Dan Wallach of Rice University was one of the computer scientists who worked on California's landmark 2007 "Top to Bottom Review" of the state's electronic voting systems. He's also a voter in Harris County (Houston), TX where a fire destroyed all 10,000 of the county's 100% unverifiable voting systems just a few weeks before the start of early voting.

His report on his personal experience at the polls on Election Day, where the county was forced to have paper ballots on hand this year as they scrambled to find enough borrowed e-voting systems (for some stupid reason) to replace their destroyed ones, is well-worth reading. It begins this way...

Wallach goes on to describe how difficult it was for him to actually get a paper ballot, despite their availability at his polling place this year, and how, even after various difficulties towards that end, he was still able to complete his vote before his wife, who chose to vote on the unverifiable, virus-prone e-voting system...

His report, particularly given his intimate, expert knowledge of the voting systems that most Houston voters were strongly encouraged to vote on, is, as noted, well-worth reading in full...

Oh, and by the way, where is all the evidence of that "massive Democratic voter fraud!!!" we were breathlessly told by the Houston Republican gr ... er ... I mean independent "Tea Party" group in Houston was scheduled to occur this year (in minority areas, naturally)?

From cartoonist Ed Stein's blog item on the above toon:

[Hat-tip Van Jones via Twitter.]

How terribly quaint. Via Taegan Goddard's Political Wire today...

The Independent reports that Woolas, a Labour MP, "is to be barred from the Commons for three years and the election contest for his Oldham East and Saddleworth seat [will be] re-run." His crime:

Thank God we, the people of the United States of America, live in a land where there is no such need for laws to protect the electorate from the sort of dirty, disingenuously-divisive, knowingly-false, racially-based fear-mongering that might otherwise plague our totally free and respectable democratic elections!

[Hat-tip @emptywheel on the Twitters.]

Yesterday we posted Rachel Maddow's round-up of "top-of-ticket" races that were still un-"called" on Wednesday after Election Night. Last night, she did us the continuing favor of updating that list with a follow-up detailing a number of those up-in-the-air races that have since been "decided" as based on media calls, candidate concessions, and/or the completion of unofficial tallies by the computers which do that sort of thing...

Reminder: Neither projections of "winners" by the media or concessions by "losers" have any legal standing on the final outcome of an election. Only officially canvassed and certified election results from elections officials do. In all of the races declared as "over" to date, none of them have actually been certified by officials yet, and in virtually every one of them, ballots (where they exist, as they don't when it comes to Direct Recording Electronic, usually touch-screen, voting machines) have been tallied only by oft-failed, easily-manipulated computer tabulators, with few, if any, such ballots actually being examined by any human beings to assure the computer tabulators have been accurate.

Also, there are still many un-"called" and/or contested races across the nation which are not "top-of-ticket", but which still matter a great deal to both the candidates and voters affected by them.

Well, it's a good thing last Tuesday wasn't a Presidential Election with really huge crowds of voters in Utah County, UT. As polls opened at 7am, digitally encoded cards used by voters to begin the voting process on the state's oft-failed, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable Diebold AccuVote touch-screen voting systems didn't work at all 110 polling locations across the county. A programming error was blamed.

Voters were forced to wait in line for up to an hour while technicians struggled to figure out how to correct the failure. Many voters simply gave up, walking away and becoming disenfranchised in the bargain when they couldn't hang around to wait that long to vote on a work day. As usual, the wide-spread failure (county-wide, in this case) was marginalized by the media as little more than a "glitch". Of course, had the county used paper ballots, nobody would have been disenfranchised, or had to wait on line for an hour to cast their vote. Voters across the entire state are now forced to vote on the Diebold touch-screen systems on Election Day.

Separately, and to make matters worse, the Vote.Utah.gov website for looking up voter polling locations crashed, multiple times, throughout the day. Here's Tuesday's report on those "glitches" from KSL TV 5:

It was also in Utah County were, as we reported a week before Election Day, the easily-manipulated Diebold voting machines had been found left unattended in the lobby of an office building.

One of the more bizarre incidents we've come across this election...

Rachel Maddow did us the favor, last night, of rounding up the bulk of the "top-of-ticket" races from Tuesday which were still un-"called" as of last night...

There are still many more races undecided and going through calls for recounts, etc., around the country. Many of them are not "top-of-ticket" contests, so you may not yet have heard about many of them. I've been fielding calls and emails from representatives of many such campaigns over the last 24 hours or so while looking into various charges of irregularities, etc.

Also remember that in just about every race where you've heard a "winner" announced at this hour, those results are still un-official and un-canvassed for accuracy with virtually all of the ballots (where ballots actually exist) uncounted by nothing other than a computer tabulator. There has been virtually no human confirmation of accuracy of those (failure-prone and easily-manipulated) computer-reported results as of today.

Also remember that neither a media declaration of a "winner" nor a candidate's concession has any actual legal meaning on the official results of any race. Clearly, there are a number of races where counting, canvassing, and contesting will be continuing for quite a while.

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Still plowing through tons of incoming problem reports from yesterday in trying to help separate wheat from chaff before I bore you with any chaff here, and looking at a number of still-uncalled elections. (If you'd like to poke around at a few such issues, please see Joyce McCloy's Voting News today). All the while I've been trying to keep up with various scheduled media appearances and wrapping up other odds and ends from yesterday. Here's one of those odds and ends. My appearance on Thom Hartmann's new TV Show, "The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann", via (not-very-good) Skype webcam yesterday.

The 5-minute interview we did yesterday afternoon begins at around the :38 minute mark...

Our buddy Greg Palast is also interviewed a bit earlier in the show, on issues of Voter Caging, beginning just after the :31 minute mark. Hartmann's TV show now airs on RT America weeknight's at 9p & 11p ET. Here's their Youtube page...

And a few other appearances I've done over the last 24 hours, at least the few I was able to get copies of, which you may find entertaining and/or informative (hopefully both!):

• From yesterday's WBAI News with Rebecca Myles in NY (where I appeared the day before as well to discuss Citizens United). This appearance discusses concerns about touch-screen e-voting systems in yesterday's elections...

Download MP3 or listen online below (appx 7.5 mins)...

• A very lively and combative "hour" of post-election decompression, wise-cracks, rants and related matters during my regular weekly appearance with Harrison earlier today on KPFK/Pacifica...

Download MP3 or listen online below (appx 50 mins)...

• A slightly more sober appearance on WSFR, New Mexico Pubic Radio, with Diego Mulligan this afternoon right after the above...

Download MP3 or listen online below (appx 20 mins)...

This is amusing. At least it would be, had not their entire phony, shameless, anti-democracy campaign been built on hopes of suppressing the legal votes of American minority voters.

But I guess that "epidemic" of "MASSIVE DEMOCRATIC VOTER FRAUD!!!" that Fox "News" and their easily duped viewers had been warning us all about for weeks/months/years (here's one recent example, and another, and another, and another) didn't exactly materialize yesterday. Who could have guessed it?

Via Media Matters...

Fox News cancels Thursday segment on NV "Voter fraud" after Angle’s poor showing

Las Vegas Sun political columnist Jon Ralston posted the following to his Twitter profile this afternoon:

At least we know what Fox News was planning had the Senate race between Majority Leader Harry Reid and tea party darling Sharon Angle been tighter.

Media Matters' headline avers the segment was spiked due to "Angle's poor showing". There's another possible explanation for cancellation of the segment: No actual evidence of any such "voter fraud". Of course, that's never stopped Fox "News" from making a whole bunch of it up in the past. So perhaps Media Matters is more right than wrong there.

From last night's live Colbert Report, during which he used his "Action Midterm Outcome Prediction Verifier 2010 5400" to examine where "there have been reports of voting machine irregularities" across the country yesterday...

Running on fumes and about 3 hours sleep here tonight. So, as David Gregory says, "we'll have to leave it here for now."

While almost no votes have been counted by actual human beings anywhere in the country at this hour, most of the races have already been "called" by the media, for whatever that's worth. But a number of them are reported as being incredibly close at this hour. Among the "uncalled" top-of-ticket races as we wrap things up for tonight: U.S. Senate races in WA, CO, and AK; Gubernatorial races in OR, MN, and FL; and a number of U.S. Houses races.

We'll revisit the world with clearer eyes in the morning to see what sense, if any, can be made of any of it and what sort of light we may be able to help shed. Your thoughts and what you're seeing out there on any of the above races, or any others ("top-of-ticket" or otherwise) are, as ever, welcome in comments.

As we always remind on Election Nights, many of the problems of Election Day are not revealed until the days, weeks, and sometimes even months after elections. So your vigilance, as always, is welcome and appreciated...

[On/off the air all day today, so trying to keep up as I can. Feel free to leave your own problem reports, or those you're finding in the media, in comments in this thread. Most recent reports will be added to top of this item.]

NATIONAL: "Widespread Reports of Problems at Polls" (NYTimes):

REMINDER: If you had probs at the polls today (or are still having them, as polls are still open out here in the West), please remember to report them to 1-866-OUR-VOTE! It's very important to track records of all such probs, as the full extent of problem patterns often don't reveal themselves until the days, weeks (and sometimes, even months) after an election! Thank you...

TX: Collin County - E-pollbooks, networks fail at "vote centers" disenfranchising untold numbers of voters. (Collin County Observer)

We know how ya feel, Observer. Collin County, btw, is also where a voter reported a Diebold touch-screen flipping his vote from Democratic to Republican.

CA: Contra Costa County - Inspired by my own e-voting disasters in '08 (when the ES&S InkaVote Plus system here in L.A. County misprinted 4 out of 12 of my votes) and in '10 (when after two hours of failure with two of the same machines I finally had to give up and vote on a hand-marked paper ballot), a voter in Contra Costa tries to use the e-voting system for disabled voters as I did. After spending four hours trying to cast a vote on the counties ES&S AutoMark, he eventually had to give up. The shameful tale is detailed here. And remember, allowing disabled voters to vote privately and independently was one of the prime thrusts for the $4 billion federal "encouragement" for states to "upgrade" to these e-voting systems as per the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. Fail. Again.

National: Here's the lede from Joyce McCloy's Voting News tonight...

See her report for details and links for all of the above.

NJ: Warren County - Touch-screen machine flips GOP to Dem and Dem to a ballot initiative. Via OurVoteLive.org's problem report database...

MD: Diebold touch-screen votes flip from GOP to Dem... (Luterville-Timonium Patch))

MD was the first state in country, along with GA, to go to all Diebold touch-screen systems. The BRAD BLOG obtained and published a long redacted SAIC report on their systems in 2007, years after its secret 2003 publication. The report was described at the time as the "Pentagon Papers of E-Voting," showing all kinds of problems with the systems. The state was supposed to move to paper ballots by this year. So why didn't they?

MUCH MORE BELOW...

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