Franken Gains in First Day of Counting, Media Plays Fast and Loose with Numbers, GOP Prepares for the Worst...
We've predicted since Election Day that Al Franken's chances of winning the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota are excellent. News tonight, out of the state where a manual count of the paper ballots began today, may already be bearing out that prediction, though its far too early to know for sure. Franken, so far, has gained about 30 votes on the incument Sen. Norm Coleman on the first day of counting, bring the gap between the two to just 172 votes.
The race was previously determined, by the faulty and easily manipulated ES&S and Diebold ballot-scanning machines initially used to tabulate the paper ballots, to have had little more than 200 votes in favor of Coleman, out of nearly 3 million ballots cast.
That hasn't stopped Coleman from desperately and prematurely declaring "victory" --- hey, it worked for Dubya in 2000, and he was able to succesfully take that to the Supreme Court after all! --- nor has it kept the GOP conspiracy theorists and potential sore-losers from declaring all manner of unsubstantiated claims of "fraud" and attempts to "steal the election."
But as the hand count moves slowly forward --- and as I may be "off the grid", or otherwise unable to keep up with every beat as quickly as usual over the next several weeks --- I'd ask that you folks keep a very close eye on a very important point likely to reveal itself (to those who pay attention) during this count...
Why Georgia? There's strongly suggestive evidence that the 2002 senatorial election in Georgia was stolen. That was the first election in which Diebold DRE (Direct Recording Electronic, usually touch-screen) voting machines were used statewide. Republican Saxby Chambliss beat front runner Democrat Max Cleland, with an astounding 12-point reversal of the vote count compared to pre-election polls. A last-minute "patch" had been applied covertly by Diebold staff to multiple voting machines throughout the state.
Now the Senate race hangs in the balance in Georgia again...
A combination of factors, that I can get into at another time (but which include a still-very sore wrist that I've had to wrestle with over the last several months, despite doctor's orders, while trying to keep up with a helluva busy election season) have forced me to slow down a bit on this end, over the last several days, while allowing time for a few more guest voices here in the bargain.
I thank you for your patience and understanding as I continue to tread water and do my best to chew well so much that I've bitten off over the last several years (much of which takes a while before it makes its way onto these pages) and offer an early heads-up that I am going to try to take a bit more down time --- in hopes of allowing my wrist to heal a bit, my brain to heal a bit, my body to catch up with some rest, my family to actually see me for a minute or two, as well as a number of other well-worth-it super-secret projects which require some time and attention --- over the next month or two (or even three if I can get away with it) during and after the holidays.
My hope is to bring on a few more guest contributors here to allow me some of that time. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to spend some much needed hours away from the blog in the bargain, though not immediately and certainly not indefinitedly. So, with much still on the plate, I'm still right here, and have much more to come (even today, on a number of important items, if I can catch up, with a TV taping scheduled for mid-afternoon to keep me further behind-schedule). But I just wanted to offer a quick status report, and explain why I've been a bit slower than I'd like in keeping up with a lot that continues to roll over the last several days in a number of places (AK, MN and GA, just to name a few of them.)
Hopefully, you haven't much noticed. But either way, as mentioned, thanks again for your patience and understanding and for your support over so many months and years. I'll do my best to keep you all up to date on the above as things move forward, of course, and hope, in the meantime, you'll keep The BRAD BLOG high your list of daily must-reads in the ever-growing blogosphere...
Mark Begich, the Democratic Anchorage mayor, has defeated Sen. Ted Stevens in a closely contested, see-saw race for the United States Senate, according to Associated Press projections.
The Division of Elections has almost concluded an initial count of absentee, early in-person and questioned ballots Tuesday. That, coupled with the numbers culled from Election Day, gave Begich a 3,724-vote lead over Stevens, the 40-year Republican incumbent, with about 2,500 ballots left to count.
Democratic challenger Mark Begich extended his lead over Alaska Senator Ted Stevens with about 10,000 ballots still to be counted, according to the state's elections division.
Begich now leads by 2,374 votes as the remaining ballots are tallied from the Nov. 4 election, according to division Director Gail Fenumiai. Officials said they may complete counting about 7,700 absentee ballots today with another 2,500 ballots from military families overseas yet to arrive.
Republicans in the Senate postponed their vote today to consider removing the felonious Stevens' committee assignments, since indications are that he's going to lose anyway at this point. Plus, it was his 85th birthday.
But he's not deterred. According to AP, "Stevens revealed that he will not ask President George W. Bush to give him a pardon for his seven felony convictions."
And Bloomberg says, in regard to his re-election prospects at this point, that he told reporters: "I still have faith I'm going to win."
Ready for a recount, Ted? (Actually a count, since all of the ballots have only been tabulated by faulty Diebold op-scanners at this point.) If so, we're happy to help.
As long promised, The BRAD BLOG has covered your electoral system 2008, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going. If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details on that right here...
Within hours after Election Day 2008 was over, the punditocracy had moved on to speculation about 2012 and the political future of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, whom many conservatives consider to be the next GOP frontrunner.
If history is a guide, however, chances are next to nil that Palin will survive the primaries in four years, and even if she does, her odds of winning the presidency are even slimmer. In fact, based on past performances of losing vice presidential nominees over the last 180 years (see chart below), Sarah Palin's chances of becoming president at any point in the future are 45 to 1, at best.
ANCHORAGE - If democracy were a religion, voting would be the sacrament.
I grew up in what I call “The First Free-Range Organic Christian Church of Homer.” Sundays brought a message, fellowship, and a line of repentant souls taking communion-a remembrance of sacrifice.
The first time I cast my vote, it struck me as similar. The blood shed for my right to stand at a flag draped table and make my choice part of the collective wasn’t lost on me. I had one of those “Come to Jesus” moments and in 20 years I haven’t missed an opportunity to vote. Unlike Christ, the idea of democracy has never shed a drop of blood; patriots did. The same cannot be said of the suffragettes. Unlike the sacrament celebrated in religious ritual, elections should not be faith-based. The framers never intended our government to be run on trust; hence the myriad of checks and balances. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Election integrity is not about restoring faith in the system. Checks and balances are...
Ashton a BRAD BLOG Reader? And Yes, We're Happy to Endorse the Proposition and the Constitutional Amendment it Would Require...
During a discussion on last Friday's Real Time w/ Bill Maher on HBO, the topic of electoral reform came up. There were the usual discussions of electoral college concerns, primaries vs. caucuses, and then Ashton Kutcher broke in with a point that may well signal he's a reader of The BRAD BLOG, as I believe we were the first (only?) to call for Wednesday as a national election/voting holiday, for the precise reasons that Kutcher points out in the following video clip (appx 1 minute)...
Hey, Ashton! Drop us a line! Given the above, as well as other comments you made on last Friday's show (one of them we posted earlier here), we'd be delighted to make you our first official BRAD BLOG Celebrity Ambassador At-Large! No, seriously. We could use one.
For the record, we most recently wrote about Wednesday as a national election holiday in our piece last week warning about the dangers of the increasing move towards the bad idea of "Vote-by-Mail" elections. Quoth yours truly at the time:
[M]aking Election Day a holiday would ease the crush of voters turning out at once (at poll opening before work, during work lunch hour, or after the work day). Though I'd recommend changing Election Day to a Wednesday when making it a holiday, so that a Tuesday holiday doesn't simply turn into a long out of town 4-day holiday weekend for many.
BTW, while we fully support making Wednesday an official national Election holiday, for the reasons Kutcher describes (and a few more), such a move would likely require a Constitutional amendment, unfortunately. But we could use one anyway for that electoral reform and a number of others (e.g., Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.'s amendment to ensure a Constitutional "right to vote," as well as making it a felony offense to deny even one voter that right, as originally advocated by the legendary Leon County, FL, Supervisor of Elections, Ion Sancho.)
Kutcher's quick comments on this topic are transcribed in full below...
State's Republican Governor Pawlenty Reverses Previous Claims, Admits 'No Actual Evidence of Wrongdoing or Fraud in the Process'...
Of all the shameful behavior by the Republicans during this last election cycle, the National Republican Senatorial Conspiratorial Committee's continuing baseless charges that Al Franken and the Democrats are trying to "steal" the U.S. Senate election in Minnesota has to be near the top of a difficult list to top! If only because that rejected sort of politics continues despite the thorough spanking their party took in an election which would seem to have been a rejection of such tactics.
Even Minnesota's own governor, Tim Pawlenty, has now reversed his previous conspiratorial tone to declare on yesterday's Fox "News" Sunday that there is "no actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud in the process." He was referring to the currently reported election results --- where Franken trails the incumbent Sen. Norm Colman by just over 200 voters --- and in the upcoming manual recount plans.
None of that has kept the RNSC from keeping up their shameful "Minnesota Recount" conspiracy theory website with postings that declare Franken "lost the election, so he is pulling an Al Gore, with his supporters manufacturing postelection votes by the hundreds" and shoveling, without correction, the now wholly debunked theory that "his supporters discover mislaid ballots in places like the trunks of their cars. By a mysterious coincidence, none of these includes votes for Franken’s rival Norm Coleman."
Though the last post on their conspiracy website was made on Friday --- so perhaps that signals they're getting the message --- all of it still remains there, as unretracted garbage, even after Pawlenty himself has now acknowledged it as such. But the RNSC isn't the only bad actor here. So are the networks, cable channels and even the New York Times...
After Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) discusses the bailout as if it's something "they" are doing (as opposed to her, a member of the U.S. Congress) Ashton Kutcher called her on it on Friday's HBO's Real Time w/ Bill Maher, before going on to make a very significant point about the insane way this economic "bailout" is being carried out.
"With all due respect, you're in a position to do something very significant about it. We're all in a position to do something very significant about it," he tells the Congresswoman, before the actor/producer of Punk'd goes on to declare, deadly seriously, in reply to Maher: "They're punking us right now!" (appx. 2 mins)...
I'll tell ya, I was really impressed with Kutcher every time he opened his mouth on the show last Friday. I hope he keeps talking. Clearly, he's been paying very close attention to what's really going on out here. And, to that end, we'll have another clip of him from the same show later today, which offers some pretty good evidence that he must be a BRAD BLOG reader. Stay tuned...
The electronic voting problems in the 2008 election are broader than recently-publicized snafus such as machines not turning on, voter databases omitting names, or touch screens not properly recording votes, according to an analysis of 1,700 incident reports from the nation's largest voter hotline.
Moreover, the voting machine issues and the confusion they caused among poll workers appear to have compounded the delays faced by untold thousands of voters this fall, a preliminary analysis of 1-800-OUR-VOTE reports by Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a researcher at Princeton University and the University of California, has found...
While fighting to try to ensure that as many voters as possible actually see their votes counted, and counted accurately, from the November 4th election, I haven't had much, if any, time to really pause to reflect on what happened a week ago last Tuesday and what it all meant.
While Elizabeth Hasselbeck's response to Obama's win (she had supported McCain) the next morning was both gracious and worth noting, Sherri Shepard's response that followed, tells the real story of what just happened. It had me in tears even today. From the November 5th, 2008 episode of ABC's The View...
Hasselbeck (2:50)...
Shepard (2:25)...
As long promised, The BRAD BLOG has covered your electoral system 2008, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with a donation to help us keep going. If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details on that right here...
Ellen H. Brodsky Jailed Overnight After Being Barred From Oversight Several Times by Incumbent SoE Brenda Snipes
Third Such Arrest of an EI Activist Since Summer...
A candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Broward County, FL, was arrested yesterday, following threats and orders from her opponent, the current Broward SOE, Dr. Brenda Snipes.
Ellen H. Brodsky, the county's first non-partisan candidate for SOE, had previously been barred from public counting and oversight on a number of occasions, at the county's official Canvassing Board site and voting machine warehouse in Lauderhill, Florida.
After being taken into custody yesterday afternoon by three uniformed police officers, Brodsky was held overnight at the Broward County Jail even though the $25 --- that's twenty-five dollar --- bail had been posted for her by her son by 8pm last night. She was finally released well after 5am this morning.
Brodsky is a longtime member of a number of election integrity advocacy groups in Florida, including the Broward Election Reform Coalition, which she also founded. Earlier this year, she determined to run against Snipes as a non-partisan candidate.
Brodsky is the latest in a string of election integrity advocates around the country who have been arrested in the course of attempting oversight of our election procedures --- although she is the first, to our knowledge, who also happens to be a candidate on the ballot.
The action has brought condemnation from a number of other election watchdogs and even other election officials in Florida who have characterized the arrest to The BRAD BLOG as an outrage and an abuse of power by Snipes and her office...
Need more proof that the vendors have made elections expensive? The folks in Vigo Co Indiana find themselves having to hold a special election for mayor of Terre Haute, a city of over 44,000 voters. The county would probably pay for the election and then be reimbursed by the city. The last municipal election the county paid for cost $580,000. The cost for one race in the city would probably be something less than that.
Why so much? The county pays ES&S to manage the voting machines. What would happen if the county or city just decided to print the ballots and hand-count them? Well, the ballots would cost around $0.05 per ballot or around $3500. The cost to hand-count those ballots, based on the cost to hand-count ballots in WA in the 2004 gubernatorial hand-recount would probably be less than $10,000. Why is it that we have these vendors involved in making our elections much more expensive than they should be? ...
Click for links to all of the above-mentioned stories and many more...
[Ed Note: This DVN item has been elevated to the main index of the front page. "Daily Voting News" is published every day, and the latest edition can always be found on the right sidebar of every page, in the special "Daily Voting News" box.]
Central Claim of GOP Conspiracy Theory for 'Stolen' U.S. Senate Race in Minnesota Falls Apart (Though They've Yet to Acknowledge It, Of Course)...
For those following the nonsense being put forward by the GOP conspiracy theorists (such as Sean Hannity, Norm Coleman, RedState blog, PowerLine blog, and all their fact-free friends), David Brauer at MinnPost.com does a terrific job of debunking the whole "32 ballots driven around in an election director's car for days" nonsense.
They weren't driven around in her car, they weren't all votes for Franken, they weren't "lost" for days, and the claim, which is being used by the national GOP at their conspiracy theory "Minnesota Recount" site to prop up their unsubstantiated claims of a "stolen election," turns out (surprise surprise) to be entirely false...
We've predicted since Election Day that Al Franken's chances of winning the U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota are excellent. News tonight, out of the state where a manual count of the paper ballots began today, may already be bearing out that prediction, though its far too early to know for sure. Franken, so far, has gained about 30 votes on the incument Sen. Norm Coleman on the first day of counting, bring the gap between the two to just 172 votes.
UPDATE: 
Within hours after Election Day 2008 was over, the punditocracy had moved on to speculation about 2012 and the political future of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, whom many conservatives consider to be the next GOP frontrunner.
ANCHORAGE - If democracy were a religion, voting would be the sacrament.
Of all the shameful behavior by the Republicans during this last election cycle, the National Republican 
A candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Broward County, FL, was arrested yesterday, following threats and orders from her opponent, the current Broward SOE, Dr. Brenda Snipes.
For those following the nonsense being put forward by the