This just in as Brad is headed over to the FOX News studios. Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported on the Republican voter registration outfit who had allegedly been illegally changing thousands of registrations from Democratic to Republican.

Last night the head of that GOP backed group, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), was arrested by the California State Election Fraud Taskforce and Oxnard, CA Police.

According to CA SoS Debra Bowen's press release, Jacoby himself had committed voter registration fraud and perjury by lying on his own voter registration form. (That's similar to what Ann Coulter did, though she not only committed felony voter registration fraud, she also committed actual voter fraud, as well, even though such fraud is exceedingly rare.)

UPDATE FROM BRAD: It was my pleasure to break this story today on Fox "News" of all places! Thanks to John Gideon for getting it posted as I was on the roll towards the studio. I'll have the video up of my appearance on Fox, and the "Fox News Alert" I was able to do, later tonight (it's now posted here). Please note, this isn't the first time there have been serious problems with GOP-gathered voter registrations in CA, as outlined recently at Alternet. Looks like the GOP's voter registration record for errors far outpaced ACORN! Whaddaya know? (Our special coverage of the GOP's ACORN "Voter Fraud" Hoax is right here.) More updates now at bottom of article.

Bowen's press release, just out, on Jacoby's arrest is posted in full below, along with a number of additional updates after it...

17 days until Election Day.

Along with early voting we are getting reports of early vote switching. The ES&S iVotronic machines in Jackson Co. West Virginia are reportedly swapping voters selections from one candidate to another.

VotersUnite has done some research of state laws and talked with election officials in a few states on the subject of straight-party voting. The laws and rules from one state to another are a confusing mess and even state election officials did not understand the rules without checking. How can the machine vendors and ballot programmers be expected to get it right? The best answer for everyone is to vote the whole ballot but avoid straight-party voting. We have done our best to explain the rules in each state for the voters HERE. ...

18 days until Election Day.

Today was a day for court decisions. Finally a judge in New Jersey has released the Princeton University report on the state’s Sequoia Voting Machines. Earlier Sequoia had released their response to the report. After the recent failures of their voting systems in Palm Beach Co. Florida and Washington DC Sequoia must be very concerned about this report and what it contains. One item of note is that the inspection and resulting report was the result of an election problem that called into question the accuracy of the Sequoia Advantage voting system. The cause of that failure is discussed in the Princeton report but that section of the report is one of the only sections that Sequoia ignores.

Also this morning the Supreme Court sided with the voters of Ohio and freed the Secretary of State and county election officials from a ruling by a lower court that would have caused as many as 200,000 voters to lose their right to vote in this election....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Tea-leaves from The Murfreesboro Post in Tennessee...

This is 3,292 voters voting in one day in six early voting sites and lines up to two hours long. What are they going to do on Election Day?

There is something very wrong here.

19 days until Election Day.

In a small but notable victory Vermonters for Voting Integrity were able to prove to the voters in Calais Vermont that it was a good thing to stand-up against the Secretary of State’s office and vote down the use of Diebold voting machines for their elections. The town will continue to hand-count their ballots. Congratulations and good work to VVI and the voters of Calais.

The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting Foundation report today on what states they believe will be the most likely to be trouble spots on election day. The report evaluates each state by four criteria: procedures for issuing emergency paper ballots, reconciling ballot tallies, providing paper records of votes cast, and post-election audits....

20 days until Election Day.

“Experts” are all speaking out and warning of voting meltdowns across the country. Where were these “experts” six months ago? Where have they been since the last national election? Why have they not spoken out against these same voting systems that they are concerned about now? Of course it wasn’t political for them to take a position against the use of these machines until now.

1-866-OUR-VOTE; 1-866-MY-VOTE1 and now YouTube and WiredNews all want voters to report when they have problems voting. And what will happen with the data collected by these groups? Will any of it be compiled and released after the election? Probably not a lot of it is my guess....

21 days until Election Day.

Officials in West Virginia have just identified a ballot programming error that will affect straight-party voting. How counties got through their “Logic and Accuracy” testing without discovering this error should give everyone a hint as to why it is important to do testing that is thorough and robust. As to responsibility for the error; all evidence points right back to ES&S, of course. This is more evidence that straight-party voting is not wise. Voters should skip the straight-party option completely and vote in each race; but they need to vote in each race.

Today the NJ judge involved in the Sequoia voting machine problems has ordered the state to tighten up security around the voting machines. She wants everyone back in court on Friday to discuss what actions are being taken to secure the machines. It is also expected that she will finally rule on releasing the Princeton University report on the Sequoia machines....

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

From the Charleston Daily Mail...

This last sentence is important. The county, and apparently other counties around the state, had already done their Logic and Accuracy testing and they had failed to find this problem. Thus the L&A testing was not thorough enough to find problems in the ballot programming done by ES&S. Of course, there is another question and that is who did the L&A testing? The county? Or ES&S?

And, as we've implored recently, do not use the straight-party ticket option when voting! Machines have failed across the country, in state after state, to count such votes accurately!

22 days until Election Day.

In what may be a program unique to Connecticut, UConn ‘s VoTeR Center performs a pre-election audit of the memory cards for the state’s Premier AccuVote Optical-Scan tabulators. This is a smart program that should be mirrored across the nation.

The University just released a report of its audit of the memory cards used in the state’s August primary election. The cards were programmed by LHS Associates, which also provides voting systems, programs memory cards, and does other election work for the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. UConn received 185 memory cards directly from LHS. Ten of those cards or 5.4% had nothing but “noise” on them. How many bad cards were sent out to polling places in CT? How many bad cards were sent to polling places in the other states LHS services? ...

Election officials across the country are beginning to make the same statements they make before every election. In order to try to give the voters some confidence they are talking about how they are ready. The voting machines are programmed and tested and all set and this year they will have another successful election. Of course on Nov. 4, just 23 days from today, we will hear the same reports of voter disenfranchisement, long lines at the polls causing voters to give up and not vote, vote flipping on touch-screen machines, and all of the other negative reports, and many will come from the very same jurisdictions that are now talking about being ready.

In a year when turn-out is predicted to be much higher than ever before county election officials should be looking to add polling sites yet in Fairfield Co, Ohio, the county has decided to delete 25 polling sites. This will cause voters to have to travel a further distance to vote and will increase the length of the lines. The county claims they are being forced into this decision by recent rulings from the Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner. If that is correct then Brunner needs to reconsider her rulings. If the county is just trying to make it more difficult for voters to vote, then Brunner needs to re-direct the county. Either way Brunner needs to take action....

I want to thank all of those who commented on my rant of yesterday. Your kind comments are very much appreciated. One email I received was especially meaningful to me. The subject line was “In loving memory - Michael, James, Andrew” and after a short bit of encouraging text, and the posters signature line, were three names: Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. The names were then followed by a little historical reminder of “Freedom Summer” and the part those three heroes played in the Civil Rights Movement.

I realized that we all, all of us, owe it to those three, and all like them, past and present, who have given so much for our democracy, to keep fighting the good fight...

I’m 61 years old. I’ve been doing this work full-time for nearly the last five years. I long for the days, before I learned so much, when I was ignorant about dirty tricks, phony voter fraud accusations, voter list purges, voter suppression, poorly designed and inaccurate voting machines, absentee paper ballots that have the voters' political parties on the mail-in envelopes (Yes, Broward Co, Florida, does that and strips privacy away from the voters and state law allows them to do it), long lines at the polls, and every other attempt to keep voters from voting and votes from being counted accurately, if at all.

It was kinda nice not knowing about all of those issues. Oh, maybe someone would bring up the old story about ballot boxes floating in the bay. What bay was that? San Francisco? Lake Michigan off of Chicago? The Hudson River? The location seems to have changed with the person telling the story.

It was nice thinking our democracy actually worked the way our founding fathers envisioned it would. It was nice thinking that, no matter for whom I voted, the majority voice was heard. Now, it just feels dirty and somewhat depressing.

I know way too much. It was nice being ignorant...

“When I finally saw the results of our [EVEREST] tests, I thought I was going to throw up. I didn’t think it would be that bad. And it was — it was awful. I looked at it on a Saturday morning, and that night I went to bed and woke up [just before 4:00 on] Sunday morning going, “Oh my God.” I never wake up on the weekends — trust me.”
Jennifer Brunner, Ohio's Secretary of State, when asked in a recent interview about the state’s EVEREST evaluation of the voting machines used in Ohio.

The group of potential voters that has participated the least in past years has probably been students. From all reports students seem to be engaged in this year’s election and will be turning out in large numbers. That can only be a good thing. However, it seems that some are doing all they can to keep the students away from the polls. Our second “Featured” article discusses the actions being taken to disenfranchise student voters and the counter-actions to enfranchise them.

Regular readers will notice that DVN is growing longer and longer as the election gets closer and closer. There will be a time, probably within a week of the election, when DVN will just be too long to be of use in a once-a-day publication. When that happens, as I have done in previous years, I will split DVN into a “Morning Edition” and “Evening Edition”.

One of the issues that bears watching is voter registrations. The news has contained many articles, of late, about the huge influx of voter registrations. Counties are under the gun to get the registrations completed and filed into the data base. The big question is will they be able to do it in the time they have left? How many voters who filed new registrations or changes in their registrations are going to end up being told they have to vote on a provisional ballot? And then either not have that ballot counted because the county has decided not to count provisional ballots because they won’t make any difference in the outcome as we have heard in the past; OR, have their ballot not counted because the county never did get the voters application processed?

Remember please, do NOT use the straight party option if you get that option. Take the extra few minutes and vote each race on the ballot. ...

Several days ago, in this space, we recommended that voters who have the ability to vote “straight party” do not exercise that right. Yes, it is easier because all you have to do is mark one box on the ballot for the top-of-the-ticket votes are all taken care of for you. However, consider this. In North Carolina (and South Carolina also) the “straight party” vote does NOT include President.

According to the first “Featured” article, ballots in North Carolina have the following words: “A Straight Party vote is a vote for all candidates of that party in partisan offices. Individual partisan office selections are not necessary if you select a Straight Party below.” What the ballot doesn’t tell you is that this does not include President. How many thousands of voters will vote straight-party but not for President in North and South Carolina?

In our second “Featured” article we learn another good reason not to vote straight party. New Mexico is one of the states that allows straight party voting, including the presidential race. However, if the ballots are not properly programmed and thorough pre-election testing is not accomplished, there is no telling what may be the result of voting straight party. Voters should not take a chance that the county has tested thoroughly. Voters should not take a chance that their machine may not even register straight party votes for their party while it does for the other party. Don’t trust them. Forego the “straight party” selection and pick each candidate individually.

The straight party states are: North Carolina, South Carolina, New Mexico, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, West Virginia, and Rhode Island. ...