Well this is about as sur­pris­ing as a sun­rise in the morn­ing:

By Brad Fried­man on 12/23/2011 2:23pm
U.S. EAC Finds ES&S Paper Bal­lot Scan­ners Used Across the Coun­try Fail to Count Votes Cor­rectly
For first time, com­pro­mised fed­eral agency admits their pre­vi­ous cer­ti­fi­ca­tion was deeply flawed...

Not to say we told ya so, but, ya know, we’ve been telling you so for years (and years.)

A new find­ing by the U.S. Elec­tion Assis­tance Com­mis­sion — a rare find­ing, first of its kind, in fact, as the woe­ful EAC has never before taken the time to inves­ti­gate and report on seri­ous fail­ures of e-voting sys­tems that it has pre­vi­ously blessed with fed­eral cer­ti­fi­ca­tion — reveals that ES&S paper bal­lot optical-scan sys­tems used in a bunch of large swing states, result in machines freez­ing dur­ing elec­tions, fail­ing to log sys­tem events cor­rectly, and, per­haps most trou­bling, bal­lots being mis­read and votes being lost entirely.

The EAC’s “For­mal Inves­ti­ga­tion Report” fol­lows on April 2010 rev­e­la­tions by the Cleve­land Plain Dealer that some 10% of Cuya­hoga County (Cleveland)‘s EAC-certified ES&S Precinct Count Opti­cal Scan­ner and Unity 3.2.0.0 tab­u­la­tor vot­ing sys­tems failed in pre-election test­ing last year.

The paper bal­lot scan­ning com­put­ers were pur­chased as a replace­ment for the 100% unver­i­fi­able Diebold touch-screen sys­tems used pre­vi­ously in Ohio’s largest county, after a mas­sive analy­sis of all of the state’s e-voting sys­tems, over­seen by for­mer Sec. of State Jen­nifer Brun­ner (D), revealed seri­ous secu­rity issues and other major flaws in the touch-screen vot­ing machines used there and in many other states.

Relat­edly, Diebold’s own paper bal­lot optical-scan sys­tem has sim­i­larly been found, in the past, to include a flaw which results in votes being lost entirely, though the EAC never issued a warn­ing about that sys­tem, to our knowl­edge, even after it led to hun­dreds of votes going uncounted in at least one elec­tion in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (and lord only knows how many else­where that the same sys­tem is used.)

The new find­ings of the fail­ures of the ES&S op-scan sys­tem led Plain Dealer reporter/blogger Laura John­ston today to worry: “If the com­pany can’t cor­rect the flaw, the gov­ern­ment could decer­tify the machines — leav­ing Cuya­hoga and juris­dic­tions [through­out] the coun­try no way to con­duct elec­tions in a pres­i­den­tial year.”

Um, did the cit­i­zens of Cleve­land lose their eye­balls? Or the abil­ity to add 1 + 1 + 1, Ms. John­ston? Yes, there are other ways “to con­duct elec­tions in a pres­i­den­tial year.” For exam­ple, one could sim­ply count the bal­lots by hand in pub­lic, at the precinct, in front of all vot­ers, all par­ties and video cam­eras, and report the results right then and there before the bal­lots are moved any­where — just as they still do in some 40% of the towns in the “First-in-the-Nation Pri­mary” state of New Hampshire.

The flawed scan­ners man­u­fac­tured by ES&S, the nation’s largest e-voting ven­dor, are cur­rently set to be used again in 2012, not only in Ohio, but also in Florida, Illi­nois, Indi­ana, Ohio, New York and Wis­con­sin, among oth­ers states...

...

@Pterrafractyl: It looks like peo­ple are really start­ing to wake up. The Dixiecrat-ified GOP is going to have a LOT of explain­ing to do one of these days. =)

Ah, the ol’ Abramof crew: the gift that keeps on tak­ing giv­ing:

TPM
Voter Fraud ‘Study’ Authored By Repub­li­can Who Pleaded Guilty In Abramoff Scandal

Ryan J. Reilly August 3, 2012, 6:13 AM

A new paper claim­ing that voter ID laws actual pro­tect rather than dis­en­fran­chise minor­ity vot­ers is get­ting play in con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. What isn’t being men­tion so much is the back­ground of the paper’s author.

Horace Cooper, the author of the paper, told the Daily Caller this week that voter fraud “crim­i­nals — more often than not — are Democ­rats vio­lat­ing the rights of peo­ple who tend to be black or senior.”

Cooper may not have any exper­tise on voter fraud, but he does know a thing or two about fal­si­fy­ing doc­u­ments. Cooper was indicted in 2009 on five pub­lic cor­rup­tion charges, charged with exchang­ing polit­i­cal favors for gifts from Jack Abramoff. Cooper allegedly accepted bribes as a staffer to for­mer Major­ity Leader Dick Armey, as chief of staff for Voice of Amer­ica and when he worked for the Depart­ment of Labor. Cooper later pleaded guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge of fal­si­fy­ing a dis­clo­sure report and was sen­tenced to 36 months of probation.

Cooper asked a judge to shorten his sen­tence ear­lier this year so he could travel to Cen­tral Fiji on a trip paid for by Qorvis Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, writ­ing in a court doc­u­ment that he was hope­ful a “more per­ma­nent employ­ment rela­tion­ship may develop” after the trip. A judge denied the motion. Cur­rently, he is “self-employed as a writer and legal com­men­ta­tor, and oper­ates a PR con­sult­ing ser­vice,” accord­ing to a court filing.

In an inter­view on Thurs­day, Cooper accused TPM of “play­ing gotcha games” when we inquired about whether he was still on pro­ba­tion and said there was “absolutely no rel­e­vance” to the issue at hand. He called the Jus­tice Department’s orig­i­nal charges against him “unsub­stan­ti­ated” and said he’s been inter­ested in voter integrity for a long time.

...

Umm...Earth to John, the mic’s on:

TPM
John Fund: Sure, Repub­li­cans Focus On Voter ID For Polit­i­cal Reasons

Ryan J. Reilly August 7, 2012, 3:16 PM

John Fund, the for­mer Wall Street Jour­nal colum­nist who has been pro­mot­ing voter ID laws for years, admit­ted Tues­day that some Repub­li­cans focus on voter ID laws which restrict in-person vot­ing over laws which could limit absen­tee vot­ing because the GOP has a per­ceived elec­toral advan­tage when it comes to vot­ing by mail.

“Absen­tee vote bal­lot fraud is the tool of choice amongst fraud­sters,” Fund told a group of blog­gers munch­ing on Chick-Fil-A at the con­ser­v­a­tive Her­itage Foun­da­tion on Tues­day. “Every­time you see a truly mas­sive, coor­di­nated effort at voter fraud, it usu­ally relies in part on absen­tee voter fraud.”

Fund said that many voter ID laws “take some pro­vi­sions to curb absen­tee bal­lot fraud,” with a few excep­tions. But he con­fessed that Democ­rats had a point when they say that Repub­li­cans focus on voter ID because of a poten­tial elec­toral advantage.

“I think it is a fair argu­ment of some lib­er­als that there are some peo­ple who empha­size the voter ID part more than the absen­tee bal­lot part because sup­pos­edly Repub­li­cans like absen­tee bal­lots more and they don’t want to restrict that,” Fund said. “But the bot­tom line is, on good gov­ern­ment grounds, we have to have both voter ID laws and absen­tee bal­lot laws.”

Fund and for­mer Bush-era Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial and cur­rent Her­itage Foun­da­tion fel­low Hans von Spakovsky have a book com­ing out next week titled Who’s Count­ing: How Fraud­sters and Bureau­crats Put Your Vote at Risk. Fund offered a pretty dire pre­dic­tion of how things will go at the polls in a few months.

“The thing I fear most is that we’ll have five, six or seven Flori­das this Novem­ber, where the elec­tion is close enough that there’s no longer a mar­gin of vic­tory you’re talk­ing about, there’s a mar­gin of lit­i­ga­tion, and we will not know the win­ner of the pres­i­den­tial race for hours or days or per­haps in the case of some­where like Florida, per­haps for quite some­time, and the next pres­i­dent takes office or con­tin­ues in office under a cloud,” Fund said.

Fund and von Spakovsky attacked a report from the Bren­nan Cen­ter which claims that mil­lions of vot­ers lack valid photo iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and will be pre­vented from vot­ing in November.

...

Five or six Floridas...great, that’s all we need.

The new book com­ing out about voter fraud by Fund and for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment Civil Rights attor­ney Hans von Spakovsky looks like the kind of “analy­sis” that one might expect from these two. But it’s also quite note­wor­thy that the pair seem to be push­ing the meme that absen­tee voter fraud is the pri­mary means of mas­sive voter fraud avail­able today. Now what about that issue of a third of US vot­ers now using easily-hackable elec­tronic vot­ing machines? Wha’ts their take on that touchy topic? Fund actu­ally ded­i­cates an entire chap­ter to elec­tronic vot­ing machines...in his 2004 book “Steal­ing Elec­tions: How Voter Fraud Threat­ens Our Democ­racy”. Just use the “Search inside his book” func­tion and do a search for “Diebold”. Granted, Fund down­plays the threat of elec­tronic vot­ing machines, but at least the topic is men­tioned in a book about voter fraud. Jump ahead to Fund’s new book Who’s Count­ing?: How Fraud­sters and Bureau­crats Put Your Vote at Risk and there doesn’t appear to be a sin­gle ref­er­ence to elec­tronic vot­ing machines in the entire thing. Once again, use the “Search Inside this book” option and so some searches for “Diebold” or even “elec­tronic”. Noth­ing (at least noth­ing I could find).

This is all just a reminder that the GOP doesn’t sim­ply ben­e­fit from a sup­pressed minority/poor/elderly vote as a result of all these new voter ID laws get­ting put in place across the US. The new laws and the pub­lic fight over them also help dif­fuse any pub­lic atten­tion that might have been paid towards the still grow­ing threat of unse­cure elec­tronic vot­ing sys­tems. So if the “five or six Flori­das” sce­nario emerges in Novem­ber, the entire elec­torate and media com­plex is now primed to imme­di­ately jump to “Absen­tee voter fraud!” or “Ille­gal immi­grants vot­ing!” instead of the obvi­ous cul­prit of elec­tronic vot­ing fraud.

This, of course, is not to say that good ol’ fash­ioned voter-suppresion won’t do the trick. Not at all:

August 6, 2012 7:14 AM
Despite polls, Rom­ney camp sees oppor­tu­nity in Pa.

(CBS News) Though both sides are adept at putting the most favor­able spin on their elec­toral prospects, strate­gists for the Obama and Rom­ney cam­paigns largely agree on which so-called swing states are truly up for grabs and which ones clearly lean a par­tic­u­lar way.

But per­haps the most glar­ing excep­tion to that broad con­sen­sus is Penn­syl­va­nia, where the two camps are work­ing under widely diver­gent assess­ments of how the race is shap­ing up.

Despite earnest assur­ances that they are tak­ing noth­ing for granted, a com­monly held view among the president’s re-election team is that the Key­stone State is all but in the bag. Romney’s team, on the other hand, has long been eye­ing it as a real­is­tic and poten­tially deci­sive pickup for the Repub­li­can challenger.

“When you talk about Penn­syl­va­nia, the Obama cam­paign is going to roll their eyes,” said Romney’s polit­i­cal direc­tor, Rich Bee­son. “They don’t know it, but it’s rot­ten under­neath for them.”

At first glance, there is lit­tle empir­i­cal evi­dence to back up that claim.

The pres­i­dent has been ahead in every Penn­syl­va­nia poll since Rom­ney became the GOP nom­i­nee, and he leads the Repub­li­can chal­lenger by seven per­cent­age points in the lat­est RCP polling average.

...

But what many Repub­li­cans expect to be their strongest card in Penn­syl­va­nia is one that they are often reluc­tant to tout: a new voter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion law that requires a spe­cific form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in order to cast a ballot.

The law is con­sid­ered the most strin­gent of its kind in any swing state in the nation and could cut sig­nif­i­cantly into Obama’s mar­gins in the state’s largest city.

“The bot­tom line is Philadel­phia is incred­i­bly impacted by that law, and it could have a real effect,” said KDKA-Pittsburgh polit­i­cal edi­tor Jon Delano, a long­time ana­lyst of Penn­syl­va­nia politics.

Delano, who con­sid­ers the state to be “very much in play,” said that there are no reli­able pro­jec­tions on the extent to which the voter ID law might depress turnout among Obama vot­ers, but there is no doubt that Repub­li­cans see it as a major boon to Romney’s hopes.

At a June GOP rally, House Major­ity Leader Mike Turzai sparked out­rage among voting-rights pro­po­nents when he trum­peted the new law as an accom­plish­ment that would pay polit­i­cal div­i­dends to the Repub­li­can nominee.

“Voter ID, which is going to allow Gov. Rom­ney to win the state of Penn­syl­va­nia: done,” Turzai said, elic­it­ing cheers from the par­ti­san crowd.

...

Ack, the link to their new book in the above com­ment is bro­ken. Here’s a fixed one. Seri­ously, can any­one find a ref­er­ence to ele­cronic vot­ing machines in that entire book using the “Search Inside this book” Ama­zon func­tion? Is there a search term that I’m just not think­ing of that will bring up at least one ref­er­ence to elec­tronic vot­ing machines? John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky are foot sol­diers in the far-right agenda so it’s no sur­prise if they want to down­play the risk of elec­tronic vot­ing machine rig­ging, but it’s quite a warn­ing sign if a brand new book about vot­ing theft doesn’t even men­tion elec­tronic vot­ing machines at least once.

Virginia’s attor­ney gen­eral Ken Cuc­cinelli is now assert­ing that an inves­ti­ga­tion is needed to deter­mine whether or not Obama stole the elec­tion through voter fraud. He specif­i­cally cites the fact that the Pres­i­dent lost every state with one of the photo-ID laws that the GOP had been pin­ing for in states across the coun­try over the last year. And you know what, he’s right. An inves­ti­ga­tion into the need for these new vot­ing voter ID laws and the other new GOP-inspired vot­ing laws from this past year would be a won­der­ful idea.