Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

From News4 in Jacksonville, FL...

If the signature doesn't match the voter is not asked to provide proof of who they are? In Washington state if our signature does not match on our absentee ballot the county contacts you and gives you the opportunity to go to the county election office and provide ID and your ballot is then accepted.

In the suburban county of Montgomery, just outside of Philadelphia, election officials have, inexcusably, been caught off guard by a new, court-mandated directive by PA's Secretary of the Commonwealth Pedro Cortes.

The directive requires that counties have enough emergency paper ballots (EPBs) on hand at polling places to ensure that voters can vote if half, or more, of a precinct's voting machines break down. County officials admit today that they were completely unprepared for the directive, and even for the likelihood of serious machine failure, despite known problems with the touch-screen voting systems they use, or the extraordinary voter turnout long-predicted for next Tuesday.

The new directive [PDF] was issued yesterday, as we reported last night in our late update to our article on the lawsuit. The successful suit was filed last week against the Democratic Secretary, by the NAACP and a local election protection coalition. It followed on Cortes' directive a month a go that EPBs needed to be given out to voters only in the event of failure of 100% of a precinct's machines.

Cortes' original directive, and even the one issued yesterday, has been seen at odds with a PA statutory provision that allowed counties to offer paper ballots in the event that just one machine has failed. PA uses Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems across most of the state, and is a key battleground for John McCain's attempt to win the White House this year...

4 days until Election Day.

Georgia has, again, had problems with their voter registration database. This time there were between 500 and 1000 voters, depending on reports, who were left standing in line for two hours while they waited for Fulton Co. officials to reestablish connection with the state's computer system. This will be a huge problem on election day and may cause thousands of voters to give-up and go home. Let's hope not.

I never imagined that I would find myself agreeing with anything that John Fund had to say but in our 'Featured' article Fund wrote one graf that gives me hope for the guy. He said, "Independent, nonpartisan groups, as well as candidates and parties, should be authorized to appoint poll watchers to observe the election and the vote tabulation. All vendors who supply voting machines and computer software should be required to undergo investigation for financial security and integrity. Clear rules for identifying what constitutes a vote and procedures for contesting an election result must be developed by each state"....

We've got two shameful situations with early and absentee voting. Well, there are many more, no doubt, but for purposes of this article, we'll focus on the outrage in D.C., where thousands of voters are not receiving their absentee ballots, so they're being forced to go vote at county headquarters. And out here in Los Angeles, the world's largest voting jurisdiction, with just one, single early voting location.

News on both of those scandals --- and the response we received from our inquiry about the L.A. situation from L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan --- follow below...

My latest column at the UK's Guardian...On America's still dark, twisted soul...

Guest Blogged by David Safier of Blog for Arizona

Just in time for the elections, the Pima County, Arizona, Election Integrity Committee has developed computer tools to examine election databases created by the Diebold/Premier system. The EI group is offering to examine data from any jurisdiction in the country that uses Diebold's faulty GEMS (Global Election Management System). GEMS will tabulate about half the nation's votes on November 4th...

A county clerk in Colorado has finally done the right thing for the voters by removing a touch-screen voting machine from service, and quarantining it, after it was discovered to be flipping votes from one candidate to another. The failed machine in this case was a Diebold Accu-Vote, a frequent flipper.

As reported by the Colorado Independent (Hat-tip VoterAction.org)...

Long is to be lauded for being the first election official in the country so far during the general election (that we're aware of) to have taken the correct action in such a vote-flipping case. And now that Hodge's eyes are "opened" we hope that both she and her Republican opponent, Hadfield will stand up for their voters by signing the StandingForVoters.org "no concessions" pledge immediately!

Late last night VelvetRevolution.us (a non-partisan, non-profit election watchdog co-founded by The BRAD BLOG) issued a press release calling on election officials to not recalibrate systems mid-election, but rather remove and impound them, and offer voters paper ballots as needed instead. The complete press release is posted at the end of this article.

Colorado has a troubling history with electronic voting, even as the Secretary of State found all of the state's machines to be faulty and easily hackable in late 2007, but has capitulated to pressure from election officials to allow them to be used by voters again this year anyway...

5 days until Election Day.

A deal was struck last evening in Colorado with the Secretary of State. 20,000 voters who were illegally purged from the state's voter rolls will now be allowed to vote using provisional ballots and those ballots will get priority handling and a presumption of validity by Colorado counties.

The Reform Institute, a non-partisan public policy organization, today released a checklist to assist voters in casting their ballots. The checklist provides helpful tips for voters, especially those going to the polls for the first time, to facilitate a voting process free of complications....

After all these years, believe it or not, it was my first appearance on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! this morning. I was happy to appear along with my friend Harvey Wasserman of the great Columbus Free Press to discuss our many concerns about Election Day 2008, touch-screen vote-flipping, voter roll purging, and the woeful effort by the DNC and Obama Campaign to take steps to correct these enormous problems. So happy, in fact, that I almost didn't mind waking up at 4am to do the show. Almost. I hope you'll not mind the fuzzy webcam I had to use from my dark, pre-dawn cave this morning during my appearance.

The video follows in three parts, the text transcript is here...

[The new, court-ordered directive from Secretary Cortes has now been issued. It's linked below, in the last update at the bottom of this article. - BF]

[Please note several important UPDATES added to the bottom of this article. - BF]

This just in from Pennsylvania... a federal court has found in favor of the NAACP and the 866-MYVOTE1 Election Reform Network, which were forced to sue the state's Democratic Secretary of the Commonwealth, Pedro A. Cortes, after his recent directive that emergency paper ballots need to be given to the voters only in the event that all of a precinct's touch-screen voting machines fail.

Most of PA uses 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems, and many of them broke down across the state during last April's Primary Election, leaving untold numbers of voters unable to cast votes.

As we reported when the lawsuit was filed last week, state law allows county clerks to give out paper ballots if just one machine breaks down on Election Day; Cortes' stunning decree, issued last month, went unchallenged by both the DNC and the Barack Obama campaign...

We've been reporting for the last week or so on the ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines which are flipping votes from Democratic candidates to others in, so far, at least four states. We've showed you actual footage of it and how even after being "recalibrated" these machines still continue to flip votes.

(See our special coverage page here for links to our many recent stories on this issue, and advice on what to do if the problem happens to you.)

Unfortunately, it's not just the error-prone, hackable, wholly unverifiable iVotronics from ES&S which are failing. Error-prone, hackable, and wholly unverifiable Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems made by Hart InterCivic, Diebold, and Sequoia Voting Systems are also having the same problems across the country. And the Democrats, who have the most to lose, continue to do nothing about it...

Guest Blogged by DES

What's the matter with Indiana? Nothing. Unless you want to vote. And happen to fall onto anti-democracy champion, Republican Sec. of State Todd Rokita's hit list...

Guest Blogged by DES

In a response to unprecedented voter turnout, this afternoon Florida's Republican Governor Charlie Crist ordered the extension of early voting hours...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Wait times for voters are reported to be as much as 8 hours at one early polling site in Georgia, and now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offers this:

This is early voting. Not all polling places are open so there are only a limited number of polling sites checking in voters. The slow-down and crashing of that system has little to do with high voter turnout. It is once again, as it was during the primary in GA, the ironically-named Diebold "ExpressPollbook" registration check-in computer that is slowing things up.

If the system is already not working with only a limited number of poll sites open, what will happen when all polls are open on November 4th?

UPDATE: All of that comes on top of late news that GA has illegally purged and/or flagged nearly 5,000 voters from their registration databases, incorrectly identifying them as "non-citizens".

UPDATE FROM BRAD: In our continuing desire to try and help bring a smile, even during these difficult times, we offer the ironic, related, very short (appx 1 minute) and amusing "Early Voting" video, as posted at right, just out from our friends who made the great Election Integrity documentary Free For All. Enjoy!

UPDATE FROM BRAD 10/29/08: RAW STORY has video of voters waiting 8 hours to vote in GA. Thank you to those voters who were willing to hang in there! Shame on you to those officials who set up this system that can't even accommodate the limited numbers of early voters! God save us all next Tuesday. Stay strong and brave people!

I was live on the popular Riz Kahn program yesterday on Al Jazeera English, along with Clint Curtis (he in FL, myself in L.A.) to discuss the terrifying new documentary Murder, Spies & Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story and related concerns about electronic voting in our current general election. AJE, for those who don't know, is a very well respected, and widely viewed worldwide cable/satellite channel, run by former BBC folks like David Frost. Here's what aired live yesterday...

If you'd like your own DVD of the MSVL documentary --- which has been getting rave reviews from all quarters --- I'd be delighted to send you one, signed by both myself and the filmmaker, Patty Sharaf, in exchange for a $50 contribution to The BRAD BLOG.

Alternately, or in addition, if you'd like a copy of the award-winning Uncounted (which I'm also in, but it's still good anyway), signed by filmmaker David Earnhardt, a $50 contribution here will get you one of those as well.

For a $75 or more contribution, I'd be thrilled (and much appreciative!) to have both of them sent to you!

(Snail-mail works for all of the above as well. Send to: Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594, Los Angeles, CA 90028)

Thanks for the support, and onward we go...