During a discussion on last Friday's Real Time w/ Bill Maher on HBO, the topic of electoral reform came up. There were the usual discussions of electoral college concerns, primaries vs. caucuses, and then Ashton Kutcher broke in with a point that may well signal he's a reader of The BRAD BLOG, as I believe we were the first (only?) to call for Wednesday as a national election/voting holiday, for the precise reasons that Kutcher points out in the following video clip (appx 1 minute)...

Hey, Ashton! Drop us a line! Given the above, as well as other comments you made on last Friday's show (one of them we posted earlier here), we'd be delighted to make you our first official BRAD BLOG Celebrity Ambassador At-Large! No, seriously. We could use one.

For the record, we most recently wrote about Wednesday as a national election holiday in our piece last week warning about the dangers of the increasing move towards the bad idea of "Vote-by-Mail" elections. Quoth yours truly at the time:

BTW, while we fully support making Wednesday an official national Election holiday, for the reasons Kutcher describes (and a few more), such a move would likely require a Constitutional amendment, unfortunately. But we could use one anyway for that electoral reform and a number of others (e.g., Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s amendment to ensure a Constitutional "right to vote," as well as making it a felony offense to deny even one voter that right, as originally advocated by the legendary Leon County, FL, Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho.)

Kutcher's quick comments on this topic are transcribed in full below...

Of all the shameful behavior by the Republicans during this last election cycle, the National Republican Senatorial Conspiratorial Committee's continuing baseless charges that Al Franken and the Democrats are trying to "steal" the U.S. Senate election in Minnesota has to be near the top of a difficult list to top! If only because that rejected sort of politics continues despite the thorough spanking their party took in an election which would seem to have been a rejection of such tactics.

Even Minnesota's own governor, Tim Pawlenty, has now reversed his previous conspiratorial tone to declare on yesterday's Fox "News" Sunday that there is "no actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud in the process." He was referring to the currently reported election results --- where Franken trails the incumbent Sen. Norm Colman by just over 200 voters --- and in the upcoming manual recount plans.

None of that has kept the RNSC from keeping up their shameful "Minnesota Recount" conspiracy theory website with postings that declare Franken "lost the election, so he is pulling an Al Gore, with his supporters manufacturing postelection votes by the hundreds" and shoveling, without correction, the now wholly debunked theory that "his supporters discover mislaid ballots in places like the trunks of their cars. By a mysterious coincidence, none of these includes votes for Franken's rival Norm Coleman."

Though the last post on their conspiracy website was made on Friday --- so perhaps that signals they're getting the message --- all of it still remains there, as unretracted garbage, even after Pawlenty himself has now acknowledged it as such. But the RNSC isn't the only bad actor here. So are the networks, cable channels and even the New York Times...

After Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) discusses the bailout as if it's something "they" are doing (as opposed to her, a member of the U.S. Congress) Ashton Kutcher called her on it on Friday's HBO's Real Time w/ Bill Maher, before going on to make a very significant point about the insane way this economic "bailout" is being carried out.

"With all due respect, you're in a position to do something very significant about it. We're all in a position to do something very significant about it," he tells the Congresswoman, before the actor/producer of Punk'd goes on to declare, deadly seriously, in reply to Maher: "They're punking us right now!" (appx. 2 mins)...

I'll tell ya, I was really impressed with Kutcher every time he opened his mouth on the show last Friday. I hope he keeps talking. Clearly, he's been paying very close attention to what's really going on out here. And, to that end, we'll have another clip of him from the same show later today, which offers some pretty good evidence that he must be a BRAD BLOG reader. Stay tuned...

Text transcript follows below...

Guest blogged by Steven Rosenfeld of AlterNet

The electronic voting problems in the 2008 election are broader than recently-publicized snafus such as machines not turning on, voter databases omitting names, or touch screens not properly recording votes, according to an analysis of 1,700 incident reports from the nation's largest voter hotline.

Moreover, the voting machine issues and the confusion they caused among poll workers appear to have compounded the delays faced by untold thousands of voters this fall, a preliminary analysis of 1-800-OUR-VOTE reports by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a researcher at Princeton University and the University of California, has found...

While fighting to try to ensure that as many voters as possible actually see their votes counted, and counted accurately, from the November 4th election, I haven't had much, if any, time to really pause to reflect on what happened a week ago last Tuesday and what it all meant.

While Elizabeth Hasselbeck's response to Obama's win (she had supported McCain) the next morning was both gracious and worth noting, Sherri Shepard's response that followed, tells the real story of what just happened. It had me in tears even today. From the November 5th, 2008 episode of ABC's The View...

A candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Broward County, FL, was arrested yesterday, following threats and orders from her opponent, the current Broward SOE, Dr. Brenda Snipes.

Ellen H. Brodsky, the county's first non-partisan candidate for SOE, had previously been barred from public counting and oversight on a number of occasions, at the county's official Canvassing Board site and voting machine warehouse in Lauderhill, Florida.

After being taken into custody yesterday afternoon by three uniformed police officers, Brodsky was held overnight at the Broward County Jail even though the $25 --- that's twenty-five dollar --- bail had been posted for her by her son by 8pm last night. She was finally released well after 5am this morning.

(Note: An account of the arrest posted this morning on the South Florida Sun Sentinel's blog incorrectly reported that Brodsky was "released on bail Thursday evening." A report later filed on their website by the same reporter correctly noted that she "was released from jail at 5:40 a.m. Friday.")

Brodsky is a longtime member of a number of election integrity advocacy groups in Florida, including the Broward Election Reform Coalition, which she also founded. Earlier this year, she determined to run against Snipes as a non-partisan candidate.

Brodsky is the latest in a string of election integrity advocates around the country who have been arrested in the course of attempting oversight of our election procedures --- although she is the first, to our knowledge, who also happens to be a candidate on the ballot.

The action has brought condemnation from a number of other election watchdogs and even other election officials in Florida who have characterized the arrest to The BRAD BLOG as an outrage and an abuse of power by Snipes and her office...

Need more proof that the vendors have made elections expensive? The folks in Vigo Co Indiana find themselves having to hold a special election for mayor of Terre Haute, a city of over 44,000 voters. The county would probably pay for the election and then be reimbursed by the city. The last municipal election the county paid for cost $580,000. The cost for one race in the city would probably be something less than that.

Why so much? The county pays ES&S to manage the voting machines. What would happen if the county or city just decided to print the ballots and hand-count them? Well, the ballots would cost around $0.05 per ballot or around $3500. The cost to hand-count those ballots, based on the cost to hand-count ballots in WA in the 2004 gubernatorial hand-recount would probably be less than $10,000. Why is it that we have these vendors involved in making our elections much more expensive than they should be? ...

For those following the nonsense being put forward by the GOP conspiracy theorists (such as Sean Hannity, Norm Coleman, RedState blog, PowerLine blog, and all their fact-free friends), David Brauer at MinnPost.com does a terrific job of debunking the whole "32 ballots driven around in an election director's car for days" nonsense.

They weren't driven around in her car, they weren't all votes for Franken, they weren't "lost" for days, and the claim, which is being used by the national GOP at their conspiracy theory "Minnesota Recount" site to prop up their unsubstantiated claims of a "stolen election," turns out (surprise surprise) to be entirely false...

The response from the guy who works at the real NYTimes alone --- after he claims "we've been all over the Bush administration since day one, we set the standard for coverage of the Iraq War" before the reporter mentions the name "Judith Miller" --- makes this a must-see video (appx. 2 minutes)...

Thank you to those who dare to dream, even if such dreams are little more than saying out loud what we all know to be possible. Even that much, incredibly, in 2008, seems to have become the impossible for so many, in a country which once saw nothing as impossible.

More on the special (fake) edition of the NYTimes here. Hat-tip "Floridiot" in BRAD BLOG comments.

As the counting continued of the 90,000 previously uncounted votes in Alaska today (a full third of the total votes cast had remained untabulated), Democratic Anchorage mayor Mark Begich has now taken a three vote lead over the convicted Republican felon Sen. Ted Stevens who had previously led by some 3,200 votes.

From Public Record:

As predicted, the previously-uncounted early and absentee ballots were likely to favor the Democrat. Looks like they have. RAW STORY has MSNBC's video coverage here...

Three U.S. Senate seats remain up for grabs still, in Alaska, Minnesota, and Georgia. Should all three go to the Democrats --- and at least two of them, AK and MN, are looking increasingly likely --- they would have the 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the next Congress (as long as you include Joe Lieberman) that we first discussed last week.

UPDATE 11/13/08, 10:10am PT: We're playing catchup on the numbers this morning, but as of late last night, Nate Silver reports at FiveThirtyEight.com, Begitch had opened up an 814 vote lead over Stevens with the remaining, uncounted ballots largely from Dem districts. Details...

Patty Sharaf's explosive, new election integrity film, Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story, has been named "Best Documentary" at this year's New Jersey Film Festival! Congrats to Patty and crew!

That's the second such award for an election integrity documentary (both featuring yours truly, so clearly, we'd expect no less!) recently, as the San Diego Film Festival's "Best Doc" award went to David Earnhardt's Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections in late September.

MSVL has received some great press of late, even as I haven't had time to cover it. Most recently, Epoch Times called it "a great entertaining thriller," and said it was "alarming" and "outrageous." And Meet the Bloggers reviewed the film as "truly one of the scariest movies I've seen in a very long time" and called it "gripping." (Other recent reviews here and here.)

[UPDATE: The following promotion may no longer be available! Email us to find out if there are any DVDs left!]

So...grip this...If you'd like your very own DVD of MSVL, signed by myself and the filmmaker, please donate $50 or more to The BRAD BLOG here.

If you'd like both MSVL and Uncounted (also signed by the filmmaker) please donate $75 or more to The BRAD BLOG here!

Snail mail works as well. If you can help, please make checks payable to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

It's been a very rough season around here, and we'd greatly appreciate the support if you're able. For those who have contributed over the last week or so, and are waiting for your DVDs, they're coming soon! I've gotten a bit backed up over here of late for some reason or another. Thanks for your patience...and for your support! It means the world...

The Democrats, as usual, have only themselves to blame. But we're still happy to help both them and the Republicans if it means the voters might see their votes counted and counted accurately, no matter who will ultimately be declared the winner of any election. You're welcome, Republicans (and Democrats).

After years of Democrats refusing to use the f-word (fraud) or discussing concerns about the s-word (stolen) for elections, for fear of being declared conspiracy theorists and sore-losers by the Republicans, we'll note that Republicans have no such fears. They never did. And they are happy to don enormous and shiny tin-foil hats any time to claim any conspiracy they need to, regardless of the actual evidence (or lack thereof) to support their theory.

They will claim --- even at the highest official levels of their party --- that "Democrats are stealing the election," "stuff[ing] new ballots into the ballot box" and all other manner of unsubstantiated allegations, if they believe it might help their candidate "win." The voters be damned.

To that end, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has now gone so far as to set up a "Minnesota Recount" conspiracy theory blog. The site is devoted to the advancement of making and reposting unsubstantiated claims from around the wingnut 'sphere --- and that would include liar John Fund's Wall Street Journal --- that Al Franken and the Democrats are in the process of "stealing" the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota...

"Source code is almost irrelevant to us," says MD's State Election Director Linda Lamone a few minutes before she removes her mic and walks off the interview. "That's not what we use to run this voting system. It's the executable code."

Lamone, responsible for bringing Diebold's 100% unverifiable voting machines to the entire state of MD in 2002, is wrong and/or lies about so much in the course of this interview --- taped by a major broadcast news network, but never aired, in 2006 --- that we don't even have time to dissect it all. So, for the moment, I'll leave it to all of the good denizens of The BRAD BLOG who are now very well-versed in just how full of it Lamone is during the entirety of this interview.

"I think you're in Fantasy Land, so I'm gonna end this," Lamone says, ironically enough from the bowels of her own Fantasy Land, in support of her 100% faith-based voting system, before she rips off her mic, walks off camera, and ends the interview. We guess she's not used to being interviewed by a reporter who knows what she's talking about.

The remarkable, never-before-seen video follows (appx 6:45 mins)...

As I haven't had much (if any) time to focus on it since last Tuesday's election, I just wanted to toss in for now, here on Veterans Day, that I find it hard to believe that many of those vets, to whom we ought a great debt, would have risked their lives to fight to remove individual freedom, personal liberties, and hard fought rights for any American.

Thus, what may have happened in this state last Tuesday, when voters apparently voted in favor of Prop 8 to remove the right to marriage equality for same-sex couples, is an embarrassment and a reminder of why rights should never be put up for popular vote. The U.S. Constitution --- and presumably the CA Constitution, which will be amended by this proposition, if it's allowed to stand --- is meant to protect and guarantee the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Had it been placed on the ballot for a popular vote in the 1800's, slavery would likely have been approved by the electorate as well. That wouldn't have made the right to live free of enslavement in these United States any more correct than removing the right for same-sex couples to share all of the benefits (whatever they may be) of marriage that every other couple in America has the right to enjoy.

What a shameful disgrace. It will not stand. But it remains an extraordinary embarrassment that so many still have to go to such lengths in order to guarantee their individual rights and freedoms in 2008...particularly after all that we've been through in this nation.

Happy Veterans Day to all. And thank you to all of those who have served. Your sacrifice will not have been in vain.

UPDATE: Protest rallies against Prop 8 are planned all over the country this Saturday. Please help keep America free by joining one of them in your town, if you can. More details here...

Guest blogged by Shannyn Moore

ANCHORAGE - It doesn't bother me to have fundamental differences with people. If it did, I'd never get out of bed. The person I most respected growing up, my Pop, was and is a conservative ideologue. I'm crazy about him. Disagreeing with facts is fair and healthy. Arguing from a place lacking intellectual curiosity is quite another as nothing is learned nor gained.

Since my first post questioning the voter turnout and other anomalies in Alaska's election, I've been accused of all sorts of things. I have been misquoted in the Anchorage Daily News. They claimed I wrote the election was "stolen." I wrote "Stolen Election in Alaska?" It wasn't the word, it was the punctuation.

But there is good reason to be concerned. A lawsuit filed in 2006 in State Superior Court to release the Diebold GEMS Software from 2004 revealed the database had been tampered with. Unfortunately, the user log-in and password were set to the default settings so it was impossible to tell who had edited the software numerous times post election, since all entries were made by "administrator" with password: "password". So it's not too outrageous for anybody to believe it's important, this time, to pay very close attention to the results of last Tuesday's election...