The following email invitation arrived today, from reader "Karen"...

The BRAD BLOG welcomes any other insider tips on rooms planned for the library, but not yet listed above...

In New Jersey there is a lawsuit that has been going through the court process since 2004. The complaint asks the State Superior Court to block the use of nearly 8,000 Sequoia Advantage Direct Recording Electronic (DRE touch-screen) because they “cannot be relied upon to protect the fundamental right to vote.” This lawsuit probably played some large part in legislation that required voting machines used in the state to be outfitted with a Voter-verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT).

Sequoia Voting Systems has not been able to meet the legislative deadlines, for a VVPAT printer, which have been moved a couple times. In fact only recently it was announced that the legislature may introduce new legislation to repeal the previous legislation. This move would probably have given more strength to the lawsuit.

Now, suddenly, the state has announced that they will require the Sequoia DREs being used in 18 counties to be refitted with VVPAT printers. It seems clear that this move by the Secretary of State is an attempt to make the lawsuit moot. The state will surely argue that because the DREs are refitted with printers there is no need to change to optical-scan technology.

One question that the state and Sequoia must answer though: Is there a printer in development or developed by Sequoia for use on the Advantage? If not, the state continues to be in violation of the law and it seems that they are being aided and abetted in that by Sequoia.

Also there are hints in the Houston media of problems in the vote count last Nov. Look for more on that over the next week or more....

On Monday, we reported on former Senator Norm Coleman's right to challenge the election results in Minnesota which found Al Franken the winner by 225 votes before Franken is officially seated by the Senate.

That is, of course, the appropriate way to allow for election challengers to have their day in court, without nearly-insurmountable prejudice being stacked against them by having their opponent already seated. Incredibly enough, that's not the way most states do it, as most send officially certified results to Congress --- effectively, and Constitutionally, according to judicial precedent, handing jurisdiction of the seating of the member to a partisan Congress, robbing voters and local courts of having the final say --- before legal election contests are fully settled.

On Tuesday, Coleman filed his expected election contest in state court, which Franken's attorneys memorably described as "the same thin gruel, warmed-over leftovers ... that they have been serving the last few weeks."

We've been on the road since the complaint was filed, and haven't had time to review the 204-page suit [PDF] ourselves, but thankfully, TPM's Eric Kleefeld has done so, and reports it as "a marvelous thing"...

President-elect Barack Obama said today that there is "no pride of authorship" on his economic stimulus package. For good or bad, in regard to that particular initiative, this seems to me what a President should sound like. Let's hope he means it, and that this m.o. extends to all aspects of his Presidency. (appx 3 mins)...

As I've recently been consulted by Obama's team overseeing transition review of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), and have offered what I believe to be some good ideas about serious reform for the so-far dreadfully-failed commission, I'll hope he means what he says in the above about accepting such ideas and putting them into practice. We shall see, but the words said above sound very good to my ears.

While these things are usually decided by numbers of readers for any particular website --- and as we noted when originally nominated as a Finalist for the 2008 Weblog Awards, that would likely be as far as we'd go, given the huge readership of many of our fellow (excellent) nominees --- we're happy to remind you that you can vote for us anyway.

And you can even do it once every 24 hours! So do it! And do it again! (Yes, in this election, stuffing the ballot box is perfectly legal!)

Who knows, but a good turnout may put a few important BRAD BLOG stories, such as those on election integrity issues found nowhere else, in front of that many more eyeballs.

With all of that said, we're delighted and grateful to Jill C., of the always-sharp Brilliant at Breakfast (Disclosure: Jill has guest blogged here a bit of late) for her endorsement of The BRAD BLOG in a category with a particularly impressive club of fellow nominees. Here's her kind endorsement...

Thanks, Jill! And be sure to read her full item for other endorsements, and marvel at her ability to keep up with so many blogs! Yes, we're jealous of that!

The media is being fairly silent today. Hillsborough Co Florida is still in the news with some reports that there may be a million dollars of more that are missing. The county is trying to do an audit while, at the same time, an outside audit is being done. The ex-supervisor of elections claims that the outside audit will find nothing wrong (of course he will say that right up to the point that the auditors announce they found money misspent or lost).

We’ve also got reports of what may be a new problem from Montgomery Co Ohio. In this case votes were lost due to the use of a “broken” Diebold/Premier memory card. Of course, Diebold/Premier will do an investigation so they can figure out how to blame the problem on the voter or election workers....

Guest blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound

During Monday's State Department press briefing, Associated Press State Department Correspondent Matthew Lee posed the most pointed question about the conflict in Gaza and the Bush administration's position: "What’s wrong with an immediate cease-fire that doesn’t have to be sustainable and durable if, during the pause that you get from an immediate cease-fire, something longer-term can be negotiated?" Lee didn't tread lightly either when Deputy Secretary of State Sean McCormack failed to provide a sufficient answer and continued to challenge McCormack on the same point in Tuesday's press briefing.

Yet a funny thing happened on the way to print: the substance of these exchanges never made it into Lee's corresponding articles...

...For Coleman.

Imagine the round-the-clock phony "outrage" from the Public-air Propagandists (Fund, Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) you'd be hearing about "felons voting in the MN Senate race!" had the felon voted for Franken. Such as it is, however, he voted for Coleman, so it doesn't actually "matter".

But now that we're here, can we finally do away with these stupid restrictions on felons voting? Especially if they're out of jail, as this one was. He was on supervised release, after being convicted and imprisoned in 2004, when he was 20, for having sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl.

On Election Day, he had left a voice message for his supervisory agent that he was going out to vote, only to come home later to find out from the agent that he had broken the law. He has since pleaded guilty to illegally voting.

"I was just excited that the presidential election was coming up and I would be able to vote," he said. "I had never voted in my life. ... I really wasn't aware that I couldn't vote."

Why should felons --- often more directly affected than most by government laws, good ones or bad ones --- be disallowed from having a voice in the government that makes those laws? Particularly after they've served their time in jail?

I realize that may not be a "politically correct" point of view in many quarters. But I don't care. If you're out of jail, of voting age, able to participate in society, and are bound to the laws of that society, you ought to be able to excercise your voice in that society by being able to cast a vote in a democratically-held election. Period.

I realize that felons, even after release, may have other rights taken from them, but voting doesn't seem as if it should be one of them. If you have an argument to the contrary, of course, I'd certainly be interested in hearing what it is

[UPDATE 1/8/09: Oops! The article discussed below is indeed from Wednesday, but from a Wednesday in 2007! March 14th to be precise. I'll not out the colleague who sent it to me, who similarly thought it was published yesterday. But I'll thank the commenter who finally noticed the date on the Reuters article, re-remind myself of the the dangers of "road blogging" too quickly, and otherwise make myself feel better by noting that my originally expressed caution about getting too optimistic at this point was apparently well placed. As another commenter then noted, the original bill in question was later blocked in the Senate by an unknown, likely-Republican, Senator. Let's hope the Ds now have enough votes and control of the Senate to avoid the same fate for these bills that need to be passed now in the new Congress. And my apologies for the false-positive alarm. - BF]

A bulk of this evening’s news is again from Hillsborough Co Florida where more is being revealed about the audit of the supervisor of elections financial dealings and, of course, the Minnesota senatorial recount where Coleman has taken to the courts in what will probably be a futile attempt to get his seat back....

From Paul Krugman (via MCM):

The BRAD BLOG covered the fracas, fireworks and smack-down(s) in the Summer of '07 first between Moore and Wolf Blitzer here, and then subsequently between Moore and Gupta here.

Said Norm Coleman, as he announced his election contest:

He also added, as if he was serious, "We are filing this contest to make absolutely sure every valid vote was counted."

The sore-loser Coleman, who refuses to move on, was explaining his tin-foil hat conspiracy theories of a stolen election to reporters and cry-baby supporters, as he made the sour-grapes comments which threaten democracy, as quoted above.

As expected the Minnesota senatorial recount is going to court.

If you have been reading this space for the past couple of weeks you know that auditors have been asked to review the financial records of Buddy Johnson’s Hillsborough Co Florida supervisor of elections office. Just why did Buddy, the outgoing supervisor, go to the county and ask for $2.3M for cost overruns? It seems the auditors have found more mysteries than they have found answers....

“There can be little doubt that, of the issues springing from elections held since President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), two are among the most significant. Those issues are failures of voting systems to be accessible and accurate and the confusion over the proper use of provisional ballots.”

”The states should have been able to look to the federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) for guidance on both issues, but the EAC failed to give the necessary Assistance, thus failing to fulfill duties assigned to the agency by federal law. Now it is proposing to extend its dereliction of duty for another two years.”

Thus begins our featured article. ...

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

The state canvassing board in Minnesota has now certified Al Franken (D) as the winner over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R) in the race for the U.S. Senate. Barring a successful legal challenge, which has now been filed by Coleman, Franken will have won the seat by an astoundingly close 225 votes, out of some 2.9 million cast.

But there's still a chance, albeit a slim one, for Coleman to reverse his fate. A very good provision in MN's law --- not found in most other states --- may delay Franken's seating, meaning he will not be sworn in with rest of Congress at the beginning of the new session slated to start tomorrow. Ultimately, however, the provisions should ensure that whoever is eventually sworn in to serve as the state's Senator will not be forced to serve under a cloud.

The voters of MN deserve that much, no matter how long it takes, and thankfully, like its hand-count laws, the state's provision requiring the completion of legal challenges before final certification is sent to Congress by the Sec. of State, is a model for the nation.

Would that all of the other states in the union had such a provision...