Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Today is one of those days when there are a lot of important articles but not a lot that gets my brain matter working so I don’t have a lot to say today. Here is the news....

"Why in the world would either the Legislature or the secretary of state or anybody object to local elections officials trying to ensure that their system operates as intended and that they get it right?" asked FL Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead as he crawled out of his cave to officiate at a hearing yesterday in Tallahassee.

The nearly-unheard of voice of reason momentarily reared its lonely head on Wednesday, if perhaps just temporarily, from the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole down which American elections have almost entirely disappeared.

Anstead was questioning attorneys representing Sarasota's still-unresigned, democracy-hating Election Supervisor Kathy Dent and FL's Sec. of State Kurt Browning. The pair are attempting to nullify the democratic (small "d") citizens' ballot initiative successfully voted in by a majority of Sarasota voters in 2006. The initiative called for improvements in the county's election system --- including paper ballots with post-election audits --- in hopes of offering more accuracy and integrity.

Needless to say, Dent and Browning are against that idea.

The following snippet of yesterday's extraordinary exchange --- including the attorney's remarkable response to Anstead's question --- comes from a Sarasota Herald Tribune report today.

Silly Harry. Clearly he needs to get out more...

Context, for those who still may need it...

Who says investigative journalism in the corporate media is dead? Oh, yeah, that was us. Many times.

Nonetheless, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger proves the ability still exists for actual muckraking, watchdog-style investigative reporting (when the CMSM actually feels like it) in his exposé today concerning the unfolding scandal surrounding the downfall of professional GOP vote suppressor Thor Hearne's longtime benefactor, Gov. Matt Blunt of Missouri.

In January, Blunt shocked Show-Me Staters, and left local Republican officials "dumbfounded" and "speechless" with his surprise declaration, via YouTube, that he had changed his mind about running for a second term.

"After a great deal of thought and prayer, and with the knowledge that we have achieved virtually everything I set out to accomplish, and more, I will not seek a second term in the upcoming election," Blunt said, with a straight face, in his video-taped announcement.

As his re-election campaign had previously begun to organize and raise money, the claim of the first term Governor having finished his work wasn't taken very seriously by most. Trouble down the short road, from several ongoing criminal investigations, on the other hand, was largely believed to be the reason for his stunning duck and cover.

Today, the Post's Messenger reveals more details on just one aspect of what Blunt was likely hiding from: An investigation into the improper destruction of official e-mails, and the inappropriate termination of one of his attorneys who had allegedly advised that destroying the public documents would be neither legal nor proper.

Sound familiar? We'll remind you, a fish rots from the head down.

Messenger's investigative report is here, along with links to a secretly recorded audio tape. Audio tape?! Where does he think he works, at a blog?! We welcome the return of real journalism to a corporate mainstream media outlet. Hope they keep it up. We'd love to be put out of our "job."

UPDATE: KC Blue Blog tips us off to a Kansas City Star editorial today, calling for Blunt to step down. "It's time to start using the 'R' word with Missouri's immature governor, Matt Blunt," the Star editorial board's Yael T. Abouhalkah writes. "Yes, he may need to resign for the good of the state."

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

The Help America Vote Act requires states to have centralized voter registration data bases. Most of the states have successfully been able to meet this mandate. Colorado, on the other hand, has done about as well with their data base as they did recertifying voting systems; they appear to have failed. Election officials throughout the state tested the system during simulated elections. They found the system extremely slow; in fact it is so slow that many plan on using their old systems to do the actual poll data work on election day. Just a reminder that voter registration data bases are fairly new and there has been a lot of data entry. All voters need to ensure they are on the rolls, their names are spelled correctly, and that there is nothing that will keep them from being able to get ballots in November.

What is all the talk about Lake Co, Indiana, (Gary) reporting last evening’s primary results late? Now the county is promising to be quicker in reporting. They need to ensure every vote is counted and that every vote is counted correctly. The media can wait for those correct numbers. Don’t speed up just to satisfy the cable news services....

[Updated post-show, with archive of show at bottom of article.]

Once again today, I'll be hosting an hour of "Special Election Year Coverage" for the good folks at L.A.'s Pacifica Radio affiliate, KPFK 90.7 FM, from 2p-3p PT this afternoon.

And, once again, we'll be looking less at the election "horse race" and much more at the "track conditions," with a special eye on the Supreme Court's unconstitutional support of polling place Photo ID restrictions such as the one that disenfranchised a bunch of 80 & 90 year-old nuns (along with many others) yesterday in Indiana.

My special guest will be MO Sec. of State ROBIN CARNAHAN, joining us to discuss the effect of the SCOTUS ruling in her state, which has been called "Ground Zero" for the phony GOP voter fraud scam. It's no coincidence that MO is the home of GOP Scammer-in-Chief Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, btw, as he's the democracy-hating front-man most single-handedly responsible for the Republican Photo ID/Voter Suppression effort.

We'll also be giving away some stuff to callers, such as a signed Duhmocracy CD and a signed Uncounted DVD. So join us, and call in with your questions at: 818-985-5735.

Tune in live from 2p-3p PT (4p-5p CT, 5p-6p ET) on air in Los Angeles at 90.7 FM, in Santa Barbara at 98.7 FM, or listen live online right here.

P.S. After the show, I'll be a guest on Voice of the Voters w/ Mary Ann Gould at 4pm PT, and then on People Speak Radio w/ David Swanson at 5pm PT. So it'll be a full day of BradCasting today! Hope you'll tune in...

Post-Show Update: We had another very lively show on KPFK with Sec. Carnahan, and loads of callers. Here's the full archive (appx 55 mins) for MP3 download, or you can listen online right here...

Polls have been closed in Lake County for some 6 hours, but no results in Indiana's corner county, closely bordering Obama's homestate stronghold of Chicago and home to Gary. Tiny Union County has also failed to come up with any numbers just yet.

As of now, Indiana remains "too close to call" according to all the cable nets, with 92% of precincts (not necessarily votes, since Lake County is the second-most populous in the state) reporting. There are currently just under 20k votes reportedly between Clinton, who is currently leading, and Obama, out of more than 1.1 million "counted" so far.

For the record, Lake County uses a combination of the failed, unverifiable MicroVote Infinity DREs and paper-based MV-464's voting machines, according to Verified Voting's database of voting systems.

Union County, on the other hand, you needn't worry about, since our old friend Diebold runs the place with a combination of their hackable paper-ballot systems, and their unverifiable and hackable DRE (touch-screen) systems. But Union also has a tiny population of just more than 7k, whereas Lake has a population of just less than half a million.

Unfortunately, I don't know that I'll be able to follow this one through the night, so if I can't (or even if I can), I welcome you folks to tell the story in comments below as you are best able to figure out what seems to be going on there. Tonight, I'm guessing you can tell the story as well as (or better than) I can...

UPDATE 12:47pm ET: Results now coming in. The state could be a squeaker by a few thousand votes or less.

Let's see, with Indiana's own estimates of 43,000 voters who could be disenfranchised by their new Photo ID/voter suppression law, and less-conservative estimates suggesting several hundred thousand voters who could be robbed of their right to vote...Gosh, hope the final results in the Hoosier State don't come down to the question of a dozen or so 80 & 90 year-old disenfranchised nuns from South Bend...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

As is becoming typical, the Main Stream Media are not reporting a lot of voting problems today. It appears that we have to wait for the busy election protection hotlines to report on their day. One thing for sure is that turnout was huge.

Early voting began today in Washington Co, Arkansas, where the county is using some paper ballots in which names of some unopposed judicial candidates are missing. State law requires any unopposed candidate to get at least one vote and that has happened. It is typical for the ballot printer, ES&S (yes, the one and the same ES&S), to mis-print ballots but why did the county not proofread their ballots before they got into a position where they had to use them? Those stories and more below. ...

The non-partisan Election Protection coalition offers a mid-day press release detailing some of the problems being reported to their 1-866-OUR-VOTE hotline today from both Indiana and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court's recent, outrageous approval of Indiana's restrictive and disenfranchising Photo ID law --- better described as their Voter Suppression Act, despite Scalia's claim that "the burden at issue is minimal," to him, anyway --- is already "working" to disenfranchise legal voters, denying them their right to cast ballots like everyone else.

According to EP, it's not just veterans, elderly, and minorities who are being affected by the ruling, so are young voters and, yes, nuns, who have reportedly already been disenfranchised today under the Republican law...

Remember, the law was upheld by the Supremes just last week, despite Indiana's inability to point to a single instance of in-person, polling place, voter impersonation fraud (the type of "voter fraud" the law was purportedly meant to deter) in the entire history of the state.

UPDATE: Brad Jacobson has more on the dangerous "roaming pack of octogenarian and nonagenarian hooligans [nuns, who] attempted to exercise their right to vote," including one of them, a clearly-up-to-no-good, 98 year-old, trouble maker who Catholic Antonin Scalia and friends don't believe deserves the right to cast a ballot.

Additional updates at the end of this article, including details on the evil nuns, a newly married woman, and more disenfranchised students.

Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy notes today that if a study recently done in Wisconsin correlates to numbers in Indiana, as many as 620,000 citizens in the Hoosier State might lack the Photo ID needed to cast votes there. That, even as the state downplayed the numbers in the SCOTUS case, arguing that there were only 43,000 such voters there. The authors of the WI study were unable to check the same numbers in Indiana, because "the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles would not provide the data needed to do the study," reports Murphy.

EP's news release goes on to list a number of other incidents being reported (if not yet by the corporate media) so far during voting today in IN and NC both, including multiple reports of voting machines problems; paper ballots not being offered to voters when machines go down; registered Independent voters being disallowed from voting in either party's primary; or voters being given Republican ballots when they believed they were registered as Democrats.

A few of the specific incidents as reported by EP so far, (which we post along with the usual caveat that frequently the most serious concerns do not come to light, if ever, until the days and weeks following such e-elections) include, from Indiana...

Anectodal for the moment. But a sign of a larger problem? We're doing our best to keep an eye on this, and related incidents today, as you may suspect.

Posted early this AM by Jim Sheaves at BlueNC [emphasis in the original]...

More power to you if you can figure out who the actual bad guys are here, versus the actual good guys (if any) in the following news, breaking this afternoon. At this point, the corruption across so many federal agencies has become so pervasive we couldn't even begin to guess at what's actually going on here, and who, if anyone anymore, can be trusted.

Call it the unintended (or, the intended) consequences of the Bush Era of Shame and Criminality.

Wall Street Journal's coverage is posted in full below, since it's otherwise behind their pay wall. Good luck...

From Friday's Austin Chronicle...

Singer's futile July 2004 efforts, attempting to notify the Secretaries of State in both Texas and Ohio, were originally reported in exclusive detail by The BRAD BLOG in March of 2006.

Following discussions we had with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after our report, he and his radio co-host, Florida attorney Mike Papantonio, filed a federal qui tam whistleblower suit [PDF] on behalf of Singer.

The complaint charges fraud and other violations of the False Claims Act by Hart, including allegations the company failed to test its products properly, and frequently at all; withheld information from prospective clients about the potential loss of votes in its voting systems; dummied-up machines, reports, and test results presented to clients in sales presentations; and much more in an attempt to win state and county contracts and the federal money that came with them...

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

Governor John Corzine of New Jersey has signed yet another extension of the electronic voting paper verification requirement for his state. Now citizens of New Jersey will again vote in an election without any paper. What the state needs to do is to get rid of their Sequoia Advantage voting system and get an actual paper ballot system that really works. Events in the state’s primary election prove that the Advantage system may have actually violated federal accuracy law (HAVA Section 301(a)(5)). No vvpat printer would have fixed that problem.

According to BlackBoxVoting.Org, while 4.3 million voters are registered to vote in Indiana the state has recently purged 1.1 million voters from the voter rolls with one quarter of that total coming from two counties. Those and other stories are below....

[Ed Note: Please see the update at the bottom of this article, for the state's explanation concerning the 1.1 million voter records discussed in the following.]

The Republican War on Voting continues apace.

In addition to the recent, outrageously bad decision by the Supreme Court to approve Indiana's draconian polling place Photo ID restrictions, sure to keep thousands of legal voters from even being able to cast votes in tomorrow's important Primary Election --- despite the state's inability to offer up a single instance of in-person polling place voter impersonation that's ever occurred during the state's entire history (as we've covered here, here and here, for example) --- another 1.1 million voters have now been purged from the voting rolls altogether, reports Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, as based on the Hoosier State's own data.

Moreover, the state will use unverifiable touch-screen style voting systems across the state. One widely used system, made by MicroVote, will be used despite having been decertified, and two other systems, made by ES&S and Diebold, have been found vulnerable to undetectable vote-flipping viruses by several reputable universities.

According to Harris' report...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Yesterday The BRAD BLOG interviewed Byron DeLear who is running for Congress in Missouri's 2nd District. The current holder of the seat is the ultra-conservative war supporter and Bush crony, Todd Akin (R-MO), who last year infamously argued to keep sending reinforcements to Iraq by invoking Davy Crockett at the Alamo.

We found the intellectual DeLear, who supports the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, extremely knowledgeable on a wide range of issues including election integrity. DeLear even goes so far as to call for the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution to secure the vote.

Says DeLear during our exclusive interview...

"I talk about the necessity for the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution to be securing the most sacrosanct institution of our Republic which is the vote – the cornerstone of our democracy. And how is it that we can allow corporations to own the source code that instructs voting machines how to count the vote? How is it that in our supposedly popular and public owned electoral system can we have privatization occurring where the basic functions of our elections are in secret and are not available to the scrutiny of the American people?

"So I think the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution should be securing the vote, providing for independent verification of ballot results and I think we should explore the idea of perhaps standardizing the American voting experience. Because when you have 13,000 different methods of counting the vote littered across the landscape of our Republic – that essentially violates the essence of equal protection under the law. And I don’t think it’s fair that you can have African Americans waiting six hours in the rain in Ohio and then other people in other parts of the country just walk in and get their votes cast and there is no problem whatsoever.

"So we got to end this kind of unequal, unfair playing field that is occurring in regards to counting our votes and getting our voice heard."

Our complete interview (appx 4 mins), shot Sunday during a fund raising even here in Los Angeles, follows below. You can find out more about DeLear at his DeLear for Congress website...