I've seen a lot of horrific articles on e-voting in my time. At this point, given all that we've come to learn over the last five years or so about the utter failure of these systems, I usually just ignore such pieces as no longer really worth my time to even point out.

However, Richard Wolf's article last week in USA Today was so spectacularly bad, and so astonishingly unbalanced in favor of e-voting shills and unapologetic proponents who have been proven wrong time and again over the years, that I must take a moment to at least flag it here, given it's length, publication in a prominent, national MSM outlet, and extraordinary lack of a single quote from any real Election Integrity experts or e-voting critics.

Wolf's article, "10 years after Bush v. Gore, new concerns about voting" would better be headlined "10 years after Bush v. Gore, MSM still quoting long-discredited e-voting flacks."

With what appears to be dead seriousness, Wolf reports that ten years after FL 2000, our elections in the U.S. are in much better shape, as he writes: "The verdict? Elections are more accurate: There is less chance that voters will make mistakes, and there are safeguards in case they do."

Mr. Wolf must have been living in a cave from 2000 until just last week. Given the roster of discredited e-voting shills he quotes in the piece, almost exclusively, it's clear he's, at the very least, living in another time, say 2004 or so...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The Nation magazine headline was sensational: Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder. The article, written by Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, exploded on screen during a must see Aug. 4, 2009 segment of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann (video posted below). It was summarized by Amy Goodman on Aug. 5 when Scahill appeared on Democracy Now!:

The significance was underscored in Scahill's Aug. 4 remarks on MSNBC's Countdown:

While the allegations are extremely disturbing, they are apparently not disturbing enough to warrant coverage in almost all of the nation's leading newspapers. That, even though, as reported in Scahill's book, amongst the first to arrive in the aftermath of Katrina --- before the U.S. government and most aid organizations --- were a contingent of 150 Blackwater mercenaries, "some with M-4 automatic weapons, capable of firing nine hundred rounds per minute"....

On Friday, USA TODAY's Richard Wolfe ran a not terrible article about the growing nationwide trend to move away from electronic voting machines to more transparent and secure paper ballot based systems. His otherwise decent article included this curious graf [emphasis added]...

So I'm just curious. Which of the myriad, scientifically demonstrated problems with the security and transparency of electronic voting are the "perceived" ones, versus the "real" ones? Or are there some other "perceived" problems which have prompted the trend?

If your own personal house has never been robbed, yet you turn on an alarm system and/or lock the doors when you leave it, is that due to a perceived concern or a real one?

I'd really love to know Wolfe's answer.

Richard Wolfe of USA Today, needs some new sources in his Rolodex.

In two decenti-ish and important stories today about massive failures and inaccurate voter purges in the new voter registration databases mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, Wolfe quotes two discredited operatives:

1. U.S. Elections Assistance Commission executive director, Thomas Wilkey, the man who has failed miserably in his job of overseeing e-voting system certification on behalf of the EAC (or, more accurately, on behalf of America's voting machine companies), and
2. Our old friend, the discredited discredited (to all but the corporate mainstream media, apparently) chief GOP voter suppression operative, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne of the exposed and defunct Republican front group, "American Center for Voting Rights".

To the substance of the two stories, both running today...The first, on legal voters being tossed off voting roles all across the country, Wolfe reports:

Wolfe then goes on to close the story with a comment apologizing for the federal government's failure in all of the above, by quoting Wilkey, the federal government's man who oversaw the failures, on behalf of the EAC, on all of the above...

Blogged by Brad from St. Louis...

Supposed to be cooling my holiday heels a bit today, but couldn't let this one pass without comment. USA Today has an article this morning anointing psychologist Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, as the Democrats' new political rhetoric guru.

Nonetheless, in her article, headlined "Democrats get advice on how to talk about issues," reporter Jill Lewis can't seem to help but pass on the conventional wisdom (read: lies) of Republican rhetoric guru/liar Frank Luntz.

"Al Gore should have won" in 2000, Lewis unquestioningly quotes Luntz as telling her. "He lost because Americans didn't want him in their living rooms every night."

No. He "lost" because one vote on the Supreme Court determined that the man who won the national popular vote, as well as the electoral vote in Florida, should not have his votes counted as cast.

Had Lewis gone back and reviewed the findings of her own newspaper, who took part in a study of the ballots across the state of Florida, she likely would have discovered that.

While we realize that history is frequently re-written by the "winners," we see no reason why the corporate mainstream media need to participate in that charade. And yet, nearly 7 years later, and with facts now easily at hand, USA Today continues to do so.

We don't blame Luntz for lying. That's his job. Much as we don't blame Ann Coulter for being an unapologetic liar and hate-monger. We blame USA Today --- and other similarly irresponsible corporate mainstream outlets --- for giving him the platform to continue to pass on his lies without correction. Much as we blame ABC, NBC, MSNBC, et al. for giving Coulter a bully pulpit from which to spew her bullshit.

We need to begin to hold those who hold the keys to the kingdom responsible for allowing the charlatans inside the gates in the first place. Until we hold the media accountable and demand that they clean up their act, the Democratic focus-grouped advice of media message masters like Westen, and George Lakoff before him, won't mean a damn thing.

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...

...And this...

...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...

A long awaited study of electronic voting machine security by computer scientists and security experts has been released this morning by the Brennan Center of Justice at the NYU School of Law.

Given preparations for tonight and tomorrow's "Emergency Townhall" events on the Busby/Bilbray mess (I'll be emceeing and "keynoting"), I've yet to be able to read the long report any more than cursorily, so I'm forced to defer for now to USA Today's coverage of it from this morning...

Here's the complete Executive Summary [PDF] of the Brennan Report.

UPDATE 6/30/06: The complete Brennan Center for Justice report is now posted here [PDF]. Their press release announcing it is here.

It looked promising for a start. USA Today files a report today headlined "Spate of lawsuits target e-voting".

As we've been calling for for some time, a national media outlet begins to connect some of the many "local" dots around the country. Then, of course, they blow it.

Here's the good news, early in the story (all stuff we've reported long ago, but happy to see it reported here, of course):

No mention of other "some problems" in primaries so far this year in Ohio, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, etc. But okay. What gets us is that the story then goes on to quote only two sources, both of whom are E-Voting advocates and both of whom suggest there is nothing to worry about and that these systems "can be trusted."

Not one quote from any of the myriad computer scientists and security experts who have decried the enormous flaws and security vulnerabilities in loads of electronic voting machines describing them as shocking, alarming, critical, etc. etc. etc.

Beginning to see any patterns here?

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

This morning, USA TODAY is reporting that their sources confirm that the National Security Agency is secretly building a massive database of American's phone calls. The database has been called the "largest database ever assembled in the world."

The source said that the NSA's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the borders of the United States. This particular program does not actually monitor conversations but is used for data mining along with data collected by other secret NSA program such as the warrantless domestic spying program and numerous other sources. Data collected by U.S. companies such as credit history, buying patterns and mailing lists are used along with data collected by the intelligence community. NSA whistleblower Russell Tice has said (60 Minutes video clip here) that there may be many other secret programs which spy on "millions of Americans". The phone call database alone is said to collect information on "tens of millions of Americans." Combining and analyzing all of these sources of data amount to an appalling and possibly illegal invasion into the private lives of Americans.

If you use AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth --- the three largest phone companies --- then your phone calls are being collected by the NSA. These three companies alone provide service to over over 200 million customers. Like the warrantless domestic spying program, the NSA has not obtained warrants or notified the FISA court about collecting phone calls. Qwest was the only phone company that refused to hand over phone call records until the NSA obtained a FISA warrant. (You can thank Qwest right here.) The NSA refused to go the FISA court. But customers with Qwest accounts are not immune to the NSA's violation of privacy. Many customers who have Qwest also use AT&T or Verizon for long distance service. The NSA can also cross-reference other databases to build a nearly complete profile for an individual.

George W. Bush has said that the program is lawful and necessary for fighting terrorism. He also says that the private lives of Americans are not being violated.

In this video clip, NBC's Today Show reports on the NSA's ongoing collection of domestic phone calls.

From USA TODAY...

(NOTE FROM BRAD: Playing serious catch-up on a number of stories, related-but-off-blog commitments and several crushing deadlines. Was gone the entire day yesterday interviewing someone on camera. Very interesting. More on that, and a bunch of other items as I can get caught up later today, tonight, and for the rest of the week as things are breaking and I do my best to keep up with all of it. Hopefully David and John will be able to jump into the breach where available here and as I continue to scramble to get caught up throughout the week. Begging your indulgence and patience over the next few days where coverage might be quicker or leaner than normal in the bargain...and as necessary.)