Just one of the many recent, yet notable, items I was unable to cover over the past week...

On Thursday, Roll Call reported that all three of the major staffers for Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), the lead author/co-sponsor of the disastrous Help America Vote Act (HAVA), are running for the hills.

The departures are described as "the latest sign that Ney’s legal and ethical troubles stemming from the Jack Abramoff scandal are growing worse with each passing day."

Josh Marshall covered the exits of his "troika" --- his Chief of Staff, Legislative Director and Communications Director --- all scramming on the same day.

We first referred to Ney as "the soon-to-be-indicted" back in January when we published our exposé connecting the dots between Ney, Abramoff, Diebold, HAVA and Ney's even-more-former chief of staff, David DiStefano, who became Diebold's main congressional lobbyist. That exposé has been wholly ignored by the mainstream media ever since. (Except for Matt Taibbi who referenced the info, but without attribution, in an April Rolling Stone piece on Abramoff.)

Wow...missed this one over the last several whirlwind days. Please read it. Both pages. A little geeky, but underscores the extraordinary mess we're now facing at the highest levels of government in regard to this entire e-voting nightmare/fiasco. Even the head of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) --- which is (theoretically) the governing federal body overseeing (or not) federal certification of voting machines --- is apparently clueless in regard to the real world threats inherent in these systems.

Why this story itself isn't front page and cover story material for NY Times, Washington Post, NEWSWEEK, Time et al, is way beyond my pay grade. (Though the eagle-eyed John Gideon caught it and made it so in his 'Daily Voting News' from a few days ago, natch. He wrote about this article at the time: "If you thought the Elections Assistance Commission was in existence to assist and protect the voters this article might influence you otherwise. Two of the commissioners can't even get their misinformation right.")

This story has been largely overlooked, while the recent landmark Brennan Center study has received a lot of much-deserved press. I was alerted to this article, in fact, by one of the main individuals responsible for that Brennan Center for Justice report on the security threats of e-voting.

Be horrified...

In an email discussion yesterday among a group of Election Integrity advocates, in reply to the horrendous San Diego Union-Tribune coverage of the Busby/Bilbray issue, Yolo County, CA Registrar of Voters Freddie Oakley posted a crystal clear statement on the concerns of sending voting machines home with poll workers prior to elections.

"As an election official, I understand the practical issues involved here perfectly. I am strongly of the opinion that it is exactly this kind of practical issue that should give election officials serious reservations about deploying electronic voting machines," Oakley wrote.

"If, as a practical matter, [the electronic voting machines deployed prior to an election] can't be secured, then perhaps they ought not be used at all. Period. Until the impediment can be removed," her email statement read.

Her comment was in direct reply to a discussion about how voting machines, in the post-Hursti Hack age, might be deployed now that sending them home unsecured for "overnights" with poll workers is no longer a secure option. That hack, in Leon County, Florida in December 2005 of a Diebold optical scan voting system, has set off a chain reaction revealing massive vulnerabilities in these systems, forcing both federal and state authorities to issue extraordinary security requirements for the machines in just the last few months. Those requirements were subsequently all but ignored in the June 6th Busby/Bilbray U.S. House special election --- the first federal election in the nation to be administered since the additional mitigation requirements were put in place.

Oakley's responsible comments are in direct contradiction to the irresponsible statements by San Diego County Registrar Mikel Haas, given to the Union-Tribune, in which Haas dismisses concerns of election integrity advocates. Haas claims that proper procedures were followed (they were not) and that the practice of sending home voting machines with poll workers "has been followed without incident for about 40 years." Haas ignores, along with his other prevarications, that these eminently hackable electronic voting machines were not in use during all but the last few of those 40 years. The U-T didn't bother to quote, or apparently even attempt to contact, anyone who could reply directly to Haas' deceptive comments.

Registrar Oakley's entire statement --- a grand slam as far as I'm concerned --- should be read in full. It follows below...

It's still remarkable how many in the MSM regard bloggers as "unreliable"...even as they get story after story wrong and report unsubstantiated, unverifiable nonsense as fact.

I wrote early on in the Busby/Bilbray election results saga about AP (and all the rest) reporting that Brian Bilbray had won the election. They did so without a shred of evidence to prove that assertion.

Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune's John Marelius jumped in to report on the Busby/Bilbray fiasco (where the world's most hackable voting machines were sent home overnight with poll workers days and weeks before the election, to be stored in their cars and garages or who-knows-where in violation of both state and federal laws, effectively decertifying all of the voting machines used in that U.S. House special election.).

Here's how the U-T article began:

Okay...For a start...Who is calling for a recount, as Marelius writes? You can't recount something that you haven't counted in the first place and I know of no organization declaring "No Confidence" who has called for a "recount." Yet, the story uses the word "recount" again and again.

While it may be a subtle distinction, it's a very key one that I assure you both Karl Rove and Frank Luntz would understand quite clearly.

If the concept is too difficult to understand, however, the California Election Protection Network's press release announcing their eloquent "No Confidence" declaration --- referred to in the article --- not only never uses the word "recount", it also spells out clearly that they are not asking for a "recount". "Calling it a 'Free-Count' rather than a recount," the press release states, "the CEPN citizen watchdogs insist that this manual counting of the ballots be conducted without charge to the voting public."

If that was the only problem with the U-T article, we might have let it slide. But it's not. Not by a longshot. Marelius then goes on to "report" that a townhall meeting was held on Wednesday in San Diego. It was, of course. But apparently Marelius neither bothered to attend it, nor talk to anybody who actually did attend it.

He did, however, bother to report the point of view of SD County Registrar Mikel Haas (who also didn't attend). In fact, Marelius devoted a full five grafs to Haas' point of view. By my count, there are at least 5 different complete inaccuracies, misrepresentations and out-and-out misleading pieces of information passed on in those grafs...

Guest Blogged by David Edwards

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Brad appeared on this evening's edition of CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight. He explained some of the dangers of having wireless connections built-in to e-voting machines.

UPDATE FROM BRAD: Thanks for getting this up quickly, David! Was a quick piece tonight (made it back from a frantic trip back from San Diego just two minutes after my appointed time), but I'm pleased to be in the good company of Avi Rubin and Rep. Rush Holt in the Lou Dobbs report. I'm told they'll be using more of me tomorrow. We'll see. Ironically, I live about 3 blocks from the CNN building in Los Angeles and they've never called me in before...until I was several hours away in San Diego. No rest for the weary.

Full text transcript follows...

Blogged from San Diego...

...But about to rush back to Los Angeles to get to the CNN building for an interview with the Lou Dobbs folks. If I can get there in time!

I should be on tonight's Lou Dobbs Tonight tonight at 6pm ET (3pm PT) and perhaps tomorrow night's show as well. Or so I'm told.

Had hoped to catch up a bit here about the Busby/Bilbray events last night and Tuesday, but it looks like that's going to have to wait again in order for me to race back up north to get to the interview on time...yeesh...

Will also be on Mike Malloy's national Air America program tonight as Guest Hosted by Laura Flanders. We were last on air with Laura when she came down to Crawford, TX to simulcast with us on The BRAD SHOW from Camp Casey last summer.

Apologies to those of you waiting for email responses and other interesting blog items here. Looks like I'll have to be off the grid again for a bunch of hours in a row...So Open Thread here as ya like!

UPDATE: Tonight's Dobbs clip, with a brief, yet starkly vital, cameo from yours truly, now posted here courtesy of the mighty David Edwards.

Blogged by Brad from San Diego...

Just in from tonight's Busby/Bilbray Democracy Shindig in Oceanside. A great event with a lively turnout (including our old buddy Jim Lampley in da house.) As promised after last night's LA event, more as soon as I can catch my breath.

Until then, here's last night's Lou Dobbs, which I think was terrific. Be sure to watch it (or read it, transcript below the fold) until the end. Lou is gettin' angrier by the day...

I posted the results of the "Quick Poll" this morning before leaving Los Angeles. In case you missed it, the question was "Do you believe that e-voting machines should be disallowed until their integrity can be assured?" The results... YES: 97%, NO 3%.

Could America finally be coming to its senses?

Too exhausted to comment on this tonight with much detail, so please be my guest and "be the blog" for us here in comments. I will point out, however, that it's nice to see folks finally discussing the threat of Palm Pilots and other PDA's (personal digital assistants, as opposed to Progressive Democrats of America) and their wireless capacity posing a threat to these stupid systems as well. Kitty Pilgrim broaches the topic in this report from Tuesday which covered the release that day of the new NYU Brennan Center report on E-Voting security. We orginally discussed the alarming possibility of a voter with a PDA when we ran an exposé on the wireless Infrared (IrDA) port we photographed on one of the older paperless Diebold touch-screen systems.

Video in Streaming Flash format...
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The complete text transcript follows...

Must hit the road shortly to take the Democracy Train down to San Diego for tonight's Emergency Townhall on the Busby/Bilbray election results fiasco. If you're anywhere near San Diego or Oceanside please come out tonight! We had a great time last night in Los Angeles!

More on all of these as soon as I can catch my breath. The fine lower-cased blogger, skippy the bush kangaroo, was amongst those in attendance last night (as was Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire) and so I'll defer for the moment to skippy's coverage (since I don't have time for any of my own right). Skippy got a coupla small points slighly wrong, but I suspect he'll update since I let him know. As BRAD BLOG readers realize, unlike with AP and NY Times accuracy counts for bloggers.

Lou Dobbs report last night on the Brennan Center's year-in-the-making report on 120 threats to E-Voting Security was fan-damn-tastic. When I can catch my breath, I hope to get it, along with the video, posted in full. And more thoughts on that Brennan Center report. But for now, by way of teaser, Dobbs started it this way: "More evidence tonight that an increasing number of elections in this country can be outright stolen. And no one would ever know. It's incredible."

And, as of this hour, here are the results from his "Quick Poll" on this topic last night (you can still vote yourselves if you want)

Any questions? We're told he'll still be on the same beat tonight (6pm ET, 3pm PT --- you can send thank you notes/comments here to Dobbs for all of his very responsible coverage over the past three weeks and counting!)

Last, but most certainly not least, Washington Post covered the Brennan Center report themselves this morning. They highlighted the very message we've been trying to convey to Francine Busby, the voters in San Diego and across the nation over the last three weeks. The WaPo article begins this way...

See you tonight in San Diego!

A long awaited study of electronic voting machine security by computer scientists and security experts has been released this morning by the Brennan Center of Justice at the NYU School of Law.

Given preparations for tonight and tomorrow's "Emergency Townhall" events on the Busby/Bilbray mess (I'll be emceeing and "keynoting"), I've yet to be able to read the long report any more than cursorily, so I'm forced to defer for now to USA Today's coverage of it from this morning...

Here's the complete Executive Summary [PDF] of the Brennan Report.

UPDATE 6/30/06: The complete Brennan Center for Justice report is now posted here [PDF]. Their press release announcing it is here.

Earlier this evening, I heard Mark Crispin Miller as the guest on Air America's Majority Report discussing the Busby/Bilbray election fiasco with whoever was guest hosting tonight (sorry I missed the name.) As well, I'm told that Lara Flanders covered the issue on Air America as well tonight while guest hosting for Mike Malloy (I believe both Mimi Kennedy and Jeeni Criscenzo were her guests.)

But the largest media outlet to cover the story that we originally broke back on June 7th --- and who still failed to invite me as a guest...am I hard to reach? --- was Lou Dobbs on CNN.

Tonight, Dobbs covered the threat to democracy posed by the Voting Machine Sleepovers that we've been reporting on here since the Busby/Bilbray election was run on highly-hackable Diebold voting machines which were sent home overnight with poll workers for days and weeks prior to the election in contravention of both state and federal rules and laws.

One of our sources, San Diego Poll Worker Patti Newton, who we had helped CNN's producers get in touch with, is interviewed in tonight's report. Newton shows, on camera, the location of the "secure storage" she provided (her garage, near the paints) for the voting machines given to her for use in the "bellweather" Busby/Bilbray U.S. House Special Election a full week prior to the Election Day on June 6th. We originally posted some of Patti's story in our report back on June 8th.

Tonight Dobbs and reporter Kitty Pilgrim discussed "the threat to American democracy from within," the lack of security for e-voting machines and described them as "incredibly vulnerable to fraud, tampering, hacking and theft."

Here's a QuickTime video of Dobbs' report, courtesy of BRAD BLOG reader, Tab B. UPDATE: Here are faster streaming versions of the video courtesy of David Edwards...

Video in Streaming Flash format...
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The full text transcript from Dobbs' report tonight follows below. It's short! Please read it!...

My reporting here, and the concerns expressed about the Busby/Bilbray election results as announced, have little or nothing to do with Francine Busby or Brian Bilbray or even, in particular, the June 6th U.S. House special run-off election in California's 50th congressional district.

It has only a tiny bit more to do with San Diego. And only slightly more than that to do with California.

It has everything, however, to do with democracy. Across the entire country. As opposed to any one race in any one area.

If I've not been clear on that until now, please allow me to set the record straight.

The concerns I've reported --- and will continue to report --- over the blatant disregard for the rule of law and clear illegalities endorsed and encouraged by the SD County Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas, and apparently approved at this point by California's Secretary of State Bruce McPherson, have everything to do with the future viability of democracy in this country in general, and a perhaps naive hope that there's a chance in hell that taking action now will help to salvage a shred of legitimacy for this November's election.

That can only happen if action is taken now, however, directly in regard to the Busby/Bilbray election results as announced.

As far as I can see it, what happens in regard to Busby/Bilbray will be America's last, best, and only hope of affecting any real election reform prior to the November 7th general election. That's why, for me, this has become "Line in the Sand" time.

Never, in the two-and-a-half year history of The BRAD BLOG have I set aside almost everything else in order to cover and raise attention to a single story --- to the exclusion of almost every other story --- for such a long period of time as I have done since the original coverage of this matter the day after the June 6th election.

Since then, I've stated many times in both written and spoken words that I don't actually give a damn who won the Busby/Bilbray race and that I didn't even much bother to follow any of it prior to Election Day. I've got no dog in the hunt and only care that the person who actually received the most votes is the one that was declared the winner. At this point, there is absolutely no way of knowing who actually won.

The fact of the matter is that just two or three months after both the federal certification oversight body (NASED) and California's own Secretary of State issued emergency "security mitigation requirements" in light of newly discovered and massive vulnerabilities in Diebold's voting systems, those security requirements were entirely tossed out the window when all of the machines were sent home with poll workers for overnights in the days and weeks prior to the election. In doing so, the machines themselves were effectively rendered illegal and uncertified for use in any California election, and at the federal level as well.

Unless something is done, the same thing is about to happen in elections across this entire country.

(NOTE: Lou Dobbs will be covering this issue on CNN tonight I am told. Including interviews with some of the poll worker sources we gave them after originally reported on them here at BRAD BLOG.)

I'd have hoped that more media, candidates, individuals and even Election Reform organizations would have come to understand the national significance of what all the sturm and drang here has actually been about. If they haven't, that's likely my failing. So I'll try again to make both myself and the stakes here crystal clear...

What happens here and now --- in regard to this race and its results as announced --- will send a signal to elections administrators across the country. The signal will be one of two...

By John Gideon, Executive Director VotersUnite.Org

There is, for good reason, much concern and a lack of confidence in the process for federal qualification/certification of voting systems. Independent Test Authorities (ITA), who test the systems against federal standards, are not really 'independent' because they are paid to do testing by the vendors who also provide the test parameters. They look where they are told to look and go no further than that.

The next step in the process is review of the ITA test and the voting system by a panel of 'experts' called the Voting Systems Board Technical Committee. This committee is under the auspices of the National Association of State Elections Directors (NASED). One might think that this part of the process would be free and clear of any reason for concern. One would be wrong...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon while Brad takes care of other important business related to the Busby/Bilbray fiasco

Many Riverside County California voters went to the polls on primary election day, June 6, with the plan that they would use their right to request paper ballots instead of voting on the Sequoia Edge Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, touch-screen) voting machines.

Those voters will probably be surprised to learn that the county Registrar of Voters thumbed her nose at them. The paper/absentee ballots they were given --- Xerox copies of the ballot on 8 1/2×11 paper --- were then punched into the DRE's by election workers later. On the same touch-screen systems the voters had wanted to avoid by requesting a paper ballot in the first place. This was all done without their knowledge, without their permission, and without their ability to verify that their ballots were recorded as they had voted them.

Moreover, the voters were forced to attach their names and addresses to the ballots! So much for private voting in Riverside!...

UPDATE: Riverside County Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore responded to the story by Art Cassel with a 'Letter To The Editor'. See the text of the letter at the end of this article.

Congratulations to California Sec. of State Bruce McPherson!

Not only did you succeed in running the first federal election --- with illegal/decertified voting machines --- since massive vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Diebold systems you okayed for use (against state laws), but you've also now received an 18% pay raise in the bargain!

According to yesterday's Sacramento Bee, your pay will increase by $23,265 to a full $154,875 just after you run your next illegal election in November!

Nice work if you can get it! Not that he's not worth it, of course. Here's a video to give you an idea what $154,875 buys for California these days. (The following video and details explaining it were originally posted at BRAD BLOG here back in February, when McPherson was acting as if he didn't know for sure if he'd re-certify Diebold in the state. Nice acting, Bruce! It was dang-near believable!)

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(Hat tip Bruce Sims, who pays closer attention to California's elections --- by far --- than Bruce McPherson has ever done. And Sims does it on his own damn dime. For free! And also, unlike McPherson, doesn't have Diebold employees actually doing his work for him!)

Downloadable/printable versions of the flier, and more details, are available here...