Blogged by the road (from St. Louis, Missouri) by Brad...

As we wait for the results of the hearing today in the Busby/Bilbray CA50 Election Contest (see this story on the latest absurd claims from the defendants arguing that the U.S. House, not the voters of California get to decide who will be the "winner" of the election) and as I prepare to meet today with folks from the Missouri Honest Elections group, this story was brought to my attention.

No, it wasn't a "sore-loser" who requested the hand "recount" in Missouri's recent primary election for State Auditor. It was a Republican. As we know, only Democrats are "sore-losers" when they ask for such things.

To underscore that point, the following quotes are from an AP report on the matter. AP never bothered to report on the requested hand count in the Busby/Bilbray election, or even on the fact that a contest and lawsuit have now been filed in California Superior Court! We suppose that matter, since it was a Democrat who may have been screwed by the machines --- never mind that it was a federal race determing a new U.S. House member, versus a primary for a state election --- is just not to be considered newsworthy by the AP.

Anyway, Republican Jack Jackson reportedly came in second to Republican Sandra Thomas after the machine count of votes in the Missouri Republican Election to determine the Republican candidate for State Auditor. Jackson received a few reports of problems throughout the day, and so --- responsibly --- has asked for a full hand count and, according to AP says, "Whatever this recount shows, I will accept...[But] right now, I am still a candidate."

We agree.

Does Jackson's opponent Thomas consider him a "sore-loser" for making the request? Of course not. Jackson's a Republican...

Of course, Missouri has no idea what to do now. Does a recount mean they simply push the button to get the same numbers again from the same new electronic voting machines they used to get their numbers the first time? Or does it require a full manual hand count of the paper ballots and "paper trails" as the candidate has requested? Again, election officials find they have no laws for the new voting systems they have now irresponsibly decided to use.

The Democratic Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, will decide. We hope she makes the right decision and allows for a full hand count. The voters of Missouri (my old hometown) deserve no less.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

UPDATE: We have a live update from the courthouse. You can see it at the bottom of this post

We haven't been covering the CA50 Election Mess as often as in the recent past --- while Brad's been on the road and otherwise occupied --- but we have been keeping our ears to the ground, so to speak. (Yes, they get dirty, but so what? We can hear things coming before they happen. It's cool; you should try it.)

My friends, we have been hearing distant rumblings of great power. To get you up to speed quickly...

The CA50 U.S. House special election between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray was held on June 6, on illegal Diebold voting machines as has been reported here many times. (Click here for a good recent summary of the situation.) On June 13, Bilbray was quickly sworn in to the House of Representatives while thousands of votes were still being counted back in San Diego. (This surprised and angered many voters, especially since a poll taken three weeks before the election showed Busby ahead by 7%.) On June 29, the election was finally certified --- in favor of Bilbray --- by the Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas.

The election was contested on July 29 after Haas refused to allow for a hand count of the ballots, as allowed by California state law. And on August 22, defendants filed a brief in the case to dismiss, stating that because Bilbray has already been sworn in (by the Republican House of Representatives,) the California Court has no jurisdiction whatsoever and the House has exclusive jurisdiction to judge who its members are and the qualifications of those members.

According to an email sent to The BRAD BLOG this evening from attorney Paul Lehto...

So there you have it. This is the stick with which Paul Lehto is trying to beat a corrupted electoral machine back into shape.

Here's Lehto's brief responding to the absurd position [PDF] taken by the defendants in this case.

The judge is set to give his decision on the jurisdictional matter Friday, determining whether or not the case will be tossed out based on the argument of the defendants. The court hearing on this matter begins at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time in San Diego.

UPDATE... Michael Collins at Scoop has more. And now, so do we --- below the fold...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty compares the paperless Direct Recording Electronic voting in Maryland to the potentially auditable and verified electronic voting in California. Guests were Dan Wallach of Rice University and California State Senator and Secretary of State candidate Debra Bowen.

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Joy & Todd Williams

Representative John Conyers (bio) has served in the U.S. House of Representatives for over 20 terms, having represented the 14th Congressional District in Detroit since 1964. For all those years he has fought for our democracy. From his website: “In his role on the Judiciary Committee, Representative Conyers has introduced and endorsed legislation to advance civil liberties, ensure equal protection and access to the voting booth and combat violence against women.”

In July of last year he led a citizens' movement to deliver 500,000 signed petitions to the White House which questioned George Bush about his attempt to “fix the facts around the policy” as revealed in the infamous “Downing Street Memo”. This “fixing of the facts” eventually led to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Additionally, he held hearings about the Ohio voting irregularities during 2004, and published What Went Wrong in Ohio which enumerates most of the irregularities and abuse of the election process in that state. He has now published a new book, Constitution in Crisis, which documents the Bush administration’s violations of the Constitution in over 26 different categories, and in many cases multiple violations within each category.

You can support Representative Conyers' Campaign here as he will become the chair of the powerful U.S. House Judiciary Committee if the Democrats, by some fluke of nature, take the majority this November.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him a couple of weeks ago while he was en route to the airport to return to his constituents during the Congressional break. He’s a very gracious, experienced and thoughtful representative of the 14th district and for all Democrats everywhere.

Our exclusive interview with the good congressman follows...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Unconfirmed reports suggest that one Brad Friedman, the partially well-known investigative blogger, staunch Election Integrity advocate and all-around good-guy, (also allegedly "proprietor" of this very blog), may have met with "representatives of several prominent organizations" at a series of events "sponsored" by the DNC in Chicago last weekend.

We have additional "photographic evidence" of these alleged meetings: four photos which, according to usually reliable sources, were made by Friedman's putative girlfriend, Desi Doyen.

The "authenticity" of these photos has not yet been verified, and it may never be. The "chain of custody" appears to have been broken, several "security mitigation procedures" appear to have been ignored, and the "security seals" on three of the four photos appear to show signs of possible tampering. But we will post them below, since they may be of interest to the usual gaggle of conspiracy theorists who have nothing else to work on at this time.

You can click on the small photos below to see larger images.

Guest Blogged By John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco, California was paid $341,000 by Cuyahoga Co., OH to investigate why the county had so many problems with their voting system in the May 2006 election. Were the problems really all human or were the machines at fault? ESI finally issued a report last week that had plenty of blame to go around between poll worker training problems to voting machines that could not add votes, counting devices that didn't match up on the same machine and, in several cases, machines that registered no votes at all.

Of course Diebold Elections Systems Inc. immediately denied that there were any voting machine problems at all as they blamed all problems on voters, poll workers, and election administrators. As reported earlier on The BRAD BLOG, Diebold also received nearly instantaneous assistance from "outside" sources who obfuscated in their reporting of the problems, singling out the issues concerning the voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and ignoring everything else that was in the report.

Now county elections officials seem to have decided that they don't like the results from the investigation they paid for, as done by ESI, so they are throwing ESI under the bus while they run to defend Diebold. Suprised? Apparently they don't want to have to explain why they spent millions of dollars for a voting system that is flawed. Or perhaps Diebold applied pressure to their partners in crime at the Cuyahoga Board of Elections.

In either case, Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday morning that Diebold and the County have worked everything out, and it's all just fine after all...

Blogged by Brad from the still-long and still-winding (and still very hot) road...

"They're dumb as shit."
-- Donna Brazile to Rolling Stone for an article this week, discussing her frustration with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and making the party understand the need to be vigilant during Election 2006.

"Fuck you."
-- Donna Brazile to an Election Integrity Advocate at the annual DNC gathering last weekend in Chicago after being asked where the party was in Ohio after Election 2004.

Such were the contradictions and dysfunctions on parade last weekend in Chicago where I was invited to address a panel on Electoral Integrity at the DNC's annual gathering of state party chairs. What a mess.

The Rolling Stone piece referenced above, by the good Tim Dickinson, is not currently online. But it's from the Aug. 24 issue of RS on newsstands now. It asks "Will Democrats Fight Back?" The answer, as Dickinson reports, is a decisive maybe, probably not, things don't look so good, we hope so but kinda doubt it.

While it'd be nice to give you an encouraging report from the DNC meeting of how the Dems have finally figured out what the hell is going on here --- how they are going to get out in front of this electile dysfunction thing, take the offensive, become proactive and lead the way in becoming the party which stands for vigilance, Electoral Integrity and the assurance that every vote will be counted and counted accurately --- I can't give such a report.

Yes, there are some good things going on there. One of the most notable being Greg Moore who is now the Director of the DNC's Voting Rights Institute. He gets it. Moore was responsible for all of the Election Protection-related events over the weekend. It seems he's been fighting heroically from inside the power structure to wake the Dems up as to what is going on. He's the one responsible for the historic DNC statement a few weeks ago calling for a full handcount in the illegally administered Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election in California's 50th congressional district. But it's clearly been a difficult fight. And last weekend's events made that crystal clear...

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As The BRAD BLOG reported two days ago, a new Zogby poll has revealed that a stunning 92% of Americans want their vote counted transparently and not by secret vote counting machines. That overwhelming majority crosses all political, social, religious and economic demographics.

Today, Zogby has released their official statement and numbers from the poll. Their statement quotes attorney Paul Lehto, who is busy fighting the election contest down in San Diego's Busby/Bilbray CA50 challenge in which voting machines, using secret software to count the results of that election, were compromised when they were sent home with poll workers on overnight "sleepovers" for days and weeks prior to the election, as we have been reporting since that special U.S. House election on June 6th.

Here's a quick snippet from Zogby's official release...

The survey also says that some 60% of respondents "have heard news reports of flaws in new electronic voting equipment." So I guess someone is doing the job of getting this information out to the American people.

Apparently the news hasn't yet reached the DNC, however. More on that, and my personal experiences addressing folks at the DNC's annual gathering last weekend, in a report to come shortly today...

UPDATE from WP: Zogby has released more data in a PDF format. Just click here. There's a press release for Zogby too, and it's here.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Election Science Institute (ESI) of San Francisco California was hired to investigate and report on problems with the May primary election in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The 240-page report was just released this month (August), and some in the elections community have ignored a large majority of the report and zeroed in on a single aspect that supports their thesis that voters don't need any paper, even when voting on a Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine.

Daniel Tokaji is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and the Associate Director of Election Law at Moritz. He has testified against a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to a US House committee and the Election Assistance Commission..

In his paper on the ESI report, Tokaji ignores many significant findings of the report and distorts the overall findings by highlighting only the compromised VVPAT. As pointed out by VotersUnite.Org in their analysis of the ESI report, there was much more substance from ESI than just VVPAT printer problems:

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

An enormous investigation continues in Great Britain, where eight people were charged with conspiracy to murder on Monday and lesser charges were laid against three others. All eleven of the suspects who were charged Monday appeared in court on Tuesday.

From Monday's account in the Mirror: 11 Charged Over Airline Bomb Plot, police described the alleged evidence as follows (with my emphasis):

As for the charges...

Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon

Is someone murdering people who know too much about NSA wiretapping overseas?

Two whistleblowers --- one in Italy, one in Greece --- uncovered a secret bugging system installed in cell phones around the world. Both met with untimely ends. The resultant scandals have received little press in the United States, despite the profound implications for American critics of the Bush administration.

Last month, Italian telecommunications security expert Adamo Bove either leapt or was pushed from a freeway overpass; he left no note and had no history of depression. Last year (March, 2005), Greek telecommunications expert Costas Tsalikidis met with a similarly enigmatic end. Both had uncovered American attempts to eavesdrop on government officials, anti-war activists, and private businessmen.

The Bove case relates to the long-standing controversy over the CIA's kidnapping of cleric Abu Omar, who was flown to Egypt and tortured. The post-Berlusconi government of Italy is attempting to arrest and try all of the CIA personnel involved. Bove used mobile phone records to trace more than two dozen American agents.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Kitty Pilgrim reports that Pinellas Co.'s voting machines passed Logic and Accuracy (L&A) Tests until a Sequoia Voting Systems technician changed some software. A subsequent test failed so the county changed the software back and re-did the test successfully. There was no report as to what caused the problem or why Sequoia tried to install software that was, very apparently, unnecessary; or was it?

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Thus writes Michael Collins in his most recent article, a masterful presentation of the study and its results.

The graphic you see at the top right corner of this post shows how overwhelmingly Americans insist on seeing how their votes are counted; click on it to see a full-sized version. Respondents were asked to choose one of the following:

A: Citizens have the right to view and obtain information about how election officials count votes.

B: Citizens do not have the right to view and obtain information about how elections officials count votes.

The blue area represents respondents who chose option "A", the red represents those who chose "B", and the grey area represents those who were not sure. As you can easily see, the blue position was extremely popular for the survey overall. Below we have extensive charts and numerous graphs which show beyond any reasonable doubt that the blue position was extremely popular for every segment of the survey group!

But first things first; here's Michael Collins:

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight, Dobbs reporter and stand-in Kitty Pilgrim interviews Professor Avi Rubin about his new book and about the dangers of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines.

Video in Streaming Flash format...

The video is also available on Rubin's new blog.

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot

Your cold and humble blogger presents an assortment of clips from the war in Lebanon --- and on the home front --- since last weekend.

(And NO, I don't expect you to remember this, because some of it happened before they arrested what's-his-name? ... you know ... the guy who claims he ... um ... well ... you know what I mean, don't you?)

Saturday, August 12, 2006

BBC: Bush links Hezbollah and 'plot'