Meanwhile meanwhile... The Wingnuts have discovered they too should be concerned about hackable Electronic Voting Machines, as we find in this article posted yesterday over at RedState blog --- the site co-founded by serial plagiarist and disgraced former Washington Post blogger (for three days anyway) Ben Domenech --- concerning new ownership of Sequoia by Venezuelan firm Smartmatic.

Apparently, the writer is concerned about Electronic Voting Machines only now that he's realized Smartmatic may be owned or controlled or unduly influenced by one Hugo Chavez. He goes so far as to quote these words by another blogger in his article:

While we're glad to see the Wingnuts suddenly giving a damn about Electronic Voting --- now that they're concerned about their own ox being gored by a company which may have left-leaning ownership --- we're hardly surprised that the anonymous blogger who calls him or herself "AcademicElephant" (we'll presume it's a "he") didn't seem to have such concerns about another Voting Machine Company with "connections to the George W. Bush regime [being] selected to run elections" all over our country in 2004 during one of the most contentious elections in our country's history.

But of more concern for the moment, now that Mr. Elephant has suddenly decided to be worried about such important matters as a transparent and accountable democracy, he sadly exhibits the all-too-familiar Wingnut tendency of having a problem with that whole pesky "fact thing".

By way of example, Mr. Elephant decides right off the bat to use some of the same tired old misleading propaganda in one of his early grafs...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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UPDATE FROM BRAD: Glenn Greewald over at Crooks & Liars had a great find which he posted today in time for Feingold himself to pick up on and mention during today's hearings (video clip here). Here's the crux of Greenwald's post...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The Christian Science Monitor reports that Jill Carroll was not aware that the first (and most replayed) video taped interview would be broadcast in Iraq or internationally. In fact Carroll may not even been certain that she was free during the interview.

This video contain several clips. CNN's Nick Robertson opens with a quick report saying that Jill Carroll was not aware that the interview would be broadcast. Next, we have included the complete raw interview footage. Finally, Miles O'Brien interviews the editor of The Christian Science Monitor for some behind-the-scenes information about Carroll's state of mind during her initial release and during that first video interview.

Jill Carroll's kidnappers simply left her at the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) in the city of Amariyah. She had not been released to American or Iraqi officials at the time of the first interview.

Carroll was told that the interview would be for 'internal' party use. The IIP owns Baghdad TV so maybe it isn't surprising that they broadcast the interview.

Meanwhile...in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, where plans to use Diebold's hackable Electronic Voting Equipment have recently been nixed, Plan B seems to be failing too. The machines they'd hope to use instead, as made by Sequoia Voting Systems, have now been shown to be hackable as well.

Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette picked up on the story yesterday, and followed up today on the testing being run in Allegheny County by Dr. Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon University professor, on the "new" Sequoia Voting Machines. The county had hoped to use these systems --- ten-year old Sequoia "Advantage" machines as purchased from Clark County, Nevada who is moving to a different Sequoia system --- in their upcoming Primary Elections in May. That plan, now may be in grave doubt.

The testing of the machines has found so many problems --- including Shamos' findings during "tampering tests" that he was able to instantly "transform a handful of votes into thousands" --- that he has now simply shut down the entire process described as "pointless" due to all of the errors in the software.

According to today's report...

As you may recall, it was machines made by Sequoia which failed so miserably across the state in Illinois just last week during the Primary Elections there. Just a handful of the many mainstream reports covering the meltdown are here, here and here.

Now pay attention...because this can be confusing...

Illinois' Cook County (Chicago) had used new Sequoia "Edge" machines in the recent primary that had been purchased by Clark County, Nevada. Since Illinois' primaries were first, and Sequoia didn't have time or inventory to fill both orders, Cook used Clark's machines for last week's contest only.

Those "Edge" machines, which failed so disastrously in Cook County, IL, are now to be shipped to Clark County, NV who is selling their own ten-year old Sequoia "Advantage" machines to Allegheny County, PA. It is those ten-year old machines which are now being tested in Allegheny and failing so horrendously.

All of which begs the questions: How well were those "Advantage" machines tested in Nevada in the last ten years? How much is Nevada now looking forward to using the new and failed "Edge" machines that they had loaned for a single use to Cook County, IL? And finally, will Clark County, NV bother to test them to find out if they too are hackable like the ones --- modified a bit by Sequoia on the way, apparently --- that they've just unloaded on Allegheny County, PA?

But back to the halted tests in Allegheny...and the claims by Sequoia officials that the problems found were "no big deal". Shamos doesn't see them as "no big deal" and is concerned that a malicious hacker could do precisely what he was able to do in these tests...

State Sen. Debra Bowen released a statement moments ago about yesterday's report that the new computerized California Voter Registration Database is summarily rejecting some 26% of all new or re-registering voters across the statewide. The LA Times reported yesterday that some 43% of voters in Los Angeles County alone have been dumped by the new system.

We'll have more on all of this soon. Working on a number of items at once, as well as being in full catch--up mode after being on the road for a week. So for now, here's Bowen's release in full...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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More than 30,000 Iraqis have been forced to flee from their homes after being threatened with death due to sectarian differences. This video from ABC News reports on one Iraqi family that has been forced into exile. While the video doesn't reflect the magnitude of the problem, it is one of the first reports broadcast to a large American audience.

In the ABC News video report, Professor of Mideast Studies at Sarah Lawrance College Fawaz Gerges says, "This is the beginning of the nightmare." Fawaz's experience tells him that Iraq is at the early stages of Bosnia's ethnic cleansing or Lebanon's civil war.

You'll recall that in February the Palm Beach Post reported that "conservative" extremist Ann Coulter may have committed a vote fraud felony by signing someone else's address to her registration form in Florida and then voting in the wrong precinct --- a crime which, if convicted, could earn her three years behind bars.

(It's been pointed out to us that such bars would have to be very close together to keep her from simply slithering through them to escape...Though even at that, we're not sure there is steel strong enough to keep her from being able to chew her way to freedom. But we digress.)

A few days after the story originally broke, Coulter claimed publicly she didn't even live in Palm Beach where she reportedly committed the crime. The Post reporter who broke the story, Jose Lambiet, quickly replied that he had hard evidence that she does, in fact, live in Palm Beach (next door to town councilman Bill Brooks on Seabreeze Ave.) and he characterized Coulter's denial as "absolutely a bold-faced lie."

Yesterday the Palm Beach Post offered still more "skinny" on the latest in the Ann Coulter Voter Fraud Felony Scandal. Her denials about being a Palm Beach resident is about to be tested --- first by the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor Arthur Anderson, and then perhaps by the Florida State Attorney to whom the entire matter may be referred.

Coulter's now got 30 days to 'splain herself, according to Lambiet in the Post. Please read on...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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MSNBC Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviews former Nixon White House Council John Dean. Dean is scheduled to testify at a Friday hearing on Feingold's Censure Resolution.

As Nixon's White House Council during Watergate, Dean testified before the Senate committee that eventually lead to Nixon's resignation. John Dean has compared President Bush to Nixon and says that Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is illegal.

The Friday hearing will be held by Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter's who strongly opposes the censure resolution. Specter withheld the names of other witness scheduled to testify.

In this interview, Dean says:

John Dean also comments on the White House Chief of Staff change and how Jack Abramoff is a threat to the Bush Administration.

Just out from AP, the Florida state Attorney General has subpoenaed the three Electronic Voting Machine companies who have all refused to do business with Leon County, FL Election Supervisor Ion Sancho since he discovered that Diebold's optical-scan voting system was vulnerable to hackers.

Sancho's discovery, revealed via a mock election test last December, showed in no uncertain terms that Diebold's systems could be hacked, the results of an election flipped, without a trace being left behind.

Since then, as The BRAD BLOG has previously reported, all three Voting Machine Vendors certified to do business in the state have all refused to sign contracts with the heroic elected official (even though sales reps from both ES&S and Sequoia had initially promised to do so).

According to AP...

At this time, it's still unknown whether the companies refusal to do business with Sancho is due to collusion on their part, or simply because ES&S and Sequoia are concerned that Sancho may actually examine their machines with the same rigor previously applied to Diebold's machines. Sancho, though we've asked him on several occassions (one of those occasions was live on The Young Turks radio show, the MP3 of that interview is here) refuses to speculate.

The now infamous "hack test" has had repurcussions around the nation, including in California where it caused the Sec. of State to momentarily pause, commission a panel of experts to analyze situation and independently confirm the gaping security hole along with finding at least 16 others, before going ahead and certifying the hackable machines in the state anyway. A group of 25 state voters recently filed a lawsuit to prevent the purchase and use of Diebold machines in the state.

In Maryland, one of Diebold's original "showcase states", the Republican Governor has called for a ban of Diebold's machines and the State House of Reps recently voted 137 to 0 to do exactly that.

For its part, the state of Florida's Sec. of State --- while recognizing the problem exposed by Sancho and warning all state Elections Officials about the matter --- has nonetheless attacked and threatened the elected Sancho with removal from office if he's unable to strike a deal with one of the vendors certified to do business in the state. That, despite wide support from around the country, and in his own county of Leon which is home to the state's capitol of Tallahassee --- otherwise known as JebVille.

UPDATE 8:09pm PT: Looks like the heat from the AG, coupled with Sancho's previous threat of legal action for breach of contract against Diebold are causing some movement. According to Tallahassee Democrat tonight:

Whether that's a good or bad thing, we'll leave to someone else to determine. But, never a dull moment.

UPDATE 3/30/06: Jim March of BBV posts the actual subpoenas and interrogatory questions sent to all three companies by the AG. Looks like he means business and seems to be building a case for collusion and anti-trust violations amongst the companies. (Hat-tip to commenter "Catherine A")

We've been dreading this. And you're not gonna like it either.

It's an entirely new can of worms in the Electronic Rape of American Electoral Democracy. The next wave --- beyond the electronic voting machines, and perhaps even more alarming --- in the arsenal of those out to game the system for partisan advantage.

No matter what we do, no matter how many successes, the Bad Guys --- those who hate Democracy and American Values --- are always one step ahead of us, it seems.

The horrifically written and, of course, ironically named "Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002" requires, as of January 1, 2006, each state to implement "a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list."

And guess who's writing the software for it, in California, Ohio and elsewhere? That's right...our old friends at Diebold, Inc.

While we've put off reporting on much of this until now --- as prompted by story out today (in the MSM of all places!) --- we've been working on an extremely disturbing part of this story for some time relating directly to all of this out in, you guessed it, Ohio. We've yet to run the story for a number of reasons. But we hope to have much more on it, in all its troubling detail, in the not-too-distant future.

For today, however, we'll stick to the report coming out of California in this morning's Los Angeles Times which says that, since the first of year, when California's new computerized Voter Registration Database has gone state-wide, Los Angeles County has "rejected 14,629 people --- 43% of those who registered from Jan. 1 to March 15."

The rejections occur, amongst other reasons, due to failures of exact matching between voter applications and the state's motor vehicle registration (DMV) database to which they are now auto-magically compared. So, if a voter registers (or re-registers after moving to a new location) as "Brad Friedman" but has "Bradley Friedman" on his driver's license, he'll be auto-kicked out of the voter registration system and may not find out until he shows up at the polls on Election Day! That is, if he even knows where to show up since he may no longer receive sample ballots and poll location information etc. in the mail!...

In case you missed it, AP recently lifted an article as researched and written by RAW STORY and published a version of it as their own. Along the way, they seem to have forgotten to give RAW the attribution they deserved for the many hours of research and work they put into the story in order to file the piece in the first place.

RAW's Larisa Alexandrovna originally discovered the gem after plowing through a bunch of Bush Administration policy statements on National Security Clearance policies and comparing the most recent version to previous versions of that same policy side-by-side. One of the RAW researchers confirmed her work and the subtle, but important changes she found, and then Larisa, along with RAW's Executive Editor John Byrne finally filed the piece at RawStory.com.

After all of that hard work, a human rights group shared RAW's story with AP who eventually filed their own very familiar story using the work as originally unearthed by RAW. They've since admitted to being given RAW's article and using it as the starting point for their own work, which walks a dangerously close line towards plagarism.

But even as they now admit that their story originated with RAW's reporting, they still refuse to give credit where credit's due. They've now given several lame and still-changing reasons for failing to acknowledge the "oversight" including "we do not credit blogs" and later, "we only credit blogs we know."

Larisa writes about the matter at Huff Po here and here, and John Byrne wrote an article covering AP's comments and comparing both articles directly for RAW here.

Setting aside the fact that RAW STORY is NOT EVEN A BLOG --- apparently any independent news source which originates on the Internet is now considered a "blog" by some in the MSM...all the easier to dismiss them by, we suppose --- The BRAD BLOG is a blog and yet we find the practice of failing to give us due credit equally objectionable for the many stories we have broken which were later picked up by the MSM as well.

Though most "blogs" do not do the sort of original reporting that we do here, it's certainly harder to argue that we're not one --- what with the word "BLOG" in our name and all. And yet, I'm forced to ask: What the hell does the word "blog" have to do with anything anyway?

Journalism is journalism is journalism. The quality of the reporting and the journalism therein is what matters no matter the name given to the media originating the work.

The reason that all of this matters is not so that Larisa or RAW or even myself or The BRAD BLOG receives some form of personal adulation or ego stroke for our hard work.

So if not for the good of our own personal self-esteem, why does proper credit to such sources really matter?...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart pokes fun at Bush's White House 'shake up' and exposes more ridicules Bush Administration deceptions in the process.

Stewart is not impressed with Bush's pick for Chief of Staff:

Blogged by Brad on the road...

As The BRAD BLOG reported last week, a Conservative Republican former Texas Supreme Court Justice had been considering an Election Contest after electronic voting machine problems and inexplicable tallies plagued the first-in-the-nation March 7th primary in the Lone Star State.

Steve Smith --- who ran for election to the state Supreme Court, Place 2, in the Republican primary against an opponent backed by both Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry and the Bush family --- will be filing an official Election Contest this afternoon in Travis County District Court, The BRAD BLOG has learned.

Since our previous report, the Smith for Supreme Court campaign has been examining election tallies around the state and report that they continue to find anomolies in virtually every county they look into.

"The more research we do, the more irregularities we find," campaign manager David Rogers told The BRAD BLOG this morning.

The problems are being found on machines made by both Hart InterCivic and Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S) --- the two major Electronic Voting Machine vendors supplying the state of Texas.

Rogers says the campaign plans to file the Contest before 5pm (CT) today. The Contest (to be posted in full here when available) will outline some of the many problems they have found so far including counties "where there were more votes than voters."

They hope the Election Contest may allow, for the first time, a closer examination of both the Hart InterCivic and ES&S electronic voting machines used in Texas elections, as well as elsewhere around the country.

An earlier statement from the campaign had detailed a number of the campaign's initial findings including several mysterious totals in Smith's home county of Tarrant where officials admit some 100,000 votes were incorrectly added to the reported results on Election Night.

Smith had outperformed his statewide average in Tarrant County during the 2004 Election by 13%, but this year, his campaign reports, he underperformed the statewide results by 23%. One other such puzzling number reported previously by Smith's campaign:

Says Rogers, "We are contesting the state as a whole, but looking at specific larger counties where there are problems and a few of the smaller counties where the mistakes were absolutely egregious."

The BRAD BLOG has also previously reported on whistleblower William Singer who had worked at both Hart InterCivic and then as an "Election Programmer" in Tarrant County. Singer had attempted to alert the Texas and Ohio Secretaries of State and Attornies General about concerns, including possible criminal fraud by Hart, ES&S and Tarrant County, as long ago as July of 2004. His letters were all virtually ignored by officials in both states. The Texas Secretary of State was recently forced to shutdown a mandated recount in Tom Green County when it was discovered that recount numbers from the machines differed by some 20% from results reported on Election Night.

Up until now, many critics who have doubted or ignored the many concerns about the hackable hardware and secret software used in Electronic Voting, as expressed for some time by Election Integrity Advocates, have said that it is only Democrats who seem to be concerned about results as tallied on such machines which are now blanketing the country in the wake of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).

That flawed law was written and sponsored in large part by Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and passed in 2002 along with heavy lobbying by Voting Machine Vendor Diebold, Inc. of North Canton, OH and their top lobbyist, Ney's former chief of staff, David DiStefano. HAVA's full impact kicks in by statute for the first time this year. Ney recently stepped down from his chairmanship of the U.S. House Administration Committee after being named in one of the plea bargains by disgraced former Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Smith's election challenge, by a conservative Republican Supreme Court Justice from Texas, may well help to change the tenor of the debate over Electronic Voting, as is becoming apparent in several national mainstream publications of late including USA TODAY who published a front page story finally touching on these matters today.

We are on the road for the bulk of today and this evening, but if one of our friendly Guest Bloggers can update this item with a copy of the full Election Contest as filed by Steve Smith later today --- once we receive it --- we will do so.

UPDATE 3:50pm PT: Campaign managaer David Rogers has contacted us to let us know the campaign has found additional information that they wish to investigate before filing their contest. Due to this new information they will be delaying the filing by 24 hours.

UPDATE 4/1/06: The complete Election Contest filing is now attached here. [PDF] We hope to have a new report on the details/specifics later.

Blogged by Brad on the road...

"Primary voting-machine troubles raise concerns for '06" is the headline on the front page of today's USA Today. The article even quotes regular BRAD BLOG Guest blogger John Gideon of VotersUnite.org.

Here's their lede...

The article is mostly stuff that regular BRAD BLOG readers are likely familiar with while the MSM is still busy playing catch-up on these matters. (Who could have forseen such troubles, after all?)

The Voting Machine Industry and Elections Officials, are, in general, still in denial mode --- blaming "human error" for the "glitches". That too will change over time as the MSM realizes they're being sold a bill of good when they report such things within that phony framework.

The story covers briefly, USA Today-style, the many troubles in the IL primaries (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), including the 400+ missing Sequoia Memory Cards in IL (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), the 100,000 extra votes added by Hart InterCivic and ES&S machines in Tarrant County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here and here), the TX Sec. of State's shutdown of a recount in Tom Green County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here) and the former Conservative Republican (they don't mention that part) Supreme Court Justice preparing to challenge the election in TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here --- with more to come very shortly on this, btw!)

From the 2 states to have disastrous primaries so far, USA Today also looks forward to the 48 more still ahead of us, noting that "10 states hold primaries in May, including Pennsylvania, which is scrambling to train voters and poll workers."

And our man Gideon, ever the eternal pessimist (can't image why) is then quoted as follows:

No worries. Plenty of Election Officials and Voting Machine Vendor spokesfolks are quoted in more detail to let us know that everything is perfectly under control.