From AP...

And I can't help but feel the two election officials should have been sentenced to 18 years instead of months (though we understand that to be the max sentence), given the number of folks who have died in Bush's War since the 2004 Election and the fact that there were enough votes in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) alone to give the race to Kerry instead of Bush had the election been administered legitimately.

Just for the record, only 6 votes registered for Kerry instead of Bush in each of Ohio's precincts would have changed the result of that election.

Must run, so we'll refer you to our previous coverage when the two Ohio elections officials were found guilty in January for more details.

NOTE: Hat-Tip to "Ninepatch" over at DailyKos for tipping us off to the news of the sentencing. It's a rather sigh-inducing irony to get the news from dKos given it's proprietor Markos Moulitsas Zúniga had once shamefully banned all diarists, and purged their diaries, for daring to discuss and/or investigate the Ohio 2004 Presidential Election conspiracy. Thank you for continuing to make noise on these matters anyway those of you who have done so at dKos!

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** By Guest Blogger Jim Cirile

Clint Curtis just won’t roll over. And that, fellow Americans, is a very good thing.

Curtis came to prominence a few years back when The BRAD BLOG broke the story of his blowing the whistle on Republican congressman Tom Feeney (FL-24) who, as Curtis alleged in a sworn affidavit, asked him to write an election-rigging software prototype when both men worked at the same Oviedo, FL, software firm in 2000. Curtis was a programmer, Feeney was then Speaker of the Florida House as well as the general counsel and registered lobbyist for the company, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI)

A lifelong Republican, Curtis did as asked, believing the program was meant to be used to prevent election tampering by Democrats. When he learned the true purpose was to manipulate the vote in South Florida, Curtis went to the authorities and finally to the public. The BRAD BLOG has been following his story closely ever since.

Last year Curtis, who switched to the Democratic party in the wake of his experience and others like it with Feeney and YEI, challenged the powerful Feeney on his own turf --- he ran against him for the U.S. House seat in Florida’s 24th district, where Feeney had ascended in 2002.. Feeney's campaign against Curtis was as slimy as expected, with the powerful Republican friend of DeLay, Abramoff, and the whole bunch spending big bucks on a smear campaign in hopes of painting Curtis as a wacko conspiracy theorist, despite years of evidence shoring up Curtis’s original claims – including his successful passing of a polygraph test – and one report after another revealing massive holes in the claims of innocence by both Feeney and YEI.

Despite pre-election polls, including one from Zogby International, Inc., just prior to the election, showing the two men to be in a statistical dead heat, Feeney defeated Curtis 58% to 42% according to Florida’s officially certified election results.

But Curtis smelled a rat. Backed up by polling and his remarkable online vote verification tool, VoteNow 2006, he refused to concede. His race is now one of five challenges (four of them from the state of Florida, including the well-known FL-13 Jennings/Buchanan contest) currently pending in the U.S. Congress as having been filed under the Federal Contested Elections Act.

We spoke with Curtis late last week about what’s going on with those challenges, about his ongoing efforts to lobby Congress to finally bring reform to our broken election system, his experience with the Democrats "50 State Strategy," and whether he plans to run against Feeney again in 2008.

Suffice to say, like those three gals from Texas, Clint Curtis isn't "ready to make nice" either…

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As is too often the case, the proverbial shit seems most likely to hit the erstwhile fan whenever we're on the road and unable to cover the splatter sufficiently. This week has been no exception.

There is much movement in Ohio today as Michael Vu, the Election Director for Cuyahoga County, where two Election Officials were convicted two weeks ago of having rigged the 2004 Presidential recount, has now finally resigned from the Board of Elections after what is hopefully his last failed election.

The official BoE statement generously says: "Michael Vu has chosen to pursue future career growth and will resign as director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections March 1 of this year."

In related news --- and speaking of failed elections and "future career growth" --- the office of the new Ohio Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has now officially requested an audit of the SoS's office over the last two years as it was led by the corrupt former SoS and democracy-hater J. Kenneth Blackwell.

In addition to the $80,000 in bonuses given to employees on the way out the door, and the $250,000 settlement Blackwell agreed to concerning the 2004 Election last December (as we reported two weeks ago), Brunner expressed a new concern in her hand-delivered letter to the Republican State Auditor Mary Taylor: Shredded documents.

As reported today by the Columbus Dispatch:

Blackwell shredding documents?! We're shocked! Shocked!

Blogged by Brad from on the road...

There were a number of notable updates added, in the subsequent 24 to 48 hours after we published our piece on the idiots at Diebold who gave away the keys to the kingdom (literally).

The story, btw, shot to the top of a bunch of sites --- no easy feat for an Election Integrity-related story which doesn't feature Ann Coulter --- and was even picked up by the rightwing "news" site, WorldNetDaily who (unlike CNet's coverage, tsk tsk) gave us the appropriate attribution. Should I be pleased or horrified?

Anyway...As we reported initially, Diebold --- incredibly --- posted a picture of the actual key which --- incredibly --- opens all Diebold touch-screen voting systems on their website. Not so incredibly, the photo was subsequently used to hack the key and create working duplicates by an IT expert. Just the latest jaw-dropping chapter in the incredible series of blunders by one of America's largest, and most irresponsible, voting machine companies...the same ones who are --- incredibly --- contracted to protect the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence at the National Archives and who, in early January, --- incredibly --- received certification from George W. Bush's U.S. Homeland Security department for high-security contracts.

As the notable updates to the original story came after you may have read it, but they deserve to be noticed, we re-run them here in full just to make sure everyone is able to play along at home and that Diebold enjoys the maximum amount of shame that they've worked so hard to earn.

Read on. Watch Diebold run. Be amused or horrified as you see fit...

From AP...

Golly. We're shocked. We wish we would have paid closer attention to that whole 2004 Ohio Presidential Election scam thing instead of ignoring it all these years.

Oh, wait, that was just about everyone else other than The BRAD BLOG, across the near-entirety of both the MSM and the bulk of the Progressive blogosphere.

That aside...as pointed out in the article, the two who were convicted in Cuyahoga County were still pretty small fish...

By way of reminder, the recount --- the one that was rigged by Ohio Elections Officials --- came by way of the Green and Libertarian Party candidates, not by way of the Democrats or John Kerry. As well, the money to pay for the gamed recount was raised by folks on the Internet, not paid for out of the $15 million or so that Kerry reportedly had left in his campaign war chest after the "Election" in Ohio.

All of that, despite Kerry's continued and then broken promise to "Count Every Vote" in 2004.

These convictions occurred in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold of some 600,000 voters. Kerry "lost" the state of Ohio, according to the history books anyway, by just 118,000 out of some 5.5 million votes cast in the Buckeye State.

In related news, today Kerry decided to quit the 2008 Election, mercifully this time before it instead of afterwards.

Ed Note: Several important updates now added to the end of the story...

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else... now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you're not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?).

The Princeton Diebold Virus Hack, if you've been living in a cave, found that a single person with 60 seconds of unsupervised access to the system, who either picked the lock (easy in 10 seconds) or had a key, could slip a vote-swapping virus onto a single machine which could then undetectably affect every other machine in the county to steal an entire election.

But the folks at Princeton who discovered the hack (after our own organization, VelvetRevolution.us, gave them the Diebold touch-screen machine on which to perform their tests) had resisted showing exactly what the key looked like in order to hold on to some semblance of security for Diebold's Disposable Touch-Screen Voting Systems.

But guess what? Diebold didn't bother to even have that much common sense.

This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website's online store! (Screenshot at end of this article.)

Of course, they'll only sell such keys to "Diebold account holders" apparently --- or so they claim --- but that's hardly a problem. J. Alex Halderman, one of the folks who worked on the Princeton Hack and tried to keep the design of the key secret for obvious reasons, revealed Tuesday that a friend of his had found the photo of the key on Diebold's website and discovered that was all he needed to create a working copy!

As Halderman writes...

We gave her a few months off while we covered more pressing items to our nation, but it looks like the troubles are still far from over for right-wing demagogue/hate-monger turned felonious vote fraudster Ann Coulter.

Palm-Beach Post's Jose Lambiet, who originally broke the story a year or so ago, has another scoop today on the matter and The BRAD BLOG has now obtained the documents on which his scoop is based.

Lambiet's item today covers PB County Supervisor of Elections Arthur Anderson's difficulty in finding a local law enforcement agency with the stones --- or at least, the jurisdiction --- to take on the hypocritical pundit even though a police report completed in late November, requested by Anderson, indicates that Coulter could be facing two third degree felony charges, along with one first degree misdemeanor, if charged.

Newly added to the previously known allegations of Voter Fraud --- when Coulter used her realtor's address instead of her own on her Voter Registration Application --- is the allegation by the Palm Beach Police Department that Coulter seems to also have given that same, incorrect address when applying for a driver's license after moving to the tony Sunshine State 'hood, where her fellow GOP propagandist Rush Limbaugh has recently had his own troubles following the rule of law.

The allegation concerning Driver's License Fraud would be yet another third degree felony, according to the Palm Beach Police Department report!

The BRAD BLOG has obtained the complete PBPD report (linked below), summarized by Lambiet as revealing that Coulter "could end up charged with: one felony count for signing a voter form claiming she lived at her Realtor's Indian Road home instead of her Seabreeze Avenue homestead; one felony count for 'unauthorized possession of a driver's license,' also for providing the same wrong address when obtaining her license; and a misdemeanor for knowingly voting in the wrong precinct."

Lambiet reports that Anderson has been making the rounds seeking a law enforcement outlet with the proper jurisdiction since, he says, the PB County Supervisor of Elections office is "not an investigative agency" and given that there has been "significant interest from the community" in seeing the matter addressed. But, so far, Florida authorities have yet to touch the case. According to Lambiet...

The three-page Palm Beach Police Department November report, and the accompanying one-page December letter to Anderson from Chief of Police Michael S. Reiter, detailing Coulter's apparent felonies and misdemeanor, is available right here...

PREVIOUS COULTER VOTER FRAUD DOCS:

• Pollworker's Incident Report & Letter from Anderson to Coulter requesting explanation...
• Palm Beach County Property records proving Coulter lied on her Voter Registration Application...
• Coulter's Felonious Voter Registration Form...

To follow up on a story we covered last October when arrests were made in Orange County, California after it was discovered that "bounty hunters" were being paid per Republican voter registration form they gathered and had switched Democratic (and Green and even non-citizen) voter registration forms to Republican...LA Times is reporting today that sentencing for the first two of the 12 arrested has let the pair off with "time served" and three years probation:

AP adds a couple of details on how the scam was perpetrated:

Neither of the reports went into much detail on exactly who was behind the scheme, aside from statements from GOP spokesmen that they knew nothing about it. Naturally.

(Anybody spoken to Nathan Sproul lately?)

Over the weekend from the Online Review...

From Tribune Media Services' Robert Koehler, in his latest column, "Electronic Treason"...

We feel ya, Bob. And thanks for being there where few dared to go back in those dark days of mid-2005.

Read the rest at Koehler's own site or at Huff Po.

Stephen Heller, the Los Angeles whistleblower who turned over documents from Diebold's attorney, Jones Day, in 2004 showing the Voting Machine Company had illegally installed uncertified hardware and software in California --- and was preparing to lie about it --- has pled guilty, according to a statement tonight from the LA County District Attorney's office.

In an email moments ago from Heller, he tells us that he and his wife "are very happy it is over."

Heller, whose story we detailed in an article [PDF] published by Hustler some months ago, was a temporary worker at the voting machine company law firm when he stumbled across the troubling documents.

At the time, we quoted Michael Kohn, general counsel for the National Whistleblower Center, as saying, "This is a very rare instance. In fact, the only one of which I’m aware, in which a whistleblower has been charged with a felony. I find it outrageous."

Outrageous indeed --- especially considering Diebold voting systems were decertified by the state when it was found the company was attempting to game the certification process, shortly after Heller shared the documents with the Oakland Tribune and election watchdog BlackBoxVoting.org.

But Heller doesn't have the same kind of money for high-priced attorneys that Diebold does (that would be your money that Diebold uses for this sort of thing, by the way); we're not suprised he opted for the deal.

In an email message from Heller sent to The BRAD BLOG tonight, he wrote:

The LA County DA's statement says Heller pled to "unlawfully accessing the company computer in connection with its legal representation of Diebold Inc." and they quote his formal "apology" as follows:

A notice added tonight to the Stephen Heller Defense Fund website says "The case has been resolved! More details will follow soon." It goes on to thank supporters, urging them to "check back soon because Stephen is going to post the entire story here soon."

Heller tells us he's being contacted by the media tonight and plans to send a more detailed statement to The BRAD BLOG by morning.

UPDATE: 11/21/06 5:00pm PT: As promised, a new story, including a fresh exclusive statement from Heller --- concerning his thoughts on Diebold, American Elections and that he may have his sentenced reduced in a year --- is now posted here.

Guest blogged by Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution

Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization, issued a press release yesterday announcing their new report, "Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006."

According to EDA, the Edison-Mitofsky National Exit Poll, conducted by a consortium of news organizations, showed at 7 p.m. on Election Night an 11.5% vote margin in favor of Dems nationwide. But by 1:00 p.m. on the following day, according to EDA, "[T]he Edison-Mitofsky poll had been adjusted, by a process known as 'forcing,' to match the reported vote totals for the election." The adjusted exit polls showed "a 7.6 percent margin exactly mirroring the reported vote totals."

It was EDA co-founder Jonathan Simon whose foresight in downloading the Edison-Mitofsky exit polls on Election Night 2004 before those polls were adjusted made the discovery of the now-infamous "red shift" possible. Analysis of the original exit polls from 2004 became one of the most compelling bodies of evidence to suggest that the 2004 election was stolen on behalf of George W. Bush.

Now EDA reveals evidence of similar manipulation of this year's election. In his story Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Election Hacked, executive editor of OpEdNews Rob Kall quotes Simon as saying:

The BRAD BLOG wishes to point out the difference between election "hacking" and "rigging." Hacking can be done by outsiders armed with such difficult-to-obtain weapons as a hotel mini-bar key (in the case of the Diebold TSx) or a finger (in the case of the Sequoia touchscreen machines). Rigging would be done by an insider such as someone working for an electronic voting machine company or a department of elections. The evidence of skewed results in the 2006 Congressional election doesn't specifically prove whether hacking or rigging or both occurred, but certainly magnifies the call for further investigation into irregularities in the 2006 elections. Will this new report help the newly-elected-but-apparently-robbed-of-its-landslide Democratic Majority Congress understand the importance of revamping our election system before 2008?

The next phase of Election Defense Alliance's work will be to analyze results of specific Congressional races. This work will include analysis of exit polls commissioned by Velvet Revolution (of which The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder) and other independent organizations. Perhaps then we will find out how many Democratic (or even Republican) candidates who have been declared losers actually won their races.

Like brother like brother. Even San Diego County Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas's brother apparently believes it just fine to cheat at the polls.

Online polls in any case.

The BRAD BLOG has learned that Don Haas, the brother of SD County's Registrar, (one of the country's worst, by the way) has apparently been gaming a recent online poll hosted at the website of conservative San Diego radio talkshow host Roger Hedgecock. The right-wing talker has joined the chair of the Democratic County Chair in calling for Mikel Haas's resignation due to his abominable administration of county elections.

A quick investigation by The BRAD BLOG this morning reveals the poll used at the Hedgecock site can easily be gamed by simply deleting "cookies" on users' computers, allowing them to vote as many times as they wish. Don Haas encouraged readers in a posting yesterday at his website to "act like a democrats and vote three times."

As well, brother Don has been posting anonymously here at The BRAD BLOG with the user name "OMSmedia" since November 9th. In a comment this morning, in reply to Democratic U.S. House candidate Francine Busby's concession in the CA-50 race last night, Don describes her as a "loser" and continues by adding "love it when you uninformed nutroots lose."

He has his own website at OMSMedia.com which has a "Hardcore Conservative" graphic logo on the home page. In various postings in the "Live Journal" on the site, Don supports his brother's use of hackable Diebold voting machines, spreads disinformation about them, refers to Democrats as "asses," suggests all "gay representatives" are "pedophiles," and writes that "any [Senatorial] candidate yelling about the President should just resign"....

A couple of important points buried fairly deep into my ComputerWorld post-mortem article on the 2006 Electoral Meltdown. So for those too lazy (okay, "busy") to read the whole thing, I'd like to make sure you're aware of a few key points, so far underreported by the corporate mainstream media:

• Rick Santorum and the Pennsylvania GOP wrote a letter to state officials on Tuesday afternoon demanding touch-screen systems in 27 counties be impounded after reports of votes flipping from Republican to Democrat. I applaud the aggressive, pro-active stance. Even from Santorum. Dems should have done the same long ago with every report of Dem to Rep votes flipping. This is just one of the reasons I mentioned previously that Santorum shouldn't have conceded.
• The election in the FL-13 U.S. House race continues to be a mess. With just 368 votes separating the two candidates fighting for Katherine Harris's old seat, some 18,000 votes seem to have completely disappeared on the ES&S touch-screen systems.
• A full ten U.S. House races are still "too close to call;" many of them to come down to attempts to recount votes cast on uncountable electronic voting machines.

Be sure to read my complete, ingeniously crafted CW article, of course, for much more. But I just wanted to make sure you guys were aware of a couple of those above important issues of note as things move foward.

And a reminder...The VelvetRevolution.us Election Strike Force is still offering it's $500,000 reward for evidence of fraud in last Tuesday's election. We were happy to see MoveOn.org join in on Election Day with their own $250k reward as well. Complete details on VR's $500k reward here...

I should also note that VR contributed to the Zogby Exit poll down in the CA-50 Busby/Bilbray race we wrote about earlier today. Between that, other Exit Polls we've done around the country, and the reward fund, we're always happy for your support via donations to the effort if you're able.

Guest Blogged by Jim Cirile

As of midnight EST, MSNBC reported that with 90% of the vote in, Tom Feeney was projected to win FL-24 57%-43%.

As loyal BRAD BLOG readers know, Feeney, one of CREW's 20 Most Corrupt Congressmen, was being challenged for his congressional seat by election fraud whistle-blower Clint Curtis, who alleges Feeney asked software designer Curtis to design vote-rigging software.

Curtis just got off the phone with BRAD BLOG'S Brad Friedman, broadcasting live in the Election Meltdown-apalooza. Curtis says he "apparently lost 57-43%" based on MSNBC results with 90% of the vote in --- but notes that there were "oddities" --- for example in some districts there were more Republican votes than there are registered Republicans. Of course, some Dems or independents could have voted for Feeney, but statistically, that is highly unlikely.

Curtis says "We have a lot of feet we'll be putting on the ground," and he will now do a "forensic reconstruction" to find out "if the actual election is supported by actual voters." Imagine that!

Note that there are STILL no numbers being reported from Seminole County per the FL Sec. State website (as of 12:06 PM EST).

In short, Curtis is not conceding. We say BRAVO! If he lost fair and square, that's fine, we will all accept that. It's the "fair and square" part we are just a bit uncertain of. Who was it who once said "Trust Yet Verify"? Why, it was Ronald Reagan. Wise man occasionally, it turns out. Stay tuned for more news from FL-24. It's likely this story may continue for awhile. And that, friends, is a good thing.

UPDATE: 2:20 AM Eastern time with 99% reporting:

District 24
Tom Feeney (R) 122,938 58%
Clint Curtis (D) 89,158 42%