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Latest Featured Reports | Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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FL bans heat protections for workers; Methane leaks continues; Repubs' Project 2025 would ban Paris Climate Agreement; PLUS: CA snowpack is back, but too late for the salmon...
Previous GNRs: 3/12/24 - 3/7/24 - Archives...
After Accountability for Fraud, What's Next for the Corrupt NRA and Gun Safety Reforms?: 'BradCast' 3/13/24
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Press quietly resets weeks of misreporting on Biden; Suggestions for NYT; Stephanopoulos v. Mace; Also: Buck quits; RNC 'bloodbath'; WI's MAGA Speaker Recall...
'Green News Report' 3/12/24
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Listeners ring in on that, Brad's hack of Daylight Saving Time and more...
The GOP's Exploitation of Laken Riley
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GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal 2012...
VA GOP VOTER REG FRAUDSTER OFF HOOK
Felony charges dropped against VA Republican caught trashing voter registrations before last year's election. Did GOP AG, Prosecutor conflicts of interest play role?...

Criminal GOP Voter Registration Fraud Probe Expanding in VA
State investigators widening criminal probe of man arrested destroying registration forms, said now looking at violations of law by Nathan Sproul's RNC-hired firm...

DOJ PROBE SOUGHT AFTER VA ARREST
Arrest of RNC/Sproul man caught destroying registration forms brings official calls for wider criminal probe from compromised VA AG Cuccinelli and U.S. AG Holder...

Arrest in VA: GOP Voter Reg Scandal Widens
'RNC official' charged on 13 counts, for allegely trashing voter registration forms in a dumpster, worked for Romney consultant, 'fired' GOP operative Nathan Sproul...

ALL TOGETHER: ROVE, SPROUL, KOCHS, RNC
His Super-PAC, his voter registration (fraud) firm & their 'Americans for Prosperity' are all based out of same top RNC legal office in Virginia...

LATimes: RNC's 'Fired' Sproul Working for Repubs in 'as Many as 30 States'
So much for the RNC's 'zero tolerance' policy, as discredited Republican registration fraud operative still hiring for dozens of GOP 'Get Out The Vote' campaigns...

'Fired' Sproul Group 'Cloned', Still Working for Republicans in At Least 10 States
The other companies of Romney's GOP operative Nathan Sproul, at center of Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, still at it; Congressional Dems seek answers...

FINALLY: FOX ON GOP REG FRAUD SCANDAL
The belated and begrudging coverage by Fox' Eric Shawn includes two different video reports featuring an interview with The BRAD BLOG's Brad Friedman...

COLORADO FOLLOWS FLORIDA WITH GOP CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
Repub Sec. of State Gessler ignores expanding GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal, rants about evidence-free 'Dem Voter Fraud' at Tea Party event...

CRIMINAL PROBE LAUNCHED INTO GOP VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL IN FL
FL Dept. of Law Enforcement confirms 'enough evidence to warrant full-blown investigation'; Election officials told fraudulent forms 'may become evidence in court'...

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Another visit on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture with new news on several developing Election Integrity stories...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: COORDINATED NATIONWIDE GOP VOTER REG SCAM
The GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal reveals insidious nationwide registration scheme to keep Obama supporters from even registering to vote...

CRIMINAL ELECTION FRAUD COMPLAINT FILED AGAINST GOP 'FRAUD' FIRM
Scandal spreads to 11 FL counties, other states; RNC, Romney try to contain damage, split from GOP operative...

RICK SCOTT GETS ROLLED IN GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD SCANDAL
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) sends blistering letter to Gov. Rick Scott (R) demanding bi-partisan reg fraud probe in FL; Slams 'shocking and hypocritical' silence, lack of action...

VIDEO: Brad Breaks GOP Reg Fraud Scandal on Hartmann TV
Breaking coverage as the RNC fires their Romney-tied voter registration firm, Strategic Allied Consulting...

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EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
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The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...

UPDATE: Also, Michael Reagan Calls for Same!
By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2006 8:01pm PT  

This via AmericaBlog from Drudge...And note, if it's correct (Drudge isn't always, as you likely know) this if from the Washington Times, the White House organ! Not the Washington Post!

WASHINGTON TIMES ON TUESDAY WILL CALL FOR SPEAKER HASTERT'S RESIGNATION, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE... DEVELOPING... Editorial titled: 'Resign, Mr. Speaker': 'House Speaker Dennis Hastert must do the only right thing, and resign his speakership at once... Mr. Hastert has forfeited the confidence of the public and his party, and he cannot preside over the necessary coming investigation, an investigation that must examine his own inept performance'... --- Washington Times, October 3, 2006...

Holy crap.

UPDATE: We hear that Olbermann is reporting that Michael Reagan is calling for same! That's Michael Reagan, the White House organ! Not Ronny Reagan!

Holy holy crap crap.

LATE UPDATE: The Washington Times editorial --- "Resign, Mr. Speaker" -- is now up in full. Could this be the all-out implosion that seems like it should have come years ago? Should be an interesting coupla days/weeks...

LATER UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in on Republicans eating their own... "Pressure grows for G.O.P. Over Foley Scandal"




By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2006 6:52pm PT  

ED NOTE 11:49pm PT: Well, it hadda happen. A story at The BRAD BLOG that needs retraction! It's an unfortunate first in our going-on-three years here. Hopefully a last. But so it goes. We're pulling the following story (leaving it below in full, along with a note where we went wrong) so nobody accuses us of trying to hide anything. When we're wrong, we're wrong. And unless further info appears, it would seem that we worked too quickly in our research here and were, infact, wrong. We most certainly regret the error and regret slurring Ms. Hoke, albeit accidentally, by reporting that she was an attorney for Bush/Cheney '04! She appears to have been representing the Green and Libertarian parties in the Ohio 2004 recount instead. Further explanation below, if you're interested...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




CLINT CURTIS TO THE HILL: 'If I win Feeney will be in jail. He's acting frantic because he is frantic'
ALSO: As a Member of the House GOP Leadership, What Did Deputy Whip Feeney Know About His Florida Colleague Mark Foley's Predatory Behavior and When Did He Know It?
By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2006 1:31pm PT  

Signs (along with the desperate and shameful campaign smear website and smear blog he created) that Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) may be in trouble down in Florida in his race against whistleblower-turned-opponent Clint Curtis in the 24th district congressional race?

This today from from the Orlando Sentinel (who had previously endorsed Curtis' primary opponent, before Clint thumped him 2 to 1 in the recent election):

POLITICAL PULSE
Hobnob votes could provide some hints about general election

Straw votes taken at political hobnobs are often wildly off the mark. But they're still fun.

Here are some results from last week's hobnob sponsored by the DeLand Area Chamber of Commerce.

Bill Nelson whipped up on Katherine Harris in the U.S. Senate race.

Congressional incumbents John Mica and Tom Feeney won, though Feeney's race was much closer.

Also, as it's been reported that the House GOP leadership was informed about Rep. Mark Foley's predatory behavior with minors in the Congressional page program months ago and apparently took no action, it's fair to ask what Feeney, as both a Deputy Whip in the House and a fellow member of the Florida caucus, knew about Foley's behavior and when he knew it.

Feeney's campaign, by the way, has received money from Foley in the past, according to this report from MyDD.

Like his colleague Foley, Feeney has enjoyed trumpeting his own work in the House to create legislation to protect children from predatory behavior. Like Foley, (and those Feeney hangs with from DeLay to Abramoff to Ney to Cunningham to Jeb and George W.), he's never been big on transparency or honesty either. So we expect he'll do whatever he can to dance, dodge and otherwise obfuscate on this matter as usual, unless someone holds his feet to the fire.

We'd love to be proven wrong, but we're not holding our breath.

Oh...and this from The Hill last week, in response to Feeney's "crazy" campaign smear sites:

And the accusations of mental illness? A desperate measure, Curtis says. "If I win and get investigations going, he’ll be in jail," he said. "He's acting frantic because he is frantic."

...

For more info on The BRAD BLOG's continuing investigative series on
The Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney/Yang Enterprises Vote-Rigging Scandal series, please see:
- A Quick Summary of the story so far.
- An Index of all the Key Articles & Evidence in the series so far.
- Curtis is now running for U.S. Congress against Feeney.
To support or for more info, see: www.ClintCurtis.com



UPDATE: Says He'd be Interested in Running for U.S. Senate Seat in NY if it Became Available!
NOW INCLUDES FULL VIDEO!
By Brad Friedman on 10/2/2006 1:08pm PT  

Bobby will be on Your World w/ Cavuto on Fox "News" momentarily. We'll UPDATE this item with a video and/or transcript later today if we can catch it.

We'll hope it's less of a hatchet job than Cavuto delivered the last time he interviewed Kennedy, after Kennedy's first Rolling Stone story on these matters.

Have things changed? We'll see. But we wouldn't bet any money on it. Especially after Cavuto's shameful performance last time.

UPDATE: Good thing we didn't bet money. Cavuto actually let him get out a complete sentence or two without cutting him off! What in the world has gotten into Fox?

Kennedy discussed the Emergency Paper Ballot initiative proposed last week by House and Senate Dems (for which not a single Republican would sign on, reportedly amid threats to add disenfranchising Photo ID requirement laws as retaliation for the bill - more on all of that soon), the ease of hacking these systems by both parties, and some news: He said he'd now be interested in running for the U.S. Senate seat from NY should it open up! The seat was once his father's, and to our knowledge it's the first time he's publicly stated he'd be interested in running!

FURTHER UPDATE: Video now available below, with a huge hat-tip to the democracy-lovin' folks at Solar Bus!


-- Windows Media Player version...




...And on FOX 'News' of All Places!!!
By Brad Friedman on 10/1/2006 9:38pm PT  

Holy shit...They may even be losing Fox "News"!...

Welcome back to Planet Earth, Shep!

(Hat-tip Joy Williams!)




By Brad Friedman on 10/1/2006 8:05am PT  

From Mercury News Thursday (Sorry, been running behind for some reason)...

Just weeks before the November election, the Pentagon is struggling to fix its system for handling the votes of soldiers overseas.

Yet experts in computer security and election technology say the Pentagon's current attempt to keep those ballots from being rejected in large numbers, as they have been in past elections, has created a system that is ripe for fraud.

During the next six weeks, thousands of service members are expected to fax or e-mail ballots over international communications networks that are susceptible to interception and tampering, putting those votes at risk.

"I can't for the life of me figure out how the Defense Department decided this is the right thing to do," said Doug Jones, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Iowa.

And here's more...

[V]otes sent to the Pentagon will be forwarded to a private contractor whose top executives have made political contributions to Republican Party organizations.

See the full story, for more...it gets even worse.




Columnist Writes Masterfully on Mountain of Evidence Against Company's Crappy Systems, Officials in State of Denial and More...
Only Small Quibble: His Advice to Vote by Absentee...So Here's Ours Instead...
By Brad Friedman on 9/30/2006 3:24pm PT  

A great column yesterday by Andrew Kantor in USA Today on the failure that is Diebold's electronic voting systems. An amusing (if painfully so) piece as well. He covers the mountain of evidence against Diebold's e-voting systems ("We send people to death row on flimsier and more circumstantial evidence," writes Kantor), the damage to our democracy, and the state of denial that officials, and the other dead-enders who support this technology, are now in.

His column includes this...

What more do people need to hear or to see or to read to convince them Diebold voting machines simply can't be trusted? A burning bush?

...And this...

And as for election and elected officials who insist that there is no danger in using Diebold machines, here's an important question: What will it take to convince them that these machines are not safe?

And I mean that. There has to be some threshold of evidence that will cause them to de-certify these machines. What is it? Does the San Diego Chicken have to be elected governor before you admit there's something wrong?

Because if we've entered the realm of "Nothing will convince me that these machines pose a problem," then they don't deserve to be in office. Period.

...Amongst other gems.

I hope he'll broaden his coverage to include the other manufacturers (ES&S, Sequoia, Hart InterCivic et al) soon, since there is no reason to believe their machines are any less shitty than Diebold's.

Only complaint is the headline and sidebar encouraging folks to vote by absentee ballot. On that, I sent Kantor the email below which I hope he (and you) will consider when advising folks to vote by absentee...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Story Picks up on Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Recent Rolling Stone Exposé...
By Brad Friedman on 9/29/2006 4:21pm PT  

In an Atlanta Progressive News article today, Matthew Cardinale advances the ball forward a few steps concerning Diebold's chicanery and undocumented and/or questionable software patches down in Georgia just prior to the 2002 election.

Georgia, along with Maryland, was one of the original Diebold "showcase" states where paperless touch-screen voting machines were originally, and disastrously installed by the now-outgoing Democratic Secretary of State (and Diebold apologist) Cathy Cox.

Cardinale's coverage --- which has a quote or two from us --- picks up from RFK Jr.'s recent Rolling Stone piece covering this matter (and many others) as discussed by former Diebold contractor Chris Hood and others.




Another One Bites the Dust as U.S. Congressman Quits in Light of Creepy Email, Sexually Explicit Internet Chats with Minors!
UPDATED: Foley Was Part of GOP Congressional Leadership, Chair of House Caucus on Missing & Exploited Children!
By Brad Friedman on 9/29/2006 1:15pm PT  

Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) became the latest in a growing line of Republican Congressmen to suddenly resign and/or drop their re-election bid in the face of scandal.

Creepy e-mails had recently been released from Foley to a 16-year old boy. RAW STORY has the series of emails. ABC News has the story of Foley's resignation just moments ago.

UPDATE: ABC News now has text of sexually explicit Instant Message conversations between Foley and a teen boy. We should have pointed out previously, in addition to being a part of the GOP leadership in Congress, Foley was also Chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children! From ABC...

In Congress, Rep. Foley (R-FL) was part of the Republican leadership and the chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.

He crusaded for tough laws against those who used the Internet for sexual exploitation of children.

"They're sick people; they need mental health counseling," Foley said.

Guess he was just doing research...




Says 'We Can Do This', Thanks BRAD BLOGGERS for Taking Action!
By Brad Friedman on 9/29/2006 12:02pm PT  

We've just received the following letter from Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA). She was the first to answer our urgent plea last week to immediately introduce Federal legislation in Congress for Emergency Paper Ballots to be made available at polling places this November. In the letter, she requests the BRAD BLOG community send email via her PAC website to their members of Congress in order to urge them to pass this incredibly important legislation before adjourning this week.

Dear Brad & the entire BradBlog community,

I’d just like to thank all of you so much for all of your hard work in fighting for safe, secure, and reliable elections in our country.

When I saw the mess in some primary states due to touch screen voter machines, I knew I had to do something. As a result of your advocacy work on this issue for a long time now, I was motivated to get a simple, straightforward paper ballot bill out there. So thank you for being on this issue for so long and for pressing for action.

The bill I introduced on Tuesday, the "Confidence in Voting Act," would encourage local jurisdictions to make paper ballots available at every polling place to any voter who wants one. But now we’ve got to get it passed! I encourage people to join my online advocacy campaign and contact their Members of Congress, urging them to pass the "Confidence in Voting Act" before Congress adjourns this week:

http://ga4.org/campaign/...n_voting?source=bradblog

We can do this --- but we need to build grassroots support for our legislation to get it done.

Thanks to Brad --- and to all of you --- for speaking out on this issue, and for your passion in fighting for election integrity across America.

-- Barbara Boxer

The good Senator has been there for us before (you'll recall, she was the only Senator to stand up and challenge the clearly gamed 2004 Ohio Presidential Election results on Jan. 6th 2005...Back before it was fashionable to point out what virtually everyone now recogizes!) --- so let's be there for her! CLICK HERE NOW! And then pass it on! And thank you Senator!




Evidence-Free Claim Posted by Feeney on 'Crazy Clint Curtis' Smear Campaign Website, Now Repeated on Campaign's Smear Blog!
'Evidence' Presented Would Seem to Dispute Congressman's Own Charges Against Former Colleague and Vote-Rigging Whistleblower Turned Campaign Opponent!
By Brad Friedman on 9/29/2006 11:40am PT  

The silly, seemingly ineffective, and apparently expensive smear campaign being mounted by Florida's U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) attempting to attack his congressional opponent, a former colleague-turned-whistleblower, Clint Curtis continues.

Repeating a seemingly unsubstantiated attack on Curtis, initially posted on Feeney's "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign website, a posting on the Congressman's smear blog site makes the same unevidenced claim.

Feeney's "evidence-free" charge is that Curtis has claimed Feeney knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened.

It's an extraordinary claim now repeated several times in several places by the Congressman who was recently named one once again this year one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-partisan ethics watchdog organization in D.C.

While the claims has now been made on both his smear campaign website and blog, the "evidence" offered by Feeney for this claim would seem to disprove their own assertions. Here's Feeney's latest smearblog item in it's entirety (NOTE: We don't believe it's written by fifth graders, it just reads like it)...

Today is "Tinfoil Tuesday", so let's discuss Crazy Clint Curtis' top tinfoil tale.

According to Crazy Clint Curtis, Tom Feeney knew about 9/11, before the attack.

In his own words...
"When the world trade center collapsed my first thought was not were we being attacked, it was, is this the fear that Feeney talked about generating." (Clint Curtis, Just a Fly on the Wall, page 39)

That's it? Are we missing something here?

Their evidence that "Crazy" Clint Curtis claimed Feeney knew about 9/11 before the attack is that line from his self-published book?!

If we were Feeney, we'd ask for our money back from our campaign consultants. After they came home from school.

See our previous report on the smear site set up recently by Feeney and the kids, including doctored photos of Curtis and many other impressive campaign techniques.

Keep up the bad work, Tom!

For the record, in our two years of interviews and reporting on Clint Curtis' story since we originally broke the story of Curtis' extraordinary allegations [PDF] of Feeney's request to create vote-rigging sofware and much more, we have never heard him make any such claim that somehow Feeney knew about 9/11 before it happened.

On the other hand, while Feeney is spending hundreds of thousands on his less-than-dignified "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign, he has yet to answer to any of Curtis' substantive allegations made in sworn affidavit, sworn video-taped testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and found to be truthful in a polygraph test administered by the state of Florida's former lead polygraphist.

What Feeney has refused to speak to includes (but is certainly not limited to) the following wholly unanswered questions...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Donna Brazile Posts Open Letter Encouraging Citizens to Pressure Lawmakers!
(While, So Far, All Republican Congress Members Remain Apparently Uninterested in Ensuring American Citizens Can Vote This November!)
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2006 5:05pm PT  

In her role as Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute (VRI), Donna Brazile has issued a statement to The BRAD BLOG moments ago in support of the Congressional Emergency Paper Ballot legislation now pending in the U.S. House and Senate.

Announcing that "We still have time to address the e-voting security crisis!," Brazile writes in her "Open Letter to Supporters of Democracy of America" in support of the House (HR 6187) and Senate (S. 3943) bills introduced this week calling for Emergency Paper Ballots at the polls this November, in the light of voting system failures across the country in primaries so far this year.

She calls on citizens to "pressure...lawmakers to support legislation that would help produce a fair and transparent election." (Full letter posted at the end of this article)

The "time to address" the crisis, at least on the Federal level, is quickly drawing to a close as Congress will likely adjourn tomorrow for the Election Recess. Citizens are asked to call their legislators (House switchboard: 202-225-3121, Senate switchboard: 202-224-3121) to demand they pass this bill immediately.

Maryland's Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich recently called for a similar state measure after his state turned away thousands from the polls, or handed them provisional ballots, when electronic voting machines failed to start up during their September 12th primary election.

Brazile's call to push for the Emergency Paper Ballot legislation this afternoon is notable. She has come under fire in the past from critics in the Election Integrity Advocacy movement for failing to take a firm enough stance, in her role at the DNC VRI, to alert Americans to the potential for fraud, inaccuracy and disenfranchisement via electronic voting systems.

The DNC endorsement for the legislation by Brazile is the latest in a growing drumbeat of politicians and non-partisan Election Integrity organizations calling on supporters and members to help pass the 11th hour legislation, co-sponsored in the Senate by Senators Boxer, Dodd, Feingold and Kerry and in the House by Rep. Rush Holt and several other co-sponsors.

The BRAD BLOG originally proposed this legislation early last week. As of this hour, not a single Republican in the U.S. Congress has publicly endorsed the legislation or joined as co-sponsor to help ensure that all registered American voters will actually be able to cast a vote at all this November.

The complete open letter from Brazile, issued this afternoon on behalf of the DNC's Voting Rights Insitute, follows in full...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Story on Today's House Hearing Covered by 'Ohio Regional' Reporter Said to Have Left Proceedings Not Long After House Hearing Began...
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2006 3:20pm PT  

An AP reporter, who left early druring this morning's hearing in the U.S. House Adminstrative Committee on Electronic Voting security issues, has filed what would appear to be a remarkably skewed account of the session in an article today headlined, "Lawmaker questions e-voting paper trail."

The reporter, David Hammer, AP's "Ohio Regional Reporter" in DC, who --- according to two different BRAD BLOG sources --- left very early in today's proceedings, covered the hearings from a clearly "anti-paper" angle, as you'll see in his report.

That, despite the first witness of the morning, Dr. Ed Felten of Princeton University, who demonstrated both his team's viral vote-flipping hack of a Diebold Touch-Screen voting system to the reportedly packed hearing room, and then the inability to discover the election stealing malicious code via a machine "recount."

(DISCLOSURE: The machine was supplied to Princeton University by VelvetRevolution.us, a non-partisan election ingegrity organization co-founded by The BRAD BLOG.)

Hammer goes on to report almost exclusively on those who testified in today's hearings against the use of paper "trails" and/or "records" with Electronic Voting Systems...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




'It's the Help America Vote Act, not the Help Diebold Profit Act,' Says Dem Nominee
State Senator Debra Bowen, Staunch Election Transparency Proponent, Issues Strong Statement on Congressional Initatives!
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2006 8:30am PT  

The Democratic nominee for Secretary of State in California issued a powerful statement in support of recent legislation filed by several Senators and Representatives in both the U.S. House and Senate calling for Emergency Paper Ballots at the polling place this November.

The 11th hour Congressional bills, filed on Tuesday and Wednesday, just days before both chambers adjourn for the Election Recess, will offer voters the right to vote on paper ballots this year and see those costs reimbursed by the Federal Government. The legislation, if passed, is estimated to cost approximately $10 million. It would amend the disastrous 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which has mandated some $3 billion to encourage States and Counties to "upgrade" to electronic voting systems.

Monumental failures in those systems, during primary elections across the country over the last several months, have sent thousands of voters away from the polls without being able to cast any vote at all. The situation could be far worse during the general election when voter turnout will be a great deal higher than it's been so far in the mid-year primaries.

"Remember, it's the 'Help America Vote Act,' not the 'Help Diebold Profit Act,'" said Bowen, in a stinging comment referring to one of America's largest manufacturers of inaccurate, untested, hackable elecronic voting machines. "It's why this low-tech option makes so much sense, especially in light of all of the problems electronic voting machines have had in primary elections this year, not just in California, but also in Texas, Illinois, and most recently Maryland."

The BRAD BLOG originally proposed the idea for Emergency Paper Ballots early last week. The low-tech, high common-sense notion has gained considerable steam since its inception on these pages. It has now been officially introduced as legislation in Congress by Senators Boxer, Dodd, Feingold and Kerry in the Senate, and by Representative Rush Holt and several co-sponsors in the U.S. House.

Bowen's Republican opponent, Sec. of State Bruce McPherson was appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and has come under considerable fire for re-certifying Diebold systems in the state in light of severe warnings from his own team of scientific advisors about more than a dozen "serious vulnerabilities" in those particular voting systems.

An investigate report from BlackBoxVoting.org [PDF], a non-partisan E-voting watchdog organization, found that representative of Diebold's had actually drafted official documents on behalf of the California Secretary of State's office!

That same rep, Rob Pelletier, had previously been presenting disinformation in comments here at The BRAD BLOG under the name of "Wally O'Diebold" until he was found out.

Diebold voting systems were decertified in California by McPherson's predecessor, just prior to the 2004 election, when it was discovered the company had been installing uncertified software and systems in several counties across the state. They settled a qui tam (fraud) lawsuit with the state for $2.8 million later that year.

Though the legislation in the Congress so far has been sponsored by Democrats, the problem is a decidedly non-partisan issue. Maryland's Republican Governor Robert Ehrlich recently called for paper ballots to be used in his state this November after failures across the state disenfranchised thousands of voters during their September 12th primary. Maryland, along with Georgia, was Diebold's "showcase" state having installed their paperless electronic touch-screen systems as early as 2002 with the cooperation and ardent support of the Democratic MD Elections Director, Linda Lamone.

Citing the irony of the public outcry for a return to countable paper balloting, the failure of the U.S. Congress to take action on growing concerns, and the plunging confidence rate in electronic voting amongst the American electorate, Bowen said in her statement, "It's about time Congress provides counties with the incentive to allow their voters to cast a paper ballot at the polls on Election Day, a step that will help begin to restore voter confidence in the elections process and the results."

Bowen, in her capacity as chair of the CA State Senate Elections Commission, held hearings in Kern County, California after the state's marred June 6th primary, when voting systems failed to start up --- or sometimes even show up at the polls at all --- until hours after voting was supposed to have begun. The Kern County Registrar of Voters had, incredibly, given instructions that "back-up paper ballots were not to be used" on Election Day according to the State Senators statement.

"Kern County is the reason why I wish counties were required to provide this option to voters," Bowen remarked.

Citizens are asked to call upon Congress to pass the Emergency Paper Ballot legislation immediately. You may easily contact your Senators here, and your House Members here.

Debra Bowen's complete statement on Emergency Paper Ballots follows in full...

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---




Another Election Integrity Organization Joins Drumbeat Hoping to Mitigate Disaster this November With Last Chance Common Sense Legislation!
By Brad Friedman on 9/28/2006 12:45am PT  

This from an email tonight from VoteTrustUSA.org email list, from their Executive Director, Joan Krawitz, urging citizens to call Congress NOW to demand passage of the Emergency Paper Ballot bills just filed in both the Senate and the House!

URGENT ACTION ALERT!
TELL CONGRESS TO PASS EMERGENCY PAPER BALLOT BILLS NOW!

...

It All Comes Down to You! Your Calls Make a Difference. Call Your Representative NOW!

A flood of phone calls from constituents could be all it will take to break the roadblock at this critical moment. Pick up the phone NOW and call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-225-3121. Tell your Representative that Congress must pass HR 6187 before they adjourn, to make sure that every vote will count when voting machines malfunction or count votes incorrectly as they have in every primary this year.

If you don't know your Representative's name, click here and enter your zip code to find out. You can also use this link to find your Representative's direct telephone number on Capitol Hill by clicking on his or her photo, which will appear once you've entered your zip code.

Then Immediately Call Both of Your Senators

As soon as you hang up with your Representative's office, call the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121 to speak with both of your Senators' offices. Tell them to pass S. 3943 before Congress adjourns to ensure that every vote will count in November. If you don't know both your Senators' names, click here and enter your zip code to find out. You can also use this link to find your Senator's direct telephone number on Capitol Hill by clicking on his or her photo, which will appear once you've entered your zip code.

Every moment counts, so please don't delay. Make those phone calls as if our democracy depended on it --- because that's what it comes down to today.

Joan asks that you forward this to everyone you know. We ask the same. (The URL for this item is: https://bradblog.com/?p=3544)




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