Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

"We fondly remember Mayberry; but it was a fictional town. We have to move on."

So said Catherine Carpenter, the Administrative Assistant and self-described "Queen of Town Hall" and "Jill of All Trades" in the once sleepy little southern town of Bluffton, South Carolina.

Last night was the last time that the citizens of Bluffton would vote using paper ballots after going to the only polling place they ever needed: Town Hall. It has been a long-standing tradition that at the end of the day, when the polls closed, the citizens of the town would gather in the hall and watch as the votes are counted.

Each vote is marked with a slash mark on a chalk board and audience members call out "tally " each time a group of five votes is recorded.

But now, according to Carpenter, the town has grown too large to do that anymore. Since 2000 this once little town has grown from 1278 citizens to over 4800. They are very quickly being swallowed up into the retirement community craze that has swept north from Florida. And that means Tuesday's gathering of citizens to watch the tally of the votes and to call out "tally" will move on too...

A group of 16 former intelligence officials sent a letter to George W. Bush earlier today expressing their outrage over "the breach of trust between this Administration and members of the intelligence community that has resulted from the Valerie Plame case."

The letter is described by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson as having been signed by a "bipartisan" group "representing a variety of political views."

"We are agreed on one thing," said Johnson in an Email receved by The BRAD BLOG this evening, "we are Americans and believe this country is worth defending."

Johnson had been a classmate of Valerie Plame/Wilson's during training at the CIA.

The missive, sent late this afternoon from a variety of former and retired officials, calls on George W. Bush to keep his "promise to restore honor to the White House," and demands accountability for any staff members "implicated in the leak of Valerie Wilson's classified identity." It goes on to decry the "bond of trust" that was "shattered with the exposure" of Wilson's identity.

One White House official, so far, I. Scooter Libby, has been indicted on charges relating to an ongoing investigation into the matter by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

The former intelligence officials express that whether her exposure was "unwitting or intentional" the action's by Administration officials has destroyed both Wilson's career and her intelligence network "which was devoted to protecting this country from the threat of weapons of mass destruction."

They call on Bush to "immediately suspend the clearances of all White House personelle" who spoke to reporters about Wilson's CIA affiliation while taking the occassion to remind Bush about Dick Cheney's dismissal of the Air Force Chief of Staff who inadvertantly disclosed classified information to the press.

The letter, which was CC'd to several members of Congress, follows in its entirety...

This from a friend and emailer who attended today's protest over the recent dismisal of liberal columnist Robert Scheer at the LA Times. Scheer's apparent crime was being right on this administration and their trumped-up war from the get-go. That won't do as the LA Times works hard to both destroy itself and appease the Bill O'Reilly McCarthyites of the New American Right. You'll be delighted to know that while Scheer was removed, wingnut Jonah Goldberg has been added to the Opinion Page. Scheer's own website will continue to carry his columns, along with other papers around the country.

The LA Times can be reached at Letters@LATimes.com if you have any thoughts for them.

UPDATE: More details sent to me on how to contact the folks who need to be contacted:

Several additional photos from today's protest follow...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The little town of Bluffton, SC will decide to cease hand tallying their paper ballots after an election today. They have always had a town meeting after the polls close in which the votes are read off and tallied on chalk boards with the audience yelling “tally” after each group of five slash marks is put on the board. Now some feel the town is getting too big and they will go to DREs in the future. ...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Important words from P. Sabin Willett, from the Washington Post, Monday, November 14, 2005; A21. Emphasis added.

Detainees Deserve Court Trials

Death of a thousand cuts...That's what seems to be in store either for American democracy, or what will be required to finally take bring down the entire anti-democratic Electronic Voting cabal in this country, as aided and abetted in their crimes against American Democratic Values by the Corporate Mainstream Media.

We take heart that there is more and more coverage of these matters these days, even if there are more and more unfortunate reasons to have such coverage in the first place. VotersUnite.org's "Daily Voting News", now posted each day on BRAD BLOG, gives one some sense of how much is going on --- both good and bad --- in regards to Election-related issues in this country, and just how much of it does make it into the news somewhere, if only (and too often) on just the local level.

At least the public's and the media's awareness continues to grow --- slowly, but surely --- even as the incidents of democracy in disrepair increase exponentially along with that awareness (and along with the obscene outpouring of virtually unchecked HAVA money to States and Counties in the bargain).

Nonetheless, we always look for reasons to be optimistic, and our usual coterie of Election Reform Media All-Stars continues to both grow and produce stellar work. In addition to the recent Free Press exposé by Fitrakis and Wasserman on the inexplicable in Ohio's election last week, which we mentioned previously here (as well as at HuffPo), there are a few other notable heroic voices of late that you should know about.

Debra LoGuercio, the editor of the Winters Express and syndicated columnist for a number of smaller West Coast papers, continues to take both her democracy and her role of media watchdog seriously. Her latest column this week, "Where in the World is Democracy?" [link fixed] picks up on my previous calls (both at BRAD BLOG and later at HuffPo) for Mainstream Corporate Media coverage --- hell, even a single sentence would do! --- of the recent landmark report from the non-partisan Governmental Accountability Office (GAO). That report, which confirms so many of the problems with Electronic Voting that we've been reporting on here for more than a year, is apparently less important to the corporate media braintrust, according to LoGuercio, than figuring out where in the world Matt Lauer is.

We're happy as well to welcome one Kathy Gill into the still-all-too-exclusive club of journalists who give a damn about democracy. She's posted an article on that GAO report yesterday at About.com. Welcome to the small, but still-growing club, Kathy! Glad you're on board and please keep up the good --- and important --- work!

And as Election Day unravelled last week, our friend Robert Koehler of Tribune Media Services once again opines on the MIA MSM in regard to Election Fraud in America's once-great democracy in his latest piece, "A Crime Without a Name - 'Concern' about election fraud is useless without guts and anger". He speaks, amongst other things, about John Kerry's failure to stand up for what is right here, and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to investigate and report without that kick in the pants.

The always sharp Dave Astor of Editor & Publisher has added some visibility by picking up on Bob's column in a quick article about it yesterday. For this, we are pleased, since so many of Bob's Tribune Media clients have shown neither the guts nor the anger required to save our democracy, and have chosen instead to avoid running many of his important articles on Election Reform issues altogether. It'll be interesting as usual, to see how many of them don't pick up Koehler's latest, despite --- once again --- the elegant way in which he is able to express the nightmare of our crumbling democracy.

To poorly paraphrase a famous movie tagline; In the corporate-conglomerated media world of the 21st century no one can hear you scream. But some have heard, and will continue to yell even louder...And we'll keep at the rest of them until they realize what's at stake...no matter how many cuts it takes.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

The Daily Show's Rob Corddry reports on the President's Veterans Day speech. Bush attacked Democrats for "re-writing" history and sending "mixed messages" to the troops. The Democrats and others have been critical of the Administration for misusing intelligence and misleading the country into the Iraq war.

Corddry reports that "getting us out of Iraq is going to require tremendous misleadership..." He continues by saying:

Video in Windows Media format...
Video in QuickTime format...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

It was a relatively slow news day today. There are a few races, across the nation, that have still not been decided and at least one may end up being re-voted. In Louisiana it has been recommended that any New Orleans election be delayed for awhile. ...

"Torture" is not really torture. It is now officially: "enhanced interrogation techniques".

That, according to National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley yesterday whose latest job, it seems, is to clarify that when Bush said last week "We do not torture," what he really meant to say was "We do torture, but we just refer to it as 'enhanced interrogation techniques' so we can trick ourselves into being able to sleep at night."

With so much going on, we haven't had much time to report here on the extraordinary outcome of last Tuesday's election in Ohio where the crooked state that brung you --- by hook and by crook --- a second term for George W. Bush may have turned in results so staggeringly impossible, that perhaps even the Ohio Mainstream Corporate Media will have no choice but to look into it. And that's a good thing.

As usual, the Free Press' heroic Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are on the case. Their article on what happened on ballot issues 1 through 5 last week is A MUST READ for anybody who still gives the slightest damn about whatever democracy might be left in America.

We'll try to summarize here briefly. There were five initiatives on the ballot last week. Issue 1 was a controversial proposition for $2 billion in new state spending. The Christian Right was opposed (because some of the new funds might go to stem cell research), but otherwise, the Republican Governor Taft's Administration (he recently pleaded guilty to several counts of corruption) was pushing it hard alongside progressives in the state.

The Columbus Dispatch's pre-election polling, which Fritrakis and Wasserman describe as "uncannily accurate for decades", called the race correctly within 1% of the final result. The margin of error for the poll was +/- 2.5% with a 95% confidence interval. On Issue 1, the Dispatch poll was right on the money. They predicted 53% in favor, the final result was 54% in favor.

But then came Issues 2 through 5 put forward by ReformOhioNow.org --- a bi-partisan coalition pushing these four initiatives for Electoral Reform in the Buckeye State largely in response to their shameful '04 Election performance led by the extremely partisan Secretary of State (and Bush/Cheney '04 Co-Chair) J. Kenneth Blackwell.

On those four issues, which Blackwell and the Christian Right were against, the final results were impossibly different --- and we mean impossibly! --- from both the Dispatch's final polling before the election and all reasoned common-sense. Take a look:

Now, you tell us...What could possibly explain such unheard of differences between the Dispatch's poll and the final results?

Now, we'll tell you...This was the year that Ohio, under the encouragement and mandates of Blackwell, rolled out new Electronic Touch-Screen Voting Machines in 44 of its 88 counties...41 of them employing the same Diebold Touch-Screen Machines that California's Republican Sec. of State decertified in this state when 20% of them failed this summer in the largest test of its kind ever held.

Those would be the very same Electronic Voting Machines which a recent GAO Report (still unmentioned by a single wire-service or mainstream American newspaper) confirmed to be easily hackable.

Will the absurdly skewed results from last Tuesday's Ohio Election finally light a fire under the media --- either nationally or just in Ohio alone --- to look into what the hell is going on here?! We remain hopeful...if not optimistic.

The Free Press article is a must read, as mentioned, but we'll share their closing thoughts here on the possible reasons for the wildly unexplained discrepancy between the final polling and the final results which, as they posit, are due to either a completely inexplicable breakdown of the Dispatch's historically accurate polling methods wildly beyond the margin-of-error for all initiatives except Issue 1...or...somebody hacked that vote count:

Anybody in the Mainstream Media ready to give a damn yet?

Cross-Posted at Huffington Post.

UPDATE: Further information, updated news, etc. on this issue now available in this new post.

Guest blogged by David Edwards

On Friday, George W. Bush departed from traditional Veteran's Day Presidential speeches by using his speech as a platform to attack Democrats and others who have criticized the misuse of intelligence to justify the Iraq war.

Today, the White House continues its efforts to rewrite history and deny charges that intelligence was cherry-picked to sell an unpopular war to the American public.

Senator Levin was interviewed on CNN this morning where he attempted to correct the record and counter the White House spin.

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Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today gives us a good article on the GAO report and great editorials from New York and Ohio. The man who sold Mobile, AL their Shouptronic machines opines and misinforms in the Mobile Register. And from Arizona we have more on the state senate hearings scheduled for early next year....

Guest blogged by David Edwards

From today's edition of NBC's Meet the Press: Video in Windows Media format... Video in QuickTime format...

Guest blogged by David Edwards

From today's edition of Fox News Sunday: Video in Windows Media format... Video in QuickTime format...

Guess blogged by Winter Patriot

From Lectric Law Library

And from the Wikipedia:

Everybody clear on this? Good!

Now here's a call to action from hilzoy of Obsidian Wings, sent to us by a friend at Ohio University, via BRAD BLOG commentor Jazzolog (everyone clear on that, too? Good!!)...