Guest essay by Ernest A. Canning

It is vital that the American people come to appreciate the danger to liberty as well as community posed by doctrinaire libertarianism.

Despite widespread coverage of Rand Paul's absurd criticism of the provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as applied to private businesses, there has been a dearth of analysis as to how this absurdity was brought about by the serious intellectual deficiencies in doctrinaire libertarian philosophy; a philosophy which led to a second astounding Rand Paul remark.

In the face of horrendous safety records on the part of both Massey Energy, which had been found to have violated federal safety regulations thousands of times over the past several years, and BP, which had steadfastly fought off safety measures for deep water oil rigs, Rand summarily dismissed the significance of both the deadly West Virginia mine disaster and the deadly explosion at BP's deep water facility that has produced the worst oil spill in U.S. history with the cavalier, "accidents happen."

What Rand Paul has done is open a window into "libertarianism," which, contrary to the current Wikipedia definition, does not merge into "anarchism." The principle distinction arises because, as explained by Noam Chomsky, anarchism challenges not only authoritarian government but all authoritarian societal structures, including the work place.

Libertarians like Ron and Rand Paul focus exclusively on individual liberty vis-a-vis the government. They fail to appreciate that, especially in the 21st Century, the removal of government as a check against unfettered corporate wealth and power leads to "the tyranny of a corporate controlled economy"...

Those who follow me on Twitter may already know that I've been referring there to the New York Times' shameful coverage of the Richard Blumenthal situation as the paper's "ACORN Pimp Hoax REDUX."

Their front page exposé last week suggested that Connecticut's Attorney General --- the leading Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate --- was, perhaps, a serial liar because, the "paper of record" informed readers, he'd exaggerated his service in the military. But then we learned that the Times had failed to share the complete video taped comments from a recent speech. Instead, they chose to quote and share just one selective portion out of context to help make their case.

Not only did the complete video --- which Times Executive Editor Bill Keller now admits the paper had seen prior to publication of their story --- offer additional comments from Blumenthal in the same speech, which may have mitigated the comments the Times selectively shared with readers, the paper also failed to share with readers that the story had been fed to them originally by the campaign team of one Blumenthal's Republican rivals for the U.S. Senate seat.

Now that the NYTimes' Public Editor, Clark Hoyt --- supposedly the paper's "readers' representative" or ombudsman --- has rung in with his "verdict" on the whole mess over the weekend, we can officially announce that the comparison to the Times' shameful response to the ACORN Pimp Hoax scandal, which we spent the better part of three months detailing earlier this year, is complete...

If you're in or near L.A., there will be a FREE screening tomorrow (Saturday, 5/22) at 1pm, of Murder, Spies and Voting Lies: The Clint Curtis Story at the Unurban Cafe, 3301 Pico Blvd in Santa Monica. I'll be there for a Q&A afterwards, and to sign DVDs, and would love to see ya there!

UPDATE 7:28pm PT: I wish they hadn't called me a "Liberal Blogger," which I find grossly inaccurate. I've corrected them for next time. In any case, had fun on RT. You'll let me know how I did!...

BTW, for those who had been paying attention, I predicted all of this Rand Paul fun earlier in the week, when I wrote in my "Super-ish Tuesday Backgrounder" on Monday:

I just didn't think it was gonna happen on the Wednesday after his Tuesday election!

Setting aside the unverified (and, in many cases, unverifiable) results of yesterday's elections for the moment, what caught my eye throughout the night were the turnout numbers, Democratic compared to Republican.

While the reported results of the races ran largely counter (surprise!) to the "GOP/TeaParty-fueled Massacre Slated for November!" meme that the corporate beltway media and related villagers have been endlessly re-enforcing with zombie-like precision over the last several weeks and months, the turnout of actual voters in the marquee state-wide primaries (races that we detailed, along with the e-voting systems in use, in our Super-ish Tuesday Backgrounder on Monday) seem to be of note when considering what November might actually look like when all is said and done.

I'd caution not to take too much from these numbers as there are various mitigating factors that could be used to explain them --- or even explain them away --- as noted below, but I think the numbers themselves are very much worth noting here, as I haven't seen much coverage of this over the last 12 hours or so...

Reports of votes flipping on the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic touch-screen voting machines used in Carroll County, Arkansas, have led to a call for removal of the machines. Who could have predicted it?

[Oh, yeah, we did, in our backgrounder on today's election in AR, as based on years of the same exact problem happening, on the same exact machines, over and over again, in election after election, in Arkansas and many other states alike, where officials are still in utter and shameful denial.]

This report is somewhat unique in that it comes from a candidate for County Clerk who has called for the removal of the machines, and is reportedly supported by affidavits from a Circuit Court Judge and one of his employees who both reported their votes flipping from the County Clerk candidate to his opponent during early voting on two separate days...

It's been an ugly day at the polls in Kentucky, at least between supporters of the two highest profile candidates on the ballot today, in what's become a highly contentious race. Allegations of vote buying and intimidation have been coming out all morning in county after county.

[See our backgrounder right here on today's race for the GOP U.S. Senatorial nomination between Sec. of State Trey Grayson and Dr. Rand Paul, along with details on the voting systems in use, and the recent history of election fraud by top election officials in the Bluegrass State.]

Nate Hodsen, the campaign manager for Grayson (who is responsible for overseeing his own election as the state's chief election official) released a statement to say: "This despicable behavior should not be tolerated. Bullying and intimidation should have no place in our elections. Rand Paul needs to rein in his goon squad and follow the law."

David Adams, the campaign manager for Paul (the son of TX U.S. House Rep. Ron Paul) responded in kind to call the allegations "ridiculous" and "much ado about nothing," before going on to blame them on Democrats somehow. "We had a tip over the weekend that some of our volunteer activities have been infiltrated by (national) Democratic operatives planning to cause problems," he told reporters.

See Janet Patton's detailed coverage at the Lexington Herald-Leader for much more on the problems being reported --- for now, mostly complaints about Paul volunteers, being publicized by Grayson's people (both his campaign staff and SoS staff.)

Tuesday's election are being called "Super Tuesday" by some in the media hoping to hype the four-state Election Day as a bellwether for the "anti-incumbency fever" predicted by the same media for this November.

But beyond the marquee races in each of the states holding elections tomorrow --- Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Oregon (and Hawaii is currently holding an all-mail special election which ends on Saturday) --- as usual, we'll be keeping our eyes on whether voters are actually able to cast their votes, and whether or not those votes are actually counted and counted accurately.

The mix of states holding elections tomorrow also offer a mix of electoral systems --- from a majority of voters using 100% unverifiable touch-screen machines in use in KY and PA, to a compilation of touch-screen and paper ballot systems run by a company with a disastrous reliability record in AR, to the black hole of all mail-in voting in OR (and in HI).

Remember, whatever happens or gets reported (or doesn't) on Tuesday, it's often the case that concerns about failures in the system don't necessarily become immediately apparent on Election Day itself. Sometimes problems in the system and in the tallies do not begin to emerge until days, weeks, and sometimes even months after Election Day. So whatever we see in the surface reports tomorrow, for good or bad (and, as usual, you can count on various reports of "glitches," "hiccups," "snags," and "snafus" which use those words to marginalize problems, instead of the correct word: "failures") may just be the tip of any electoral icebergs beneath the surface. As usual, eternal vigilance by the citizenry is the hallmark of the ongoing fight for electoral integrity and transparency in these United States.

Here then is a general BRAD BLOG backgrounder on each state heading to the polls, its marquee race or races, the electoral systems used in each, and what you can do to help keep an eye out for any election integrity issues as they could emerge...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

In "Meg Whitman, Wall Street, 'Billionaire Sociopaths' and the Media 'Substance Deficit,'" we noted:

Now comes a SurveyUSA poll, conducted May 6-9, revealing that Whitman's once commanding lead over CA Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has all but evaporated. Where she led Poizner by 22% on April 22, Whitman is now said to hold a meager 2% lead. One suspects that, in the wake of a hard-hitting, front page May 12 Los Angeles Times article, "Whitman's words put spotlight on deeds," Whitman's once-commanding lead may soon become a deficit.

The Los Angeles Times followed up on May 13 with a separate piece, "Companies challenged Poizner business claims," which revealed that a major portion of Poizner's wealth was acquired when SnapTrack Inc., the company Poizner founded, was sold to Qualcomm. Poizner claims SnapTrack invented mobile-phone GPS technology. In pending lawsuits, other companies accused SnapTrack of infringing intellectual property rights, and, the Times reports, "as SnapTrack developed its GPS technology, Poizner faced another test of his entrepreneurial skills, as a special interest trying to bend the Washington regulatory process his way."

The drastic change in the recent public opinion polls is tied not only to the fact that her fellow billionaire Poizner unleashed his own paid-for propaganda (ad) blitz, deconstructing Whitman's one-sided narrative. Nor is the change tied only to hard-hitting, if overdue, front page newspaper exposés on the facts behind how these two rapacious "business people" amassed their fortunes.

Disturbingly, Poizner's late gain in the polls may be attributed to his open embrace of Arizona's version of apartheid South Africa's infamous "pass laws." Poizner's is a cynically calculated effort to scapegoat immigrants while deflecting attention from the true source of California's fiscal woes: the very same billionaire sociopath economics in which both he and Whitman amassed their fortunes...

The disputed upcoming special election in California's Senate District 15 may be on hold, at least for a day or two, as a federal district court has ordered [PDF] the five counties involved in the election to withhold the distribution of absentee, overseas and military ballots, pending the results of a hearing now set for May 20th in federal district court.

Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel set next week's hearing, requiring the state "to show cause, if any they have, why they, their agents, servants, employees and those in active concert or participation with them, should not be restrained and enjoined pending trial of this action from accepting any ballots, including absentee ballots, or operating any polling place in connection with the special primary election" as currently scheduled.

The compressed schedule for the election has given rise to complaints from county registrars, concerns that the hastily set date for the contest would lead to disenfranchisement of overseas military voters, and a lawsuit filed by Hispanic voters charging the election fails to comply with federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Rather than consolidating the special election with pre-existing general election dates, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared the special election --- to fill a vacancy in the state Senate following his appointment of former State Senator Abel Maldonado as Lieutenant Governor --- would take place on June 22nd.

In two previous articles, The BRAD BLOG has detailed how the issue has rankled election officials and voters alike, yet the Governor's office has so far failed to make accommodations for those serious concerns from several different corners...

After all these years, not much has changed for the denialist jurisdictions that still insult their voters by using 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines.

Pittsburgh's WTAE filed a report last week with a ring of exhausting familiarity --- at least to long time readers of The BRAD BLOG. This one stars, as usual, both an open, unsecured door to the warehouse, and an election official --- in this case, Allegheny County Pennsylvania's Election Division manager, Mark Wolosik --- claiming he's "seen" no problems before, so everything is just dandy, nothing to worry about when it comes to his support of the use of 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems by his county's voters...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

On California's June ballot this year, a measure paid for and deceptively represented by one major corporate sponsor, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), purports to be a "Taxpayers Right to Vote Act." In truth, the initiative represents one corporation's attempt to pervert the "citizen's initiative" process by spending millions to deceive voters into believing they can push back against the vaguely socialist-sounding notion of "government-run electric service."

The measure is anything but a "Taxpayers Right to Vote Act," and that name itself has even been out-and-out rejected for use on the ballot by the state's Attorney General --- not that it has stopped PG&E from misleadingly selling it that way to the public in a multi-million dollar television ad buy and direct-mail propaganda campaign...

Two quickie items from Public Citizen's latest DontGetRolled.org "e-newsletter about the movement to curb corporate influence in politics and restore our democracy," as brought to my attention by Ernie Canning today...

It's not just the troops and the election officials who are now acting on concerns of disenfranchisement. Now the Hispanic community and Democrats are charging the Governator's special election dates will "thwart voter turnout within minorities communities".

On the heels of The BRAD BLOG's coverage yesterday reporting on worries that thousands of overseas and military voters could be disenfranchised by CA Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's order for an early special election schedule in the state, and that election officials were "outraged" by the timing and concerned about the costs, minority groups and the Democratic Party are now filing suit to halt the impending election, charging the compressed dates are in violation of federal law.

A nine-page complaint [PDF] was filed in the Northern California U.S. District Court today by three Hispanic plaintiffs seeking "a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction" to halt the impending June 22nd special primary election date to fill a vacancy in Senate District 15 following the appointment of Abel Maldonado as Lt. Governor. The lawsuit is being funded by the state Democratic Party.

The suit charges that the short time-line for the special election schedule did not leave time for the required preclearance of the election dates under Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act. Monterey County, one of five included in SD 15, is covered by Section 5, a provision which requires the Dept. of Justice to pre-approve changes to voting laws in jurisdictions around the country where minorities have been historically disenfranchised.

Yesterday, retired twenty-year armed services veteran and Monterey talk-radio host Scott Dick detailed how the expedited special election schedule meant that ballots could not possibly be printed and sent to military family and personnel serving overseas prior to the 45-day minimum requirement of the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. He charged that there will not be enough time for those voters to receive and return their ballots in time to be counted in the special election.

State election officials, The BRAD BLOG has learned, share similar worries...

[UPDATED: Santa Cruz, CA, County Clerk/Registrar and Vice President of the CA Assoc. of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO) Gail Pellerin saw our article just after it went up, and wrote to both thank us for covering it, and to express her outrage over the Governor's decision here. She points us to a letter sent by clerks to his office earlier this week, and also notes that "Military voters are definitely disenfranchised" by this move. See the UPDATE at the end of this article for more comments and detail from Pellerin. - BF ]

[UPDATED AGAIN: Hispanic voters file federal complaint, charging violation of Voting Rights Act. Details at bottom of article - BF]

-- Guest blogged by Scott Dick

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is effectively disenfranchising at least 2,046 overseas California voters around the world, including military personnel stationed in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan by calling a special election for June 22, 2010.

Background: The Senate seat from California's Senate District 15 was recently vacated when Schwarzenegger's nominee, Abel Maldonado, was confirmed and sworn in as the new Lieutenant Governor. He was appointed as a replacement to the elected John Garamendi who was recently elected to the U.S. Congress in a special election filling the seat of Ellen Tauscher who had been appointed by the Obama administration to a post in the U.S. State Department.

Schwarzenegger set the date for the special election to fill Maldonado's Senate District 15 seat as June 22, 2010, virtually eliminating the ability of overseas voters to participate in the election.

While not directly violating the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act) signed into law October 28, 2009, he is most certainly violating it in spirit. The law was designed to ensure the rights of overseas civilians and deployed military personnel to participate in federal, state and local elections. For federal elections it requires ballots to be sent out 45 days prior to an election to allow the Department of Defense time to process those ballots. If a state requests a waiver they must do so 65 days before the election. The law was passed with a 45 day minimum requirement for a very good reason --- a reason that Schwarzenegger seems willing to ignore, unless he can be convinced to change the date of the election, and quickly...

Just in tonight as tabulation continues in Ohio's primary election today. Via Josh Sweigart at Middletown Journal:

Long-time readers of The BRAD BLOG will remember that similar "glitches" affected the 2004 Presidential Election in the Buckeye State when the election night reporting website went down late in the evening, was moved to the "back up servers" of a far Rightwing firm in Chattanooga, TN, before coming back up to show that George W. Bush had taken the lead over John Kerry.

That system was created by Mike Connell, the GOP's IT guru who, in 2008, was subpeonaed for a deposition in a long-standing 2004 election fraud suit, only to die in a mysterious plane crane just weeks after the election, before he could testify in open court. Computer security experts have long charged that the results of Ohio's '04 Presidential election may have been compromised by a so-called "man in the middle" computer attack as the servers changed locations that night.

Similarly, in the hotly contested 2005 Special Election contest between Jean Schmidt (R) and Paul Hackett (D) for Ohio's 2nd Congressional District seat, central tabulator computers went down during late-night counting in Clermont County, only to come back up showing Schmidt with the lead over Hackett.

Whether something similar could be going on tonight in Butler County remains to be seen, but the attacks on the servers certainly seem worth noting here should further information become available over the next few hours, days, or weeks.

[See end of article for an UPDATE on the above story.]

In another part of Ohio, Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) experienced its own predictable failures with its ES&S precinct-based optical-scan vote tabulators during pre-election testing over the weekend. 89 of the county's 1,200 machines (6%) froze up entirely during those tests...