This isn't about baseball or steroids, or even the U.S. Congress's recent and shameless waste of tax-payer money in holding hearings about them --- while other actual issues requiring Congressional oversight have been completely ignored.

It's about the Bush Administration's continuing encroachment on the rights of a free press, their contempt for whistleblowers, and their attempts to chill much-needed and far-too-rare investigative reporting.

It seems that two San Francisco Chronicle reporters may now be facing 18 months of jail time each for having reported on leaked grand jury information from the recent steroids investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), whose banned products were apparently used by a number of big leaguers including Bary Bonds and Jason Giambi.

As the Los Angeles Times is reporting today, reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, twice praised by George W. Bush for having "done a service" at a private reception before the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2005, are now staring down the barrel of a prison sentence which would be longer "than the combined sentences of all the defendants convicted in the steroid scandal they helped expose."

Even a former member of John Aschroft's Justice Department is calling the developments "very disturbing" and says outright that this precedent could lead to the end of "confidential-source reporting as you know it."...

San Diego's very conservative radio host and fill-in host for Rush Limbaugh, Roger Hedgecock --- who agrees with me nonetheless about Electronic Voting Machines --- wonders if San Diego County's Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas, one of the worst in the country, should resign.

We won't say any more than that, since we'd hate to bias the poll in any way. But rest easy knowing that the results of Hedgecock's unscientific online poll will be at least as reliable and accurate as any election Haas has ever run in San Diego.

Sleepover on your answer before deciding for sure, but either way, please vote in the poll...

UPDATE 1/14/06 1:08pm PT: We hadn't noticed this earlier, but it looks like the San Diego County Democratic Party Chair, Jess Durfee, called for the resignation of Haas on Election Night due to all of the reported problems with machine failures, lack of available paper ballots, etc. On Election Night, the far right-leaning Union-Tribune reported Durfee as saying "his polling place in University Heights was out of paper ballots by 9 a.m., and all the machines in that precinct were down by noon."

Also reported in the same article by the U-T...

We're changing our previous "neutral" stance and calling for Haas's immediate resignation. He's a disgrace, has undermined confidence of the electorate, has made a mockery of the rule of law, and the result is is that elections in San Diego have become a complete joke under his tenure in the county. There is absolutely no basis for confidence in the reported results of any election administered by Mikel Haas on November 7th.

Despite massive problems with their voting machines all over the country, at least two of the leading voting machine companies, Sequoia and Diebold, are still in extreme denial. But at least they have the "courage" to keep their names off record when talking to the press about it now...Cowards.

Witness the last two grafs of this ComputerWorld story on touch-screen vote-flipping --- the type that was reported all over the country both in Early Voting and on Election Day this year, and certainly in a big way back in '04...

It's not a problem. It doesn't exist. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

So not only are these guys liars, they're now cowards afraid to go on record with their names when spreading their utter bullshit.

By the way, one of those "conspiracy theory activist bloggers" who had the "non-existant" "non-problem" was Marshall Cook, a candidate for city council in Pinellas Park, Florida, last March. He kept trying to vote for himself, but his vote kept flipping to his opponent until he was finally forced to move to a different crappy Sequoia touch-screen voting machine.

As we reported at the time, quoting from that "activist blog" otherwise known as the St. Petersburg Times(!)...

Idiots.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Will the main stream media (MSM) continue to report on voting issues as they did in the long lead-up to the election? My guess is that they won't. Oh, there will be some follow-up on local issues but the networks and the cable news channels will surely forget that there is an issue with regards to voting machines. I expect to see even Lou Dobbs stowing the "Democracy at Risk" graphic away. It now goes back to the thousands of citizens who work in obscurity to try to convince our election officials that electronic voting machines should not have any place in our elections. This year's national election proved that fact though the national media immediately ignored the melt-down and blessed the election as having "wide-spread failures". As expected the MSM was joined by the Election Assistance Commission, electionline.org, the vendors, and many election officials. / Sarasota County and other Florida CD-13 counties have begun two days of recounts and number crunching without really recounting the voters' wishes....

Tired of reading me whine about problems with our crumbling electoral system? Now you can watch me whine about them instead.

As if it's not enough I've had to become a spokesman, a journalist, a broadcaster, an investigator, an advocate, a political consultant over these last two years or so..on the Saturday before the election, I was asked to become a Standup Comedian...of a sort.

Click the photo for a quick 4 and a half minute video of an onstage appearance at the premiere of Electric City: A Political Comedy Special, in which I was shanghaied into appearing with a bunch of actual comics (such as Marc Maron, John Fugelsang, Rick Overton, etc.) on the Saturday night before the election.

As I was exhausted at that point, I'm glad the bit was caught on video tape. Otherwise, for the life of me, I'd not have been able to tell you a thing I spoke about that night. The week(s) before the election are all a blur to me right now.

The gig was smartly hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ben Mankiewicz of The Young Turks. A two-minute trailer (in which I also appear briefly) for the entire evening is posted below as well...

Thanks to Cannon for the find. To HannibalLectersmith for the video. To JFK for the reminder.

What a difference 45 years or so makes...

From the Ocean City Observer...

We wonder if he's equally scared --- or has even been made aware by the Sequoia Voting Systems people --- that the Sequoia Advantage touch-screen system his county uses is the same machine shown at the beginning of the HBO Hacking Democracy documentary to be flipping vote after vote from a Republican candidate to a Democratic candidate.

Or if he's concerned that Sequoia's other touch-screen model, the "Edge", gives voters the "edge" by offering the opportunity to vote as many times as they want, over and over again, just by pressing "the yellow button" as The BRAD BLOG revealed during the week prior to the election.

We wonder what else Sequoia has failed to inform the Ocean County Board of Elections about concerning their crappy voting systems.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As should be expected by anyone who follows elections as closely as we do, the news today is again full of articles from Sarasota Co., Florida where the counties paperless ES&S voting machines failed to register over 18,000 votes for a 13th Congressional District race. ES&S and the county elections director are, of course, blaming the problem on the voters just not wanting to vote in the race. Meanwhile the media is full of anecdotal evidence that the machines failed to register votes in that race. The lesson is that Never, NEVER should the decision of who wins a race come down to a decision made by a voting machine. Never! NEVER should a voting machine be part of the decision. If the voters don't want to vote in a race then it's their decision and there should be no doubt that was their decision. A paper ballot gives us that information. A box with circuitry and software gives us nothing. We need to take the box out of the decision process....

After the state's initial denial that there were any problems in Florida's 13th Congressional District U.S. House race, even Jeb is now admitting there may be problems "worth investigating." From AP...

Orlando Sentinel's coverage on Friday began with these incredible words [emphasis ours]:

"Not as foolproof as hoped"?!

Just who exactly are the fools they're referring to there?

Electronic voting machines made by ES&S, the largest supplier of voting systems in the country, failed across the country on Election Day. We're beginning to see more and more of the results of the failures from those machines --- as "foolproof," apparently, as the Titanic was "unsinkable."

An unprecedented 83% voter turnout has been reported from ES&S iVotronic paperless touch-screen systems in Benton County, Arkansas, after the Election Commission reviewed it's balloting when it was found that tabulated votes were being dropped from the system as new votes were being entered into it on Tuesday night.

The results: More votes than citizens in several areas of Benton County and an overall turnout described as "eye-popping" by a University of Arkansas political science professor who pointed to Idaho's 63% turnout as having made news for a midterm election record. Idaho's got nothing on Benton County, apparently.

Four different Florida counties are reporting enormous undervote rates on the same type of ES&S iVotronic paperless touch-screen systems in at least one key U.S. House race and in their election for State Attorney General.

And in one small town, ES&S voting machines are reporting zero votes for a mayoral candidate who swears that, yes, he really did vote for himself!

In Arkansas, the Morning News reported on Friday...

At the risk of stoking conspiracy theories which I have no interesting in doing, I have absolutely no idea what to make of this. Though it seems worth putting out there nonetheless. Make of it what you will...

From the FEC's 2000 Connecticut Senate Election Results...

From CNN's 2006 Connecticut Senate Election Results...
(as of 11/11/06, 4:26pm PT)

(Hat-tip to BRAD BLOG Emailer Nigel E.)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Faced with election results that show over 18,000 voters were disenfranchised by her voting machines, Sarasota Co. Florida Elections Director Kathy Dent has changed her mind about DREs. Dent has now come out in favor of a referendum that was on the ballot, and that she fought hard against, that would require the county to change to a paper based voting system. The referendum won overwhelmingly. ...

After our joint 9-hour marathon broadcast on Election Night (had some great guests and interviews that night, hope to get all of the hours logged up and online for the historical archives soon), the mighty Peter B. Collins and I wrapped up the week's events during my normal weekly Friday appearance yesterday --- which included lots of great phone calls as well. Here's the audio for your weekend listening pleasure...

-- Brad on Peter B. Collins Show, 11/10/06 [MP3, 1 hour]

Noah at Nero Fiddled brings to our attention this notable point from a story in today's WaPo on the so-called "Religous Right" turnout last Tuesday [emphasis ours]...

"The amazing thing was that the Democratic swing wasn't bigger."

As we move forward with forensic investigations of what happened last Tuesday, examinations of Exit Polling, reviews of fraud reports coming in to VR's $500k Fraud Tip Hotline and more, I believe the posited notion from my ComputerWorld article yesterday --- that Dems "might have taken 40 seats in the House instead of just 30 had they bothered to fight for an accountable, secure, transparent electoral system and instructed their candidates to concede nothing until every vote was counted, verified and audited for accuracy" --- will begin to emerge as a more and more likely case.

Such as it is for the moment, however, I think it's fair to suggest that the only reason things went as well as they did is because of the tireless Election Integrity advocates on the ground across the country this time. The bad guys knew that this time they were being watched, and it would be much harder to get away with anything. I'll associate myself with Ohio's democracy champions, Fitrakis and Wasserman who wrote that last Tuesday was a "monumental victory for the Election Protection movement."

I couldn't concur more whole-heartedly...Even with miles to go before we sleep...

Speaking of bullets barely dodged, here was some of the appropriate anxiety on Election Day...

(Hat-tip to CarbonDate)