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Latest Featured Reports | Monday, March 18, 2024
Corporations 'Taking a Bazooka' to NLRB, Hoping to Declare it 'Unconstitutional': 'BradCast' 3/18/24
Guest: Labor journo Steven Greenhouse; Also: Putin's 'election'; Trump can't find $450M...
Sunday 'Wouldn't Wanna Be Ya' Toons
FEATURING: Moses Mike...Trump II Terror...TikTok Truth...and more in our latest collection of the week's most secular toons!...
Schumer Steps Up; Trump Associates Paid Biden 'Bribe' Liar $600k: 'BradCast' 3/14/24
Also: TikTok foolishness; NY hush-money trial delay?; Navarro must go to jail; Trump owes $400k for failed 'Steele Dossier' suit in UK...
'Green News Report' 3/14/24
  w/ Brad & Desi
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
Guest: Brady Center's Kelly Sampson; Also: Biden, Trump clinch; GA judge nixes 6 counts...
How to Media Better and Other Smart Ideas:
'BradCast' 3/12/24
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
Biden touts climate jobs boom at SOTU; Feb. obliterated global temp and ocean heat records; PLUS: Great Barrier Reef hit with yet another 'mass bleaching event'...
Biden's Bold SOTU, Britt's SOTU Border Lies: 'BradCast' 3/11/24
Listeners ring in on that, Brad's hack of Daylight Saving Time and more...
The GOP's Exploitation of Laken Riley
CANNING: Suddenly they care about gun violence?...
Sunday 'Strongman' Toons
FEATURING: Sleepy Joe...Cognitive tests...The People's Court...and more in our latest collection of the week's most powerful toons!...
Echoes of Hitler's 'Final Solution' in Trump's Call to 'Finish the Problem' in Gaza
CANNING: 'In normal times, Hitler comparisons might seem over the top. These are not normal times'...
SCOTUS 14.3 Ruling a 'Sham' Says Group That First Raised Issue: 'BradCast' 3/7/24
Guest: Ron Fein of FSFP; Also: Sweden in NATO; Biden aid to Gaza; 'No Labels'; More...
'Green News Report' 3/7/24
2024 nominees set, climate stakes couldn't be higher; Broken utility pole caused TX fires?; Coastal U.S. cities sinking; PLUS: N. Atlantic keeps breaking heat records...
BARCODED BALLOTS AND BALLOT MARKING DEVICES
BMDs pose a new threat to democracy in all 50 states...
VIDEO: 'Rise of the Tea Bags'
Brad interviews American patriots...
'Democracy's Gold Standard'
Hand-marked, hand-counted ballots...
Brad's Upcoming Appearances
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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'...

Brad Breaks PA Photo ID & GOP Registration Fraud Scandal News on Hartmann TV
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...

RNC FIRES NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION FIRM FOR FRAUD
After FL & NC GOP fire Romney-tied group, RNC does same; Dead people found reg'd as new voters; RNC paid firm over $3m over 2 months in 5 battleground states...

EXCLUSIVE: Intvw w/ FL Official Who First Discovered GOP Reg Fraud
After fraudulent registration forms from Romney-tied GOP firm found in Palm Beach, Election Supe says state's 'fraud'-obsessed top election official failed to return call...

GOP REGISTRATION FRAUD FOUND IN FL
State GOP fires Romney-tied registration firm after fraudulent forms found in Palm Beach; Firm hired 'at request of RNC' in FL, NC, VA, NV & CO...
The Secret Koch Brothers Tapes...


Court loses sight of fundamental right to verifiably accurate count...
By Ernest A. Canning on 12/10/2016 3:04pm PT  

If allowed to stand, the reasoning behind U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Goldsmith's December 7, 2016 decision [PDF] in Stein v. Thomas to halt the Michigan presidential "recount" is flawed, at best. Issued, ironically enough, on the day we commemorate what President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as "a date which will live in infamy", it is by no means an exaggeration to suggest that Judge Goldsmith's reasoning could inflict greater harm on the very foundations of our constitutional form of democracy than that inflicted by the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

The halt to the "recount" came just two days after Judge Goldsmith issued a temporary restraining order ("TRO") directing the MI Canvassing Board to immediately commence the "recount" and one day after a U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal decision, upholding that TRO.

Under that 6th Circuit appeals ruling, Judge Goldsmith was obligated to revisit the issue if "the Michigan courts determine that Plaintiffs' recount is improper for any reason." Separately, on Dec. 6, the Michigan state appellate court ruled that, under MI law, only a candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning has a right to initiate a post-election count. But that state court ruling, by three Republican judges, did not justify Judge Goldsmith's decision to halt a "recount" that had been predicated on Dr. Jill Stein's rights under the U.S. Constitution.

As he acknowledged in his original decision, the Green Party Presidential candidate did not base her federal claim on state law. To the contrary, in his initial finding, Goldsmith held that the Plaintiffs had shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the two-business day waiting period mandated by state law "would likely violate their right to vote under the First and Fourteenth Amendments." Judge Goldsmith, in that first decision, added, "the [federal] right to vote, and to have that vote conducted fairly and counted accurately" [emphasis added] is not merely "fundamental" but serves as "the bedrock of our Nation."

State law, whether directed at the timing of the recount or to the aggrieved status (standing) of the candidate seeking the count, should not be allowed to infringe upon a fundamental right that every citizen has to a verifiably accurate count of their votes.

The truly damaging aspect of the decision to dissolve the TRO lies not in the question of standing but in Judge Goldsmith's upside-down reasoning as to who should bare the burden of establishing the integrity of the vote. That reasoning is directly at odds with the rulings made in two landmark cases in Germany and Austria, to the effect that the need for election integrity and transparency are paramount in any nation that values democracy...

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




Or, how Politico summarizes much of BRAD BLOG's 15 years of e-voting coverage in 8,500 smart words....
By Brad Friedman on 8/5/2016 1:15pm PT  

Please read the cover story of Politico Magazine today headlined "How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes". Ben Wofford's excellent, comprehensive feature summarizes a great deal of almost 15 years of our work here at The BRAD BLOG. He focuses his piece on the core of computer science and cybersecurity experts initially working out of Princeton University back in 2005 or so, who have, since that time, gone on to publicly hack virtually every electronic voting system and tabulator still in use around the country (and even, looking forward, hacking at least one planned Internet Voting scheme.)

We've covered and/or broke the news about many of those landmark exploits, both here and on the radio, going back through 2005 or so. I don't have time to collect all the links here at the moment, but it's very nice to see so many of them rounded up so thoroughly in Wofford's piece.

The 8,500+ word article is far too detailed to adequately summarize, or even quote from in detail here. So please go pour a tall drink or cup of coffee (you may need several, there's a lot there) and go read about the "parabola of havoc and mismanagement that has been the fifteen-year nightmare of state and local officials", as he accurately describes it, following the horrifically misguided and ill-advised move to computerized voting and tabulation systems following the 2000 election. I suspect we've filed almost as many articles on this topic as Wofford has words in today's piece!

But there's one element of his piece I want to ring in on specifically, as I think it represents something a bit more encouraging from the computer scientists who are discussed in the report than I have seen over the years...

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




While concerned about intimidation, court permits expansion of voter challengers, reduction of early voting in 2014 election; But also offers important interpretation of Voting Rights Act provision
UPDATE: North Carolina requests stay at U.S. Supreme Court...
By Ernest A. Canning on 10/2/2014 10:22am PT  

A bit of encouraging voting news came out of North Carolina on Wednesday, believe it or not. We'll see how long it lasts.

By way of a 2-1 decision and a lengthy Opinion [PDF] on Wednesday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeal ordered U.S. District Court Judge Thomas J. Schroeder, a George W. Bush appointee, to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent the State of North Carolina from implementing two provisions of a sweeping election "reform" bill.

The court sharply criticized the lower court's ruling that previously allowed the law to move forward as is, despite the likelihood of a disproportionate effect on minority voters in the Tar Heel State.

The BRAD BLOG described the bill in question, when it was passed by the GOP legislature last year, as "the nation's worst voter suppression law since the Jim Crow era." The law includes virtually every restriction on voting --- shortening early voting hours, ending same-day registration, implementation of disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions and much more --- ever attempted by Republicans across the country over the past decade. The legislation was, quite literally, rammed through the state's Republican-controlled legislature, with no period for public comment or debate, just one day after a sharply-divided U.S. Supreme Court gutted the heart of the Voting Rights Act in the Summer of 2013.

The majority opinion at the 4th Circuit was highly critical of Schroeder's analysis in the case. They described it as "flawed," containing "grave errors" and "plainly wrong" on the law. The court found that the District Court judge abused his discretion in refusing to issue a preliminary injunction that would prevent implementation of two provisions of the state's H.B. 589.

In their decision, the three-judge panel's majority also offered significant interpretations of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), that, if ultimately upheld, could minimize the damage wrought by the gutting of Section 5 by the U.S. Supreme Court last year...

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




Unknown to users, 'massive security vulnerability' in Internet architecture allowed massive 'man-in-the-middle' rerouting...
By Brad Friedman on 12/12/2013 6:05am PT  

[This article now cross-published by The Progressive...]

We've discussed, many times over the years, the madness of Internet Voting schemes. Today we've got yet another piece of disturbing evidence that underscores why such a scheme for American democracy would be nothing short of insane.

The BRAD BLOG has highlighted how easily Internet elections can be hacked by all sorts of nefarious folks (perhaps most disturbingly, without the knowledge of election officials); how various experiments in Internet Voting have proved disastrous (Hello, Canada! Hello, Honolulu! Hello, Oscars!); and how it is simply impossible to do a true pilot test of any such Internet Voting schemes in advance, since the most dangerous tactics that bad guys might throw at an Internet-based election in order to game it are actually illegal. Because of that, good guy "white hat hackers" wouldn't be able to use those same techniques to test the security of any Internet Voting scheme before it was actually put into use in a live election.

Moreover --- and perhaps the deal-breaker when it comes to the viability of Internet Voting ever being workable in public elections --- even if the Internet Voting scheme remains secure, there is no way that the citizenry can know that was the case. Any such scheme would require faith and trust in others, which is decidedly not what our system of oversight and checks and balances in public elections is supposed to be built on. Thus, even a secured Internet Voting scheme would seriously undermine the basic tenets of, and overall confidence in, American democracy.

Now, Kim Zetter at Wired's "Threat Level" blog offers yet another reason why the Internet, as it currently exists, is simply unfit to serve as a means for secure online voting. Her recently published article, which doesn't focus on voting, is alarmingly headlined "Someone's Been Siphoning Data Through a Huge Security Hole in the Internet".

And no, in this case, it's not the NSA. At least as far as we know.

Zetter details a "huge security hole" indeed, one which, as she documents, was found to have been used earlier this year to re-route "vast amounts" of U.S. Internet data all the way out to Belarus and Iceland, where it was intercepted in a classic "man-in-the-middle" fashion, before being sent on to its intended receiver. During the hijack attack, the senders and receivers of the Internet data were none the wiser, just as would likely be the case if the same gaping security hole in the Internet's existing architecture was used to hijack votes cast over the Internet, change them, and then send them on to the server of the intended election official recipient...

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




By Brad Friedman on 1/25/2013 11:30am PT  

As it is said when it comes to voting technology: As California goes, so goes the nation. To that end, there is some disturbing news on the horizon from BlackBoxVoting.org as the Internet Voting virus threatens to spread to the Golden State.

If you're not familiar with the many insane dangers of this idea, and if the Academy Awards' recent nightmare wasn't enough, here's an article or two or three or four from the past year or two here which should do well to appropriately scare the hell out of you.

In the meantime, here's how BBV cuts to the chase --- and the core --- of the real concerns of Internet Voting, as the anti-democratic profiteering vultures descend into the state...

California Assemblyman Phil Ting has proposed AB 19, a bill to require the California Secretary of State to implement an Internet voting pilot project.

They tell us Internet voting is secure. It's not. It's not secure, and can't be made secure, but that's not even the point.

The point is it's not transparent. The whole premise in our Constitution is that we self-govern. To do that, the public must be able to see and authenticate essential processes, like who actually voted and the vote count, and that is not possible with Internet voting.

Internet voting transfers all control to whoever runs the server. (The server is just a computer that sits in a room --- and one Internet voting company, Scytl, has its server physically sitting in Spain.)

Internet voting gives the administrator complete control over the front end (who put the votes into the system) and the back end (the counting of the votes).

Internet voting is trying to come on with a vengeance, and not just in California. It is now imminent. Unless we are vigilant, many of us will be forced to vote online in 2014 and 2016. Lobbyists are at work to persuade your legislators to install Internet voting.

Political support has been secured from officials in several states. The governor of Hawaii has announced he wants Internet voting. Secretaries of State from Connecticut, West Virginia, Washington, and Oregon are already pushing online voting, and soon you'll hear about it near you. Federal bills promise cash to states that "expedite" their voting systems, with vague language as to what that means.

Because Americans are skeptical about Internet voting, politicians and reporters describe it as "smart phone voting" and "iPad voting." They also call it "convenience voting" but what they don't tell us is that, in exchange for convenience, we will lose the ability to self-govern.

To put this into blunt terms: It's not whether Internet Voting is or isn't secure. (It's not, but that's actually beside the point.) It's whether you, or anybody else, can ever know that it's secure. And the hard, cold, scientific fact is that you cannot.

More on "Ting's Thing" from BBV here...

* * *
Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation, with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




By Steve Schneider on 1/12/2013 1:15pm PT  

Last week we asked (mostly) satirically: "If Lincoln ends up winning this year’s Best Picture Oscar, how early in the night will Karl Rove admit it?"

Well, now, given the Academy's latest Titanic disaster, a certain Hollywood blogger would be within her rights to say, "TOLDJA!"

The Oscar nominations that were announced last Thursday provided clear evidence that the experiment with Internet Voting by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was exactly the disaster some members had expected --- and that the reason wasn't technological befuddlement on the part of older voters, as AMPAS had unpersuasively claimed. Rather, the problem was a simply crummy online voting system that stymied the ballot-casting efforts of even computer-savvy "youngsters" like documentarian Morgan Spurlock.

The nominations list is so devoid of internal consistency and logic that show-biz pundits are using terms like "baffling" to describe it. That's a far cry from the supposed cross-category bias toward edgier, more youthfully skewing pictures we were supposed to see after the Academy's old guard supposedly gave up on learning how to use the Internet. Instead, the lack of any pattern whatsoever to the noms shows that Internet Voting was every bit the nightmare for the Oscars that it has been for the American and even the Canadian elections systems as a whole, as The BRAD BLOG has detailed for many years.

But so far, it seems, no mainstream journalist or Academy member is willing to voice the unavoidable conclusion that this year's contest is now hopelessly tainted, and its results even more meaningless than usual. If your nominations basically represent a compendium of votes that were able to get past a firewall of interface and design ineptitude --- not to mention the votes of anybody else who might have inappropriately succeeded in entering and perverting the system --- legitimacy for this year's supposed winners is now largely gone with the wind.

Of course, Oscar results have never been overseeable or "verifiable" by the public. Unlike organizations like the National Society of Film Critics, the Academy doesn't reveal the number of votes received by each winner, nor does it even name the runners-up. It's always lacked the transparency required for legitimacy of any small "d" democratic "election". But under the old, paper-ballot-only system, at least Pricewaterhouse Coopers (the pedigreed professional-services firm that is AMPAS' official vote tabulator and certifier) could see with their own eyes who had won. We could either trust their accounting or not.

But now, not even they know who won or lost, since there's no way for them to verify the accuracy or completeness or integrity of the online vote by the time it got to them. Thus, nobody --- least of all the Academy --- will ever know who "won" the Oscars. Ever!

The calamitous insecurity of untransparent e-voting --- whether in person at the polls or via the Internet --- is something interested parties are loathe to acknowledge. That's why opportunistic companies like Everyone Counts --- which provided the Oscar voting software despite their rich history of gumming up the works in more important, governmental races --- get to fail ever upward.

If we as a society can't cry foul when a shady but well-connected software firm louses up something as comparatively inconsequential as the Academy Awards, how are we ever going to confront the reality of what they and their ilk are doing to our democracy?

Read my full story on this year's epic Oscar Internet Voting collapse, posted at Orlando Weekly, right here. It starts this way:

Aaaaand now it's official: We will never, ever know who really won this year's Oscars.

That's because we'll never know who was even nominated...

* * *

Steve Schneider is an Orlando-based media critic who writes about the intersection of popular culture and public policy. He holds a master's degree in Media, Culture & Communication from New York University. Read his blog, "Vision Thing", at Orlando Weekly and follow him on Twitter: @Schneider_Stv.

* * *
Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation, with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




By Steve Schneider on 1/7/2013 6:05am PT  

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) had to extend its deadline for Oscar nominations, after outlets like The Hollywood Reporter spread the news of extensive difficulties with AMPAS' new online voting system.

Yes, Oscar has caught the dreaded Internet Voting disease, and it seems to be working out about as well as it did for Canada in 2012 and just slightly better (as far as we know) than it did for Washington D.C. back in 2010 or for Honolulu in 2009 (where the same company ran that particular Internet Voting disaster.)

From rejected passwords and missed deadlines to fears of system hacks and depressed participation, the whole thing has apparently been a colossal clusterfudge --- not to mention a chilling echo of the catastrophic insecurity of the American election system as a whole in the age of electronic balloting.

Of course, AMPAS should have known better when they hired the disastrous Everyone Counts outfit to run their Internet Voting scheme. But this would hardly be the first time the Academy swooned over the influence of a former Washington power broker. The revolving door between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Everyone Counts may finally be paying off for the Internet Voting democracy-be-damned company.

Making the situation even worse, AMPAS and its surrogates have attempted to recast the meltdown of their system as mere techno-confusion on the part of older Academy members, thus smearing anyone concerned for the legitimacy of this year's Oscar as a clueless adversary of "progress."

Sound familiar?

Watching this offensive and destructive meme take hold everywhere from Deadline Hollywood to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is a sobering reminder of how important it is to fight for paper balloting in every governmental contest in the nation, and how much P.R. firepower we'll have to overcome in the process.

Read my full story on the entire fine mess, posted at Orlando Weekly, right here. It starts this way:

If Lincoln ends up winning this year’s Best Picture Oscar, how early in the night will Karl Rove admit it?

* * *

UPDATE 1/12/13: It's official. The "baffling" nominations are now out and no one can ever know who really won this year's Oscars. Details now here...

* * *

Steve Schneider is an Orlando-based media critic who writes about the intersection of popular culture and public policy. He holds a master's degree in Media, Culture & Communication from New York University. Read his blog, "Vision Thing", at Orlando Weekly and follow him on Twitter: @Schneider_Stv.

* * *
Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation, with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...




Also allows ink for 'Internet Voting' voting shill, lobbyist...
By Brad Friedman on 9/20/2012 4:33pm PT  

Meanwhile, as the War Over Which Americans Get to Exercise Their Right to Vote rages on, concern about how the votes of those who do get to vote, will (or won't) be tabulated, goes largely unnoticed. Again.

USA Today takes a moment to mention that point in an unbylined editorial headlined 'Electronic voting is the real threat to elections'. Their headline may understate the very real concerns about access to the polls, because these two issues --- both access to the polls and accurate, transparent tabulation of ballots --- have always been two sides of the same coin.

Both issues must be assured for an election with anything close to integrity.

But, given the, necessarily, extraordinary focus on the first issue this year, access, it's nice that the paper has taken a moment to highlight just a few of the continuing causes of concern for the actual tabulation of votes. Nothing has gotten better since 2010 or 2008 or even 2004. We've covered all of the examples for reasons to be concerned that they point to in the editorial, of course, and many more, over the years here at The BRAD BLOG.

And, naturally, since the paper is still a corporate media outlet, they just had to "balance" their fairly decent, fact-based editorial with an additional "opposing view" editorial, filled with a bunch of misleading, dishonest bullshit about Internet Voting, of all things, from a corporate lobbyist hack...

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




Paul DeGregorio's 'Everyone Counts' was paid to carry out fully unverifiable, unsecure Internet, phone election in Honolulu
Voter participation plummets 83% to boot...
By Brad Friedman on 5/28/2009 12:20pm PT  

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

As if the former U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) chair Paul DeGregorio hadn't done enough damage to our nation's electoral system during his disastrous reign as a commissioner from 2003 to 2007, it looks like he's now more than happy to cash in on his Bush-appointed public post in the private sector as Chief Operating Officer for a dubious Internet voting operation.

Everyone Counts (E1C) is the San Diego-based firm which ran "America's first all-digital online and telephone election" in Honolulu, which was completed last week. That's the way it was described by Aaron Contorer, the company's Chief of Products and Partnership, in a very thinly disguised press release, sadly posted, as if a news article, recently by Huffington Post. [Full Disclosure: We also contribute articles to HuffPo, though we try to offer news, rather than press releases.]

As COO of Everyone Counts, DeGregorio has posted a video commercial (and a bad one at that, see the bottom of this article where it's re-posted) on his bio page at the company website. His face is also featured on the front page of their site. In the short video, DeGregorio crows about his 22 years in the election "business" while posing in front of the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument in D.C.

Trading on his former self-proclaimed status as "America's chief election official," DeGregorio endorses the private company for which he now works, noting in the video: "I've been involved in this business for 22 years, having risen to the, America's Chief election official. And I have found that Everyone Counts is the place for me to be, because it's the only organization that provides transparency, accessibility, security and choice. And I think that's the most important thing for any election official, anywhere in the world."

While evidently accuracy doesn't even make DeGregorio's list of "most important thing[s] for any election official" --- not surprising, given his oversight, during his tenure at the EAC, of federal approval for myriad electronic voting systems that fail to meet federal accuracy standards --- the idea that EC's Internet voting schemes provide "transparency" seems to be entirely without evidence, as The BRAD BLOG confirmed with a representative of the Honolulu Neighborhood Commission Office which sponsored last week's election.

Moreover, Everyone Counts' virtual election in Hawaii, according to late news reports this week, seems to have been a dismal failure, at least if the 83% plummet in voter participation might be taken as any indication, in addition to the election's lack of transparency and verifiability.

Numerous commenters, including us, left responses to Contorer's misleading and disinformative HuffPo item, noting serious concerns about E1C's "all-digital" voting scheme. Concerns were expressed by many posters about citizens' lack of ability to verify the accuracy of votes cast, and of transparency and security in the system which, Contorer claims, employs "military-grade encryption technology." He goes on to try to convince readers that it's also "faster, more reliable, and more secure than if they had voted on paper." He failed to answer to any of our critical comments, however, and neither did he offer evidence to back up his claims about his company's superior reliability and security over fully-transparent, paper-ballot voting.

Despite his shameless promotion, and an offer in his video to contact him with any questions, DeGregorio himself did no better in responding to our request for comment in regard to our concerns...

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



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