Rice, PhD., CPE, OTR/L, whose PhD is in "Human Factors Engineering (Industrial Engineering and Operations Research) with a specialization in Human Factors Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and masters degrees in both Occupational Therapy (University of Puget Sound) and Health Care Administration (Baylor University). She is a Board Certified Professional Ergonomist and a liscensed and registered Occupational Therapist". In other words, Dr. Rice is the person who should have written the states test procedure which would have given everyone a fair and even field for making a judgment on Vote-PAD.

Introduction {by Winter Patriot}:

I was honored to receive the following message from Brad's dad, Harvey Friedman, who not only voted today but also took an opportunity to interact with some election staff. It's a wonderful story! But I won't ruin it for you --- I'll let him tell it in his own words.

Reporting from St. Louis, not Brad but "Brad's Dad".

Since Brad could not stick around long enough to badger the local election staff, I tried to do my part. This morning there were no primaries of significant interest in my Chesterfield, MO precinct and thus the turnout was very sparse. With five election officials on hand to watch over three ES&S IVotronic machines, three voting booths for paper ballots to use with the ES&S Model 100 scanner [ED NOTE: It was Brad's dad who was reportedly responsible, in no small part, for St. Louis County having chosen to use ES&S voting systems at the last minute instead of their plan to contract with Diebold. See our report from last December on that here.] and three punch card machines which they said would no longer be available after today's election, and considering that at ten this morning I was the only voter on hand, I figured it would be okay if I spent some time pulling their chain. After all, wouldn't Brad have done it had he been here?