John Gideon briefly noted what happened in Florida in yesterday's Daily Voting News, but it deserves a bit more attention. A lot more attention, actually.

A recent contested election for Circuit Judge in Palm Beach County, FL, where the initial results showed a 17 vote margin for one of the candidates, continues to reveal differing counts every time the same ballots are run through the county's new optical-scan paper ballot counters made by Sequoia Voting Systems.

Sequoia is one of America's largest private voting machine vendors, and one of its worst (even though we realize such judgements are akin to determing whether Mussolini was worse than Stalin.) Just 30-some days from America's next and likely-largest election ever, the desperate company is under fire today for recent voting system failures in Palm Beach, Washington D.C., and New Jersey.

For the moment, let's look at what was reported out of Palm Beach yesterday, where re-scans of 262 rejected ballots on Sequoia paper-ballot scanners revealed differing results each and every time they were scanned...

The latest testing results from Palm Beach Co Florida seem to clearly point to problems with the voting machines. It wasn’t the only problem the county had in the primary but it seems to have been a large part of it.

Tomorrow (Friday) there will be a hearing in Washington DC to discuss and take testimony about the failures in the DC primary election. How did one precinct have over a thousand more votes than it had voters? Again this seems to clearly be a machine issue.

The tie that binds Palm Beach Co and Washington DC together is that their voting machines were all supplied by Sequoia Voting Systems...

ADDENDUM FROM BRAD: More details on all of the above now here...

I'll be Guest Hosting a special "VP Debate" edition of the The Mike Malloy Show tonight. We'll carry the debate LIVE at 6pm PT (9pm ET), followed by an in-studio "Bloggers Roundtable" until 9pm PT (Midnight ET), featuring world class bloggers:

• MARCY WHEELER of Empty Wheel
• DAVID "DDAY" DAYEN of Hullabalo & Calitics
• MARC "ARMED LIBERAL" DANZIGER of Winds Of Change
• PAMELA LEAVEY of The Democratic Daily, and;
• PATRICK FREY of Patterico

Plus your calls if we can fit 'em in, at 800-989-1480. To hell with Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer and their professional spinners! Join us for the real scoop! Live from Los Angeles!

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, on Sirus Ch. 146, XM Ch. 167 and streaming live online at NovaMRadio.com.

As always, "Agent 99" will be your rascible hostess here in our live Open Thread during the show. Hit comments below and give us your two-cents tonight! Maybe we'll read it on air!

POST-SHOW UPDATE: We had a very lively roundtable, with a lot of disagreements (the Rightwinger, Patrick Frey thought Palin dropped the ball, while the Progressives tended to think Palin did well, except for Danziger, and lord only knows what he is. My thanks to all of them, as well as the callers, including my father who offered an "Edward R. Murrow-esque" field report, live from St. Louis! Unfortunately, Pamela Leavy was not able to join us at the last second.

We ended the spirited discussion --- audio archive below --- with my request for a quick McClaughlin-style response to the following question: "Between now and the next debate on Tuesday, after tonight's debate, do the polls go up, down, or no change for Obama and McCain?" The answers from the bloggers...

Last week we told you about The Simpsons' upcoming episode wherein Homer, attempting to vote for Barack Obama on a touch-screen voting machine, has a few problems in the process. Here's the very funny, were it not so very unfunny, clip from the upcoming show...

[NOTE: The above video is no longer embeddable. Watch it at YouTube.]

So The Simpsons now get it. Why don't Obama and the Dems? And why are they doing little or nothing to ensure that every voter in the nation is able to cast a vote on a hand-marked paper ballot this year?

Tell your favorite candidate(s) that you'll support them if they support you and your vote by pledging not to concede this year until all votes are counted, counted accurately, or challenged in a court of law. (See StandingForVoters.org more info, the pledge, and stuff you can hand to your favorite candidate to demand they stand up for you this time!)

Guest Editorial by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.
The bailout of Wall Street is the rancid pickle on an economic crap sandwich that is a result of 30 years of conservative deregulation/trickle-down ideology. The fact that the Bush appointees who devised the original bailout plan are from the same gene pool as the neo-cons, cronies and heckuva-jobbers who turned America into a torture state, spied on Americans, drowned New Orleans, stole two national elections, corrupted the Department of Justice and took the country to war on the false pretext of bringing democracy to Iraq but then screwed up their true intent --- to steal its oil --- should have been reason enough to kill the plan on sight.

But that's not going to happen. As inept and ineffectual as they are at everything else, the Bush team is highly practiced at forcing Congress to act in haste. Six years ago this month, Karl Rove and the White House political shop "created a reality," as one of them has described it, that there was an urgent need to push the Iraq war resolution through Congress just days before the midterm elections. Now we know that the only urgency was Rove's need to get Senate Democrats who were potential Bush rivals in the 2004 presidential election on the record about the war before the election. Iraq post-invasion has been a disaster, but the vote on the resolution was stunningly successful in hobbling the campaigns of both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton.

Now, in what is either a horrendous coincidence or the most elaborate (and apparently botched) October Surprise in presidential campaign history, as Bush prepares to slouch off to Crawford for good, he is pushing one last crisis down our throats. As with his invasion of Iraq, it will probably be years before we know if this latest crisis is "real," or if it was fumbled attempt by the White House to change the game in John McCain's favor.

It certainly feels like we're being played again...

In one of our ‘Featured’ articles CBS Evening News has raised the “Red Flag On Purging Voter Rolls”. This article reports on a just released report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law on voter roll purges. The report “provides troubling new insight into the process. There are no national standards and as a result, the cleaning up of voter rolls is not as precise as it should be and eligible voters are often wrongly removed. The Brennan report calls the nationwide process 'chaotic,' 'shrouded in secrecy', 'riddled with inaccuracies', 'prone to error' and 'vulnerable to manipulation'."

Our second ‘Featured’ article is a report done by USPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) in which they blow the whistle on nineteen states that are violating federal law in their handling of voter roll purges.

Neither of these articles should have been necessary. State election officials should be carefully following the law and carefully ensuring voter rolls are properly purged and not in such a way as to deny legally registered voters their right to vote. Any election official who does not feel the need to ensure due diligence should be replaced and, if they violated federal law, they should be investigated for that violation. ...

From NYU's Brennan Center for Justice today...

A sample of the split ballot follows below, and looks like it could result in a lot of spoiled ballots from overvotes, and folks writing in their choice for President in addition to filling in the bubble on the first column. More details from Larry Norden at the Brennan Center here...

I'll be Guest Hosting the The Mike Malloy Show tonight through Friday, from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) each night. Hope you'll tune in!

Tomorrow, we'll be running the Veep Debate live for the first 90 minutes (or until Palin breaks down in tears), followed by a Blogger Roundtable with some world class bloggers (Marcy Wheeler from Empty Wheel, David "dday" Dayen from Digby's Hullabalo and Calitics, Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger from Winds Of Change, Pamela Leavey from The Democratic Daily, and maybe a few more --- even some Righties --- if we can get 'em!)

But tonight is looking pretty good as well, and is currently scheduled to include the following:

• MURRAY WAAS, investigative reporter at ABC, National Journal and elsewhere, on the new (and under-reported) IG report on the U.S. Attorney Purge.
• Ohio attorney CLIFF ARNEBECK on big new developments (including a possible subpoena for Karl Rove!) in his long-standing Ohio 2004 Election Fraud lawsuit.
• Today's news. My rants. Your calls (800-989-1480) & free DVD giveaways of Murder, Spies & Voting Lies!
• And whatever else I feel like!

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, on Sirus Ch. 146, XM Ch. 167 and streaming live online at NovaMRadio.com.

As always, "Agent 99" will be your charming, if often irritable hostess for our live Open Thread during the show right here. See ya tonight!

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Miss anything? Here it all is, delivered straight to ya. Commercial free. You're welcome. The audio archives follow...

Tonight's CBS Evening News finally covered what may well be the November Surprise that we've been trying to warn about for months here at The BRAD BLOG: Massive voter roll purges being done in secret, with little or no oversight, and often under federal Justice Department cover, in states and counties around the country.

And the Democrats, who likely have the most to lose via such secret purges, are doing little or nothing about it.

The CBS story, posted below (appx 2 mins) starts with an elderly New Jersey voter who was suddenly removed from the voting rolls after thirty years, for apparently no reason whatsoever, before launching into findings from a new non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice study on "Voter Purges".

We've yet to read this Brennan report, but the brief coverage from tonight's Evening News notes 10,000 voters purged in Mississippi, 21,000 in Louisiana and "to top it off, another new study discovered 19 states are ignoring federal law (the National Voter Registration Act), banning systematic purges within 90 days of a federal election."

Among those 19, are a number of battleground states. The report lists: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Masachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Texas and Washington, as places where massive purges have recently taken place.

CBS ends by noting that their New Jersey voter has now been restored to the rolls, but they warn, "come Election Day, don't count on thousands of others being as fortunate"...

CBS' coverage doesn't even note that many states have now contracted the same private companies who did such a crappy job on their voting machines (companies like Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia) to manage, with the same lack of oversight, entire newly computerized state voting rolls. Names will be dropping from rolls this year by error or by evil...

Expectations for Sarah Palin continue to plummet in advance of the Veep Debate Thursday night. From NYTimes today...

You can add the comments of Frum, the man credited with coining the phrase "Axis of Evil", to previous Republican defections from Palin, including Kathleen Parker's call for her to leave the ticket, Laura Bush's admission that she lacks experience to be President, and Fox "News'" sad attempt at hiding an article detailing a number of conservatives jumping off the ship. All coming on the heels of the disastrous CBS interviews with Couric, which made her look like a Rhodes Scholar in her initial disastrous outing on ABC with Gibson.

At this rate, all Palin should have to do on Thursday is show up, and not pass out in the middle of the debate, and she'll be declared "the winner". For more background, please see Quayle '88, Bush '00 and Bush '04.

[Note: We'll be Guest Hosting The Mike Malloy Show this week, Wed - Fri, including during the debate on Thursday night. We'll be carrying it in full, starting at 6pm PT (9pm ET) followed by a world-class "Bloggers Roundtable". To hell with Chris Matthews and the professional spinners! We'll be talking with the folks who have been right, instead, for years! Scheduled to be with us so far: Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel, David "dday" Dayen of Hullabaloo and Calitics and more to be announced soon. Hope you'll tune in!]

Congrats to David Earnhardt and company on winning "Best Documentary" at last weekend's San Diego Film Festival, for Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections! I'm quite sure the win was due to my appearance at the Q&A following the Saturday night screening down there.

Uncounted continues to screen on Starz through Election Day, and can be purchased from their website. DVDs, signed by Earnhardt, are also available here for BRAD BLOG donations of $50 or more.

And...If you missed it in the flurry of recent posting here, the terrifying new documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story --- which also tells our own story in breaking and reporting the Curtis/Tom Feeney vote-rigging exposé over the last four years --- is also now available (and playing on LinkTV!) We offered more details, video preview, review quotes, etc. on that one over the weekend here.

The MSVL DVD is also available as a premium here to readers --- signed by both myself and filmmaker Patty Sharaf --- for BRAD BLOG donations of $50 or more.

And finally...if you'd like a copy of both great documentaries (I'm in both, but they're really good anyway!), a donation of $75 or more will get 'em both shipped straight to ya! (Snail mail also works for all of the above: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028)

Congrats and thanks all around! People are getting the message because you are making noise!

The only thing America really cares about...

As of this posting, despite her latest disastrous interviews, calls from conservatives for her to drop out, Laura Bush's admission she's unqualified, and damage control from Fox "News", Palin is still on the ticket for some reason. The above video may explain why.

[Ed Note: Cliff Arnebeck, the Ohio attorney representing the plaintiffs in the case discussed below, will be joining me Wednesday evening to talk about the case, when I sit in to Guest Host The Mike Malloy Show, which I'll be doing Wed-Fri this week, from 9p-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) - BF]

A recent flurry of activity in the long-standing King Lincoln v. OH Sec. of State lawsuit concerning voting rights violations in the state during the 2004 election has resulted in the judge lifting the stay to allow depositions to be taken of key GOP tech-guru Mike Connell, and potentially others, such as Karl Rove.

A subpoena has now been served to Connell, who was recently described by the attorneys working on the case, as a 'high-IQ Forrest Gump...at the scene of every GOP crime.'

Federal District Court Judge Algenon Marbley's brief order [PDF], agreeing to lift the stay, was quietly issued on September 19th. It reads:

The BRAD BLOG had learned about the latest court action, which could soon entangle Rove as well, some time ago, but we were asked by parties involved in the case to embargo the information until such time as they were able to serve Connell with his subpoena...

We were surprised as anyone to see this listed today at Google News...

We were somewhat less surprised when we clicked on it to find the page it linked to was now an error page at the Fox "News" website, reading...

Wow. These CBS/Katie Couric interviews on the economy with Sarah Palin are breathtaking. Cafferty's response afterwards is, on the other hand, a breath of fresh air in the corporate media.

If any serious John McCain supporter can claim, with a straight face, to actually have no problem voting for this woman for President, as that's what she's ostensibly running for, I'd sure like to hear it.

As it seems very few saw these when they originally aired (during the bailout panic last week), perhaps they need a bit more play. My god. Seriously, take a look at these...

Little wonder, then, that even rightwingers, after looking at this stuff, are starting to face reality, and call for Palin to be dropped from the ticket.

On CNN, Jack Cafferty was at least as alarmed by the interview as I was, noting on air that "If John McCain wins this woman will be one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States. And if that doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should." Take a look at his reaction...