Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Jill Lawrence, writing in USA TODAY, looks at some hotly-contested races for positions that were once largely ignored: Top vote counter becomes prize job...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Today (Thursday), in Detroit, a federal judge ruled that the illegal covert spying program put in place by the Bush administration is unconstitutional and ordered the administration to stop it immediately. But the administration has given every possible indication of its unwillingness to comply.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

The next Ned Lamont is just across the Connecticut border in Massachusetts, where voting rights leader John Bonifaz is similarly taking on the Democratic Party establishment in his grassroots campaign for Secretary of State. Bonifaz, a Democrat who sued George Bush on the eve of the Iraq war on behalf of soldiers, families of soldiers and members of Congress trying to prevent the illegal invasion, squares off against the incumbent, Bill Galvin, on September 19.

But the Lamont connection runs even deeper. Bill Hillsman, the media guru who produced the winning ads for Lamont and Paul Wellstone, is eager to jump into the race on the Bonifaz campaign, which could be the final ingredient that puts John over the top. What John needs now is the financial support to make the Hillsman addition a reality --- and if he can raise $25,000 by August 23, it will happen.

Meeting this goal would lead to Hillsman joining the campaign through the primary and the production of ads that would be used on the air, on the web and as tools for further fundraising success. Please go to John’s web site today to help make this winning combination possible. Your contribution is vital. We must support Democrats who stand up against entrenched interests and stand up for our rights as voters.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Lou revisits the world of electronic voting in Ohio, where the evidence points to voting machine problems, but the vendors, especially Diebold, and the state want everyone to believe that the poll and election workers are just too dumb to do the work and all of the problems are their fault. For more on this story see the recent BRAD BLOG article regarding the Cuyahoga County investigation.

Here's a quick sample from the text transcript:

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

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

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org and VoteTrustUSA.Org

Nearly 10 percent of Cuyahoga County's official ballots in the May 2 primary were "destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised," according to a group hired by the county to investigate. But even when the paper receipts were legible in the May 2 primary, more than three-quarters of them listed vote tallies that did not match the electronic record in the touch-screen machines. ...

Blogged by Brad on the still long and winding road...

Yes, I'm still on the road and will continue to be until at least the end of this month. Still travelling across the country for various double-super-secret meetings and projects, and even the occasional (very occasional, unfortunately) day spent off the grid entirely to catch up on some rest and enjoy the waning days of summer. There's a lot going on in the background --- fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you may see it --- so despite my best efforts, I haven't found much peace and quiet, even while not blogging here regularly. Oh, well. At least I've got it better than Stephen Heller, who really may be "taking one for his country" (see below.) Much to come on those background developments in the coming weeks and months in either case.

For now though, a couple of quick points...

-- HARTMANN ON THURSDAY...

I'll be checking in with Thom Hartmann's radio show for a very brief catch-up on Thursday, 2pm Eastern Time. See the "Media Appearances" section in the red box above for details.

-- HELLER IN HUSTLER NOW...

My article for Hustler on Diebold whistleblower Stephen Heller --- who is now thanklessly facing trial for three felony counts concerning documents he released from Diebold's California law firm, Jones Day, just prior to Diebold being decertified in the state back in 2004 --- is now on newsstands. So consider that an excuse to go out and buy this month's issue, or you may download the article right here in pornography-free PDF format instead.

-- CHICAGO ON FRIDAY & SATURDAY...

Heading to Chicago this weekend to a) attend the DNC's annual gathering of state party chairs and other such officials who may or may not wish to see me on Friday (this should be interesting,) and b) emcee Illinois Ballot Integrity Project's big Take Back the Vote, election protection event outside of the city, in DuPage County, on Saturday. Speakers at the event, other than yours truly, to include our old friends Fooled Again author Mark Crispin Miller, Bob Fitrakis of the Columbus FreePress and Robert Koehler of Tribune Media. It is one of several upcoming Election Protection events around the country being sponsored in part by VelvetRevolution.us (see VR's homepage for a number of other events, some of which I'll also be attending, with more on the way in California, Ohio and elsewhere.)

In the Chicago 'hood this weekend? Please stop by and say hello! More details and info on the event right here. I'll be the bedraggled one, with only slightly more of a tan than I had before I left, but with a happy-to-see-ya smile nonetheless...so please come on by!

8/17/2006: UPDATE! POSSIBLE SCHEDULE CHANGE!: Incredibly late in the game, the DNC has now invited me to address some of their people at a Saturday afternoon round table, which occurs at the same time as the event in DuPage County! Having not (yet) figured out how to clone myself, and now making the difficult decision that a few minutes time speaking directly to the DNC about the mess on our hands may ultimately be more fruitful than emceeing the DuPage event, I may now be either late or a no-show at the Illinois Ballot Integrity Event! Depending on what time I finish with the DNC event in downtown Chicago, I'll then speed out to the DuPage event to make it for at least some of that event...if at all humanly possible. If it's not possible for me to make it out there at all, I hope I'll be forgiven... Yeesh... What a mess... Here's a 53-second video of Thom Hartmann underscoring why this matters... (Hat-tip to Ginny Ross of Election Defense Alliance!)

...And now, back to your regularly scheduled BRAD BLOG sans Brad (for the most part)...

Election Science Institute (ESI), a San Francisco based non-profit, was contracted for $341,000 to do a complete study of the May 2 primary in Cuyahoga (Cleveland) County. The study was just released to the public and it is another scathing report against Diebold and their voting machines.

Ohio requires a voter verified paper audit trail printer on every Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that ESI found:

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I wasn't surprised to see the New York Times banging the terror drums again today. It seems to have become a specialty of the house. My attention was particularly drawn to piece in today's NYT by Eric Pfanner of the Iternational Herald Tribune, which bears this headline: Europe Seeks to Unify Airport Security Rules.

I noticed that headline immediately, because I have good reason to believe it may be misleading...

Nowhere in the article --- or anywhere else that I know of --- is there any indication that "Europe" "seeks" to unify airport security rules. Instead, the article describes what regular readers of The BRAD BLOG --- or of my own nearly frozen blog --- have come to expect: that Britain, represented here by Home Secretary John Reid, is trying to force the rest of Europe to follow it down the garden path that starts with phony terror and leads to totalitarianism.

Based on what we've seen so far, we have no reason to believe John Reid and every reason to be suspicious.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

... and I sure hope somebody comes along and starts one!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Further to yesterday's post about Open Voting Consortium and Raging Grannies working together to resist Hart InterCivic machines on behalf of the voters of San Mateo County, we have bad news and good news.

The bad news is that their effort to postpone an immediate decision in favor of Hart InterCivic has failed. The good news is that the Grannies will keep on Raging. We have a note from the Grannies and a press release describing the meeting.

The press release follows.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Art Levine's new piece at Salon raises their election integrity bar quite a bit --- not a difficult task considering where that bar has been lately.

Prior to the 2004 "election", Salon's coverage was generally quite good; since then it's been dismal, thanks mostly to some outrageous smear pieces from Farhad Manjoo. In fact, Salon's coverage has been so dreadful that the site has been referred to in some quarters as "Saloon", which of course rhymes with "buffoon", which gives me a good way to remember "Manjoo", whose name just wouldn't stick in my frozen brain any other way.

But let's not dwell on those sad times.

Levine's article, "Salon's shameful six", looks at six states --- Arizona, Indiana, California, Missouri, Ohio and Florida --- where vote suppression could cause serious problems in 2006.

If you're not a Salon subscriber, you'll have to watch a short ad to read the whole article. I did; it was well worth the time and effort. But just in case you don't believe me, we have a few short excerpts, below the fold.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Lou and Kitty Pilgrim report on the litigation that is taking place around the country in order to stop the use of paperless voting machines.

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

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

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As has been his practice over the last several months, the primary election opponent to vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis was a no-show in a recent televised debate.

Curtis spoke about election fraud (vis a vis Tom Feeney), the Iraq War and the price of gas. Needless to say, he won the "debate" hands down.

With his primary election opponent, Dr. Andy Michaud, failing to appear at events across Florida's 24th Congressional District, does this mean the good Doctor is giving up? Or is there something going on that we don't know about?

The primary is September 5th. Should Clint win, he'll be going mano-a-mano against the well-monied and impossibly corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney --- the very man he claims had asked him to create vote-rigging software back when they both worked at the same software firm (even while Feeney was Speaker of the Florida State House of Representatives.)

For the record, Feeney is now the only Republican congressman who was with lobbyist Jack Abramoff on those golfing junkets to Scotland, now that both Tom DeLay and Bob Ney have dropped out of this November's election. Feel free to donate to Clint Curtis as he takes on Feeney, one of the GOP's top-tier money behemoths!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Unless you've been under a rock for most of the past week, you already know that people have been arrested in Britain and Pakistan recently, in connection with an alleged plot to bomb flights from Britain to the USA. According to reports of the arrests, the alleged terrorists were allegedly planning to take down 10 or 12 airplanes at the same time, and this grand-scale planning allegedly points to al-Qaeda. You may know quite a bit more than this, of course. Or at least you may think you do. But in point of fact, most of us probably know quite a bit less.

This post attempts to dig beneath the surface, to look at various (mainstream and other) accounts of the events and to try to determine the nature, the scope and the scale of the manipulation that has been going on. It may not point us in the direction of greater truth, but perhaps it can help us to find a direction of fewer lies.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Ginny Ross, one of our friends from the Election Defense Alliance, has posted the video of the beginning of the press conference from DemocracyFest last month in San Diego as the Busby/Bilbray election challenge (due to voting machine "sleepovers" with pollworkers) was just coming to light. Some of us have been anxious to see this ever since Ginny told us she was working on it. And rightly so. The video is a good one. Just click on the picture to see it.

For more on the press conference, please revisit Brad's post of July 18th.

You're more than welcome to disagree with me on this, but I'd say he did a fine job. Then again, what do I know? I'm partially frozen at the best of times.