Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. After telling the state of Colorado that changes can be made to allow electronic voting to take place next Nov. the SoS, Mike Coffman, is now supporting all paper elections and vote centers. This guy is like a flag and goes which ever way the wind is blowing. ...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

For much more on the medias role in spreading lies and propaganda about Al Gore see Robert Parry's informative, "Al Gore v. The Media" at Consortium News, "The Press vs. Al Gore" at Rolling Stone and many a post at The Daily Howler and Media Matters.

One of America's very best political cartoonists --- and certainly one of its most under-appreciated --- Tom Tomorrow, (aka Dan Perkins) reviews the first part of 2007. The rest of the year's shame promised for next week...

In a post noting the bizarrely different schizophrenic reactions, by the GOP punditocracy, to the two crossing-baring Christmas ads from Huckabee and McCain --- only one of them, Huckabee's, managing to be objectionable to the Republican bigs for some reason --- Glen Greenwald concludes with this bit of Christmapocracy observed on the battlefields of the far right loony bin...

...And so it goes.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

We are going to take tomorrow off for Christmas. VotersUnite would like to extend our heartfelt good wishes to all of you and your families for a wonderful day tomorrow. Merry Christmas to you all. ...

(Hat-tip BRAD BLOG reader Jim Cirile)

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

New York City has already decided to purchase one “Ballot Marking Device” for each polling place in the city. That puts them one step ahead of the rest of the state.

Meanwhile Pennsylvania has joined other states which have read the Colorado reports and decided that any testing done in Colorado does not apply to their state even though they use the same machines.

West Virginia says that even though they use machines that were decertified in Colorado they just don’t know enough to decide whether to get rid of them.

Editorials and Op-Eds from Ohio papers are mixed. The opinions of the papers surely echo the opinion of the county election offices rather than an opinion made after research and education.

Those stories, and the rest of today's voting news, all linked below...

The Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper that originally reported on the still-unresolved case of Warren County, Ohio's tabulation room lockdown on Election Night in 2004, has taken note of the comments made by OH Sec. of State, Jennifer Brunner in The BRAD BLOG's exclusive interview with her last week.

They highlight our exchange with the Secretary, concerning the lack of investigation, by her office, or any other, into the specious "Homeland Security warning" that county officials claimed had forced them to impose an unprecedented lock out, of both the media and public, denying them the ability to observe the tabulation in the counting room on Election Night. Warren County was one of the last counties in the Buckeye State to report their results in 2004 and went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush.

Brunner told us during our interview last week that she found the issue "troubling," and said that she still "can't find any justification for it."

"We'll look again at that situation and see what the best course of action is to prevent it from happening in the future," she promised us.

We argued that the best course of action is to bring accountability in order to send the message that such behavior will not be tolerated again.

At this time, the issue remains uninvestigated, the FBI and Dept. of Homeland Security deny issuing any such warnings to Warren or any other county in Ohio, and many of the county officials responsible for the unprecedented lockdown in 2004, in violation of state law, as well as the same county prosecutor, all remain in charge as another Presidential Election is set to begin in 2008.

Two of the Enquirer's original reports on the disturbing matter are posted here and here.

A very quick review of the reportage at the time, naming the names of those who were complicit, and the federal agencies that denied any such threat, follows...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Colorado Secretary of State Coffman continues to step as far away from state law as he possibly can. Rather than protect the voters it seems that Coffman wants to do everything possible to cut corners and ignore the facts in order for counties to use the machines he just decertified. Now Coffman is allowing Mesa Co to do their own certification testing to see if they can figure out a way to make their ES&S iVotronics work. “Even if Omaha, Neb.-based ES&S couldn’t get the systems to work for the certification, county officials likely can, Coffman said.” He wants to allow the counties to do their own testing and then go to the legislature and have them approve what has been done by the counties. Does anyone smell another law suit?

More info on that, and links to today's other notable voting news, follows below...

BushWorld "Reality", meet Tipping Point.

As we head into the holidays (just past O'Reilly's "nine days of Hanukkah"), the wheels continue to come off, if still maddeningly slower than they should, in one case of White House/RNC corruption and/or fraud after another. We used to be able to keep up with the bulk of it. But no more. We throw in the towel, as developments and new cases are now coming faster than Executive Branch officials can declare a suddenly-discovered need to 'spend more time with their families'.

In matters of Election Fraud, a particular specialty of The BRAD BLOG, the under-reported pickings, from which we previously had to choose, were mighty, but slim enough that we could at least touch (if not a great deal more) on most of them.

But no more. And thankfully, of course. Even if it's a bit frustrating not to be able to bring you every step, in every case, as they are now coming fast and furious across the nation.

Several such cases, of what clearly are of enormous import, of late, have received some good coverage elsewhere --- for a welcome change. So we take some solace in that, at least, even if we don't have the resources to keep up with all of them, much less advance them a few steps ourselves, as we always prefer.

But we should at least touch on a couple of them, a bit, for the historical record, here at America's Election Fraud Authority, The BRAD BLOG. Please read on for some pointers to two emerging and mind-blowing stories of apparently rigged elections, that you may, or may not, have read about yet.

Seriously, read on...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Just in late this afternoon, a typical-bad-news-on-a-late-Friday-after-the-news-week-is-complete, is the news that OH Secretary of State Brunner has ignored the statements of every person who spoke before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. She has decided that the county must change voting systems and voting system vendors before the primary election, which is March 4, with early voting beginning in a little over a month. ES&S will be given the contract.

Two more states have begun to look at the results of testing of voting systems and they are answering questions of the media. In both cases, Nevada and Louisiana election officials told the same story. Yes, they use the same machines and the machines have the same problems BUT they have administrative methods that make the findings from Ohio and Colorado inconsequential. Of course, both states have the same, or nearly the same, administrative methods as both Ohio and Colorado and the methods described in the media would not have any impact on the insecure, inaccurate and inaccessible voting systems in use.

Speaking of inaccessibility of voting systems; why has no one yet stood-up and reminded these states that their reports say the machines do not meet HAVA requirements? Why is this being ignored?

All of those stories, and many more, linked below as usual...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent, Margie Burns

Washington, D.C. -- U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy held a hearing this morning on a motion filed by attorneys representing detainees being held in Guantanamo. Following reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post that CIA videotapes of ‘harsh interrogations’ of detainees had been destroyed, apparently by the CIA, possibly under administration approval, attorneys David Remes and Marc Falkoff filed an Emergency Motion [PDF] for inquiry into the preservation of documents relating to prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Before Judge Kennedy and a courtroom packed with journalists,

• Lawyers for the detainees are asking the court to schedule a hearing for inquiry into whether the government is preserving evidence relating to detainees. Attorney David Remes expressed concern that the destruction of the two videotapes, as reported, may not be the full extent of the evidence destroyed...

The death spiral for the 131 year-old company, once respectfully known as Diebold, continues, as its stock price falls to a 5-year low today, near year's end (currently $29.23/share and still sinking, from a 52-week high of $54.50/share), along with the additional news that the U.S. Department of Justice has now joined the SEC in an investigation concerning the company's "Enron-like" bookkeeping tricks...

The BRAD BLOG, of course, originally reported on the SEC's investigation into Diebold's book-keeping chicanery back in May of 2006, just a few months after our first exclusive report, based on information from a company insider we dubbed DIEB-THROAT, preceded a 20% stock-price plunge just days afterward.

At the time, back in late September 2005, the stock price plunged to a 52-week low of about $44.37/share (which we're sure they'd kill for now --- not that we wish to give them any ideas) and DIEB-THROAT told us in response to the related news: "the last time this kind of deception occurred it was called Enron."

Then came a class action securities fraud suit against the company in December 2005, as first broken by The BRAD BLOG natch, before the parallel SEC investigation first became public.

Since then, following one independent study after another after another after another, finding their electronic voting systems to be virus-prone, hackable, unreliable and inaccurate, the company finally dumped it's controversial CEO who had infamously promised in a Republican fundraising letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to" George W. Bush in 2004, before attempting again to fool the American public by renaming its election division "Premiere Elections Solutions" (same pig, fresh lipstick), just after stock prices plummeted again in August of this year to $47.60 as The BRAD BLOG noticed what appeared to us, and at least one financial analyst, to be possible insider trading among a number of company officials.

Prices have continued to fall ever since --- a lucky coincidence, no doubt, for those executives who just happened to unload a bunch of stock near the year's high at $53.05 - to today's 5-year low of $29.20.

Additional bad news arrived last Friday for Diebold when a new study by the state of Ohio found their systems to be easily hackable (again), with better news coming last Tuesday as the state of Colorado's own certification tests, surprisingly, gave their their machines a pass while decertifying many others. Yesterday, however, the reason for the inexplicable get-out-of-jail card they received in CO may have become a bit clearer: As it turns out, the Republican Secretary of State who oversaw the new certification testing, Mike Coffman, is running for Congress, and his campaign shares the same consultants as Diebold/Premier in the state. Go figure.

Diebold/Premiere's spokeshole, Chris Riggall told the Rocky Mountain News in response yesterday, that the company just had no idea about the extraordinary conflict of interest. But with the mission already accomplished, he announced to the paper: "Effective tonight that relationship is terminated."

With their stock-price still spiraling this morning, Diebold is quoted by Crain's Cleveland Business today as saying the company "anticipates [the DoJ] review will be completed in the first quarter of 2008" ... Though rest assured, The BRAD BLOG's review of the company won't be completed by then. Not by a long shot.

Merry Christmas, Diebold!

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Did you wonder how Diebold/Premier escaped the axe in Colorado? While all of the other vendors had their machines decertified or had strict conditions set on them Diebold/Premier came away fairly clean. It seems that Secretary of State Coffman is running for Congress next year. The consultants for his campaign also seem to be the consultants for Diebold/Premier. Coffman went a long way to keep Diebold/Premier from being decertified because his testing board recommended that all electronic voting systems used in the state be decertified. Coffman reportedly used his discretion to decide which systems were “substantially compliant”. Diebold/Premier which has gotten consistently negative reports from across the nation got the head-nod and wink from Coffman.

A decision was made in the DoJ complaint against the state of New York. Details are still sketchy but it looks like the state needs to have a plan by Jan. 4.

174 ePROM chips for San Diego Co.’s optical-scan machines were lost somewhere between the California Secretary of State’s office and the county. The chips were packaged in two tubes by Diebold/Premier employees under witness by SoS employees. They were shipped by Diebold/Premier’s normal shipper, FedEx. San Diego Co.’s Registrar, on a witch hunt, is blaming SOS Bowen for the problems.

Cuyahoga Co.’s Board of Elections voted 2-2 on whether to accept SOS Brunner’s plan to change voting systems before the state primary election. The decision is now hers.

Details on all of those stories, and many more today, all linked below...