Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced emergency legislation to amend the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) this afternoon to offer funding to states and counties who make 'contingency paper ballots' available to voters to be used at the voter's option instead of electronic voting systems.

The so-called contingency paper ballots are intended to be counted as normal ballots, as opposed to Provisional Ballots which must be vetted first to determine the integrity of the voter's registration. Provisional ballots are frequently counted only several days after Election Day, and often, not at all. The Senate legislation as filed, however, does not spell out the intended difference between "contingency" and "provisional" ballots specifically.

The BRAD BLOG has learned from a source currently working on similar legislation in the House, said to be filed there shortly, that the House version will include such specific language if possible to ensure such contingency ballots are counted as normal ballots on Election Night. Several Capitol Hill sources have confirmed that such legislation is currently in the works. We hope to have more details on the House version later today.

The inclusion of Dodd as a co-sponsor on the Senate legislation is no small coup, as he was one of the original co-sponsors of the HAVA legislation of 2002 which this bill would amend. Until now, he and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of that original legislation have been reluctant to open HAVA to amendment.

The legislation, filed just after 4pm ET this afternoon, would refund state and county voting jurisdictions that offer paper ballots as an option to voters, and requires such jurisdictions post "in a conspicuous manner at the polling place, a notice stating that contingency paper ballots are available at the polling place and that a voter may request to use such a ballot at the voter's discretion."

Election integrity advocacy groups and citizens alike have been rallying members of both the U.S. House and Senate to pass such legislation since The BRAD BLOG initially called for what we had called, the "LET AMERICA VOTE ACT" last Tuesday. The act we called for would mandate emergency paper ballots at all polling places this November in light of thousands of voters having been sent away without having been able to cast a vote in primary after primary election so far this year when new electronic voting machines either malfunctioned or were otherwise unavailable.

The short Boxer/Dodd bill does not mandate the use of such ballots, but rather offers federal payment to local jurisdictions that choose to make such 'contingency paper ballots' available at either the voter's request or in the event of machine malfunction.

The bill is now being referred to informally as the "Confidence in Vote Act of 2006". It's a simple bill, three pages long in total, and is posted in full at the bottom this article. The final version of the bill to be filed momentarily (it may have already been) may be downloaded here in PDF format.

The bill introduced today is notable in no small part in that it's co-sponsored by Dodd --- one of the original co-sponsors of HAVA along with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate and Reps. Bob Ney (R-OH) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the House. HAVA was the bill which had set in motion the nationwide implementation of electronic voting systems paid for by the federal government. That bill gave states and counties some $3 billion dollars for voting systems "upgrades" around the country, and has led to a panoply of problems at polls, criticism from computer scientists, security experts and non-partisan election integrity organizations.

Dodd, and the other bi-partisan co-sponsors of HAVA, including the now-disgraced lead author Ney (R-OH), have been reluctant up until now to modify the legislation in any way, despite repeated calls from Election Integrity advocates, and a host of bills filed in both the House and Senate which have not been allowed to move forward.

The BRAD BLOG has learned that Boxer and Dodd chose to make the use of "contingency paper ballots" an option to states, rather than a mandate, in hopes that it would make the bill less contentious and easier to pass in the few days left in this legislative session before the election recess.

Both touch-screen DRE's and paper based optical scan systems have spectacularly failed across the country so far this year as well, and contingency plans have been called from both Republicans and Democrats alike to have such contingency plans in place at local jurisdictions should such machines continue to fail this November.

The downside to offering these paper ballots as an option, instead of a mandate, is that some states --- such as Florida --- have provisions in place making it essentially illegal for elections directors to offer such paper ballots at the polling place. For those states, it may well be that only a federal mandate would do the job of ensuring that voters would be able to vote come hell or highwater this November.

The legendary Leon County, FL Election Director Ion Sancho had previously expressed hopes that such a bill would make it "illegal to send a properly registered voter away from the polls without allowing them to cast a vote."

The latest state to have had machine problems in their primary election, resulting in voters being turned away from the polls, or being given Provisional Ballots (which are frequently not counted at all after Election Day) was Maryland. The Republican Governor of Maryland, Bob Ehrlich, called for scrapping the state's Diebold paperless touch-screen voting systems after their September 12th primary, calling on the state to impliment Emergency Paper Balloting this November. Incidents similar to the now-infamous "Maryland Meltdown" have been occuring across the country all year in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Arkansas, West Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, and many others.

The Boxer/Dodd legislation cites a recent call from former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and former Democratic Governor Richard Celeste to have such "backup and contingency plans that anticipate a wide range of possible failures in their electronic voting systems" this November.

With just 4, or so, legislative days left in this Congress before they break for their Election Recess, it'll be no easy feat to see the bill passed by both the House and Senate before they leave. But given the stakes, and the bi-partisan call across the country for such a measure, we hope the Congress can act with the speed appropriate for a bill so important to, at least, helping to mitigate the train wreck that our democracy may be headed for this November 7th.

The BRAD BLOG would urge you to contact your Congress Members to demand they support this legislation immediately. You can send a message to your Congress Members here asking them to pass this legislation now!

You may otherwise contact local media to write in support of it, or ask to ask them to cover it, via this link.

UPDATE 6:17pm PT: New York Times coverage now linked here...

UPDATE 11:12pm PT: Late, final edition of the Times now lists Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) as a co-sponsor of the legislation as well!

The complete text of the Boxer/Dodd legislation as filed this afternoon, follows in full...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

In Monday's "Democracy at Risk" segment Kitty discusses the ruling from the judge in Colorado (as broken originally by The BRAD BLOG last Friday) against the state's "abysmal" voting machine certification process. Of course, the Secretary of State is trying to make it a partisan political issue.

Says Dobbs in yesterday's report: "[M]any state governments across the country are finally awakening to the threat that electronic voting machines pose to our upcoming midterm elections --- and our democracy."

Says Pilgrim: "[A] judge found the secretary of state's office had violated the law, saying there were no minimum standards. It failed to meet its statutory requirements for testing. It failed to adopt rules and failed to adequately test the machines...In many cases, the state simply allowed the manufacturers to vouch for the safety of the machines."

Says the plaintiff's attorney in CO: "The deficiencies in the testing was an utter lack of competence, and an utter lack any scientific method, and utter lack of any recordkeeping."

Says the Secretary of State: "Colorado voters should not be concerned about the security of the November election...I ask voters to ignore the political rhetoric by a few seeking to destroy that confidence in the election."

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

Barbara Burt, the Vice-President and Director of Election Reform at the non-partisan Common Cause, has posted a statement this morning on the organization's blog in support of the 'LET AMERICA VOTE ACT' (Emergency Paper Ballot legislation) that we proposed last week as an emergency measure that Congress could pass in their few legislative days left before the election recess.

The idea is to ensure that registered voters who bother to show up to the polls this November could at least cast their vote --- even if the voting machines are malfunctioning or unavailable, as has been the case in primary after primary election so far this year.

The measure should make it illegal to turn away a properly registered voter without allowing them to cast a vote. Giving them a Provisional Ballot is not an alternative, since those ballots are often not counted at all.

As Burt writes in her blog item in support of the initiative:

She also reports that the legendary Leon County, FL election director, Ion Sancho, "one of the voices of reason in the world of election officials...said that it should be illegal for a polling place to turn away any eligible voters without allowing them the opportunity to vote."

Common Cause joins election watchdog groups such as VotersUnite.org and VelvetRevolution.us in publicly calling for this common sense legislation.

As of this morning, we're hearing a number of hopeful reports about a number of legislators on Capitol Hill who are considering bringing this legislation forward soon. It would be similar to the emergency measure called for by Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich in Maryland recently, after his state's primary election was an utter disaster in the face of voting machines that couldn't be started up until hours after the polls had already opened.

The SoS Project has created a page where you can contact your congress members to urge them to pass this legislation with Terri Schiavo-like speed!

The campaign of one of Congress' most corrupt members, Tom Feeney (R-FL), has apparently enlisted fifth graders to create a smear website (www.CrazyClintCurtis.com) dedicated to smearing Feeney's congressional opponent Clint Curtis with doctored photos, innuendo and unsubstantiated, disproven claims.

The rudimentary site (okay, it's not created by fifth graders, it just looks, works and acts that way) includes doctored photos and videos of Curtis, and a smear blog to go with it. Though the main "Crazy Clint Curtis" website indicates that it's "Paid for by Tom Feeney," the blog itself that it links to --- accessible via CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com --- has no indication of who it's paid for. If that blog site is created and/or run by a paid member of Feeney's campaign staff or uses it's vast resources (Feeney has reportedly spent the better part of $1 million for this brilliant smear campaign,) it would seem that Feeney is in violation of FEC campaign laws which require a "Paid for by Tom Feeney" notation somewhere on the blog.

Curtis' own website also includes a link to a blog, but as far as we know, it is maintained by a private unpaid individual.

Feeney has reportedly spent somewhere near $700k on his admitted smear campaign so far.

The good news is that those with a free blogger.com registration are allowed to post comments to Feeney's smear blog in reply to the Congressman's silliness! At least as of now. So feel free to give them regards from The BRAD BLOG and let them know where individuals concerned about things such as clean elections, clean officials, clean government contracts, congressmen who take trips from foreign-agents and Jack Abramoff, and who work with companies involved with convicted Chinese spies, can get grown-up information on the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney story if they are interested.

Curtis has made claims concerning Feeney's involvement as registered lobbyist and general counsel for a Florida software firm that has now been shown to have harbored and petioned for an illegal Chinese alien (who later pled guilty to charges related to sending Hellfire anti-tank missile chips to Communist China) and overbilled the state of Florida by hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has also alleged that Feeney asked the company, in a meeting at which Curtis was present, to create vote-rigging software when they both worked for the firm. Curtis' claims have been made to Florida and Federal officials, as well as in a sworn affidavit and video-taped sworn testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

As well, he has passed a lie-detector test in regard to the claim. So far, Feeney has refused to take such a test, or to debate Curtis face to face despite challenges from the Curtis campaign to do either. Feeney still refuses, as recently as this Tampa Bay Scene cover story published last Thursday, to answer directly to any of the allegations (most of them proven through independent government documents and investigations) that Curtis has made in regard to Feeney.

For his part, Feeney has either refused to discuss the matter, or otherwise claimed he's had nothing to do with the YEI firm since leaving them to go to Congress in 2002. That, even while Feeney's campaign headquarters remains in the YEI building, the owners of the company continue to be amongst his top financial supporters, and even hosted a party for him in 2003 (with undoctored photos)...

Bill Stone of the Tampa Bay Scene writes a devasting and detailed cover story in this week's issue, on the allegations of computer programmer Clint Curtis that Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to create vote-rigging software when they both worked for the same firm in Oviedo, Florida back in 2000.

-- PDF version of the article here: Tampa Bay Scene's posted version is in the PDF of the entire issue of this week's paper.
-- Plain HTML version of the article here: They've given us the go ahead to post an HTML version of the piece in full.
(NOTE: Some graphic photos are included with the article!)

Stone's report covers much of the ground we've detailed extensively at BRAD BLOG over the past two years since we first broke the story in December of 2004. Nonetheless, he brings a great deal of that reporting together in one easy-to-read article, and also brings us up to date on the latest shenanigans of Feeney, who finds himself facing Curtis this year, mano-a-mano, in the election for the U.S. House in Florida's 24th Congressional district.

Hardcore readers of The BRAD BLOG will be familiar with much of the story. Indeed, Stone credits us with a great deal of his sourcing, as we spoke to him for several hours at length during our recent summer travels around the country. His article, however, includes new details to chew on.

In particular, Stone hits on a fresh point or two in regard to the death of Raymond Lemme, the investigator from the Florida Inspector General's office --- the first official that Curtis had informed of his allegations against Feeney.

As well, Feeney's camp now has a new slur word they're shamelessly attempting --- without evidence, as usual --- to use to smear Curtis...

In addition to The New York Times' article in Sunday editions today headlined "Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines" (we covered that report yesterday), the Times had another piece, buried in the Business Section of Saturday's edition headlined "The Big Gamble on Electronic Voting."

Other than still referring to the machine used in the Princeton Report --- which showed a Diebold touch-screen system could be hacked with an undetectable vote-flipping virus in a minute's time, which could then spread itself to every machine in the system --- as coming from a mysterious "third party", it is a very good article which I highly recommend.

(For the record, I told everyone where the machine came from --- VelvetRevolution.us was given the machine by a source of mine --- when I broke the story originally both here, and at Salon. Not sure why AP, WaPo, NYTimes et al has such trouble figuring it out. Guess they don't use Google.)

Randall Stross' Times piece is very smart. It includes his efforts to press Diebold as to why they won't supply the latest and greatest touch-screen machine to Princeton to test. Since Diebold claimed in their silly, disingenuous reply to the Princeton Report that the Diebold AccuVote model used in the testing was "two generations old" and "to our knowledge, is not used anywhere in the country," one would think Diebold would be more than happy to supply their newest machine for similar security testing. Congrats to Stross for making that point abundantly clear!

Diebold's response about the "two generations old" system is stuff and nonsense, and in the article Diebold spokeshole Mark Radke was extraordinary.

Radke refused Stross' encouragement to supply such a machine to either Princeton or even the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC). That refusal, and the reasons for it, underscore the load of crap that Diebold is still trying to sell to an unsuspecting public and media.

Radke claims, in the piece, that sharing such machines with computer scientists, or even the EAC is "analogous to launching a nuclear missile" and Diebold must restrict "access to the buttons."

Funny reply from a company who sent these machines out like candy in their early development, with almost no inventory control whatsoever (one of the reasons why I was even able to get the machine to Princeton!). Also a funny reply from a company that has failed to warn their customers about the safe use of these machines, by not telling them about the dangers of sending these machines home with poll workers on overnight "sleepovers" for days and weeks prior to an election. Such "sleepovers" sullied the integrity of San Diego's recent U.S. House Special election in June, and the practice will be carried out again across the country this November.

Diebold, apparently, is just fine with that.

The Diebold company and their dishonest business practices in these regards are an irresponsible menance to democracy, our American Values, and our way of life. They, and several of the other voting machines companies, have succeeded in undermining the very core of our Republic. The media and both major political parties are also guilty for allowing them to do so.

Please read Stross' article in full and be amazed.

With a rather mild slap on the wrist, Columbia Journalism Review suggests in its Sep/Oct issue, in an un-bylined editorial, that the national media failed to do their job in reporting on the disasterously irregular 2004 Ohio Presidential Election.

No kidding. Do ya think?!

The CJR piece is published this week, just a touch over a month before our next national election. The decline of democracy has grown exponentially worse across the entire nation, every single day since 2004's Presidential Election (as we have been tirelessly covering on these pages since 3am or so of November 3rd, 2004) and yet CJR has waited until now for it's gentle hand-wringing over the lack of coverage on these matters in the national media.

They go so far as to describe The New York Times as "typically strong on voting controversy" before softly suggesting they haven't done enough to cover these matters. Never mind that it was the Times who, perhaps single-handedly, instructed the nation that nothing at all went wrong in Ohio in 2004 when they characterized the efforts of those of us trying to investigate what happened on Election Day as little more than "the conspiracy theories of leftwing bloggers" on Nov. 21, 2004.

We wrote at the time about that article:

The following day we constructively offered them 15 hard news items concerning "irregularities" in the 2004 election that merited their investigation, rather than their condescension. To this date, we're aware of them having investigated none of them.

"Typically strong on voting controversy?" To what decade might CJR be referring?

In the meantime, nothing has been found to suggest that those of us "leftwing blogging conspiracy theorists" were anything but absolutely right in our concern, dilligence, and attention to the matter.

The "paper of record" sets the tone for America and for all of the other media. They failed this country abysmally.

CJR bills themselves as "America's Premier Media Monitor." In other words, their job is to be the watchdog of the watchdogs. And yet, they've taken two years to admonish the national media for having failed to cover the very dissolution of our democracy, in plain sight and before our very eyes, in a tepid little editorial this month.

Consider us the watchdog watchdog watchdog.

NEWS FLASH FOR CJR (feel free to face this criticism two years from now if you wish): While your spanking the national media for failing to do their job on this most crucial topic, you have utterly failed to do yours in the meantime. Glasses houses, much?

Finally, the ironically condescending little CJR editorial (which mentions some of the few outlets who have covered the issue sparsely, while leaving out those who have reported on it every single day since November 2nd, 2004 --- what, me bitter?) concludes thusly:

Uh, no. Sorry, guys. The "time to think about that" was years ago. Now, it's pretty much too late to do a damned thing to "guard the democratic process." At least for the 2006 election. You have failed as miserably as those whom you have finally decided to criticize (gently).

See you in September of 2008...when you all decide to give a damn about this issue the next time.

...CONTACT...
dartsandlaurels@cjr.org; Click">letters@cjr.org\">Click here to Email CJR

New York Times set to report elections officials are getting "cold feet" about electronic voting. Gosh, what to 'em so long? (both the elections officials and NYTimes!)

From RAW STORY right now...

Nice going waiting until it's pretty much too late to do a damned thing about it. NY Times has, once again, failed the American people. Jerks.

(Though there's still time to demand Congress mandate Emergency Paper Ballots!)

The full NYTimes story is now here.

UPDATE: Now that I've read the full story, it looks like the following graf refers to the buzz we've help generate on Capitol Hill for our proposed LET AMERICA VOTE ACT (Emergency Paper Ballot legislation)...[emphasis added]

Also worthy of condemnation is Vermont's Democratic Sec. of State Deborah Markowitz, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) who seems to be continuing the disingenously positive spin of too many state elections officials of late...

Though we like to encourage folks to be poll workers, we might recommend that those in Vermont simply stay home this year. Your Secretary of State, who is clearly not prepared to do her job, thinks it's all your fault! So why bother? Take the day off!

CORRECTION: We had originally reported Markowitz as being a member of the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED), the group given the responsibility of certifying (and so far, rubber stamping on behalf of the voting machine companies) electronic voting machines at the federal level. Markowitz is President of NASS, not NASED. We regret the error.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

On last night's Lou Dobbs Kitty Pilgrim reported on what the media is just awakening to, problems with e-voting machines are nationwide and a threat to our democracy. Some of us have been telling all who would listen that this was the fact for years now. Finally some state's are listening and acting.

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

I just received a phone call from Holly Jacobson of VoterAction.org, the group that has supported voter lawsuits attempting to decertify e-voting machines in Colorado, California, Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

She called us from Colorado just after leaving the courtroom, where the case in that state against the use and purchase of e-voting systems made by Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and Hart InterCivic was being heard yesterday. She called and said: "We won!"

That call came moments after I'd received a report that CNN's Lou Dobbs had reported an hour or so ago that they had lost the case...

We reported last week on the mess in Milwaukee's primary election where a "programming error" is blamed for some 80,000 votes being recorded, when only 45,000 people actually voted. A recount was held to determine what the real vote count was. The city, however, was only concerned with the number of voters, as opposed to whether or not the votes were actually recorded accurately.

An editorial on the whole mess in Wednesday's Shepard-Express concludes this way (with a now-familiar warning):

The good folks over at the Secretary of State Project have endorsed the "LET AMERICA VOTE ACT" (Emergency Paper Ballots this November) legislation and have created an easy web page where you can fill in your name and address, which will then send Email to Congress Members asking them to immediately propose and pass this important legislation!

If you only fill out one such online letter writing campaign between now and November 7th, please make it this one! Click here right now to send your letter!

It'll take you 30 seconds, and it could be the difference between a mitigated success (where people are actually able to cast their vote!) and a complete disaster at the polls this November 7th! Click it, and then send that link everywhere!

We've got no more than 5 legislative days left before this Congress breaks for the Election Recess. So if 6 or 7 of you can act now, it may make the difference! My original proposal for the LAVA legislation is right here.

VotersUnite.org, an election integrity watchdog group led by Executive Director John Gideon (who is also the Information Manager of VoteTrustUSA.org and a frequent Guest Blogging contributor here at The BRAD BLOG) has issued a statement this morning in support of our demand that Congress immediately pass Emergency Paper Ballot legislation.

Our original proposal for the "LET AMERICA VOTE ACT" is posted here.

The complete news release from VotersUnite has been released to the wires, and is posted online here. The pertinent information from that release follows...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Last night Lou and Kitty tackled the argument in Maryland over whether Linda Lamone should just let Diebold do an investigation of what went wrong last week or whether Gov. Ehrlich should get his way and have the voters vote on paper ballots.

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

While we don't shy away from talking about the corrupt, the wrong thinking, the un-caring elections officials in our country we don't often get a chance to recognize those who actually do a good job and show that they really do care. I would guess that 90% of the elections officials fall into the category of the caring but it is that 10% who get talked about. I want to change that a bit and talk about one who has made a good decision.

Warren Slocum is the Chief Elections Director of San Mateo County, California. The county has recently decided that they will use Hart Intercivic eSlate Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines at the polls from now on. That's not a good decision because the eSlates are just as bad as the rest, but it was a decision made and we have to move on.

It has just been reported in the San Mateo Daily Journal that Slocum has decided that there is not enough time for him to be assured that his voters and poll workers can become acclimated to the new voting machines by the general election in November. The polls were supposed to have three to six of the eSlates but now voters will find only one eSlate and paper ballots. Slocum is giving up quick results reporting for integrity and we applaud that.

If only Cuyahoga County, Ohio elections officials had decided on integrity instead of rushing out voting machines that were unfamiliar. If only Maryland elections officials had decided on integrity instead of rushing out an unproven and ripe for failure e-poll book device. And the same "If only..." can be echoed all over the country this primary season.

Thank you Warren Slocum for having integrity and for putting your voters and poll workers first.