Officials in Broward County, Florida were confronted by the annoying truth that their voting machines do in deed count votes, but they count them in the negative direction. In a story broken by the Palm Beach Post, election officials sheepishly revealed today that the software used in their county and others can handle only 32,000 votes. After that, the system continues to count votes - but in reverse!
As of today, stunned Broward County Mayor Ilene Lieberman was still trying to learn why a voting system would even be designed to count backward.
The problem originally cropped up in 2002. Lieberman said that ES&S told her it had sent software upgrades to Florida Secretary of State, but the office, for unexplained reasons, kept rejecting the software.
This election, the glitch affected 97,434 ballots in Broward County alone, according to Broward Elections Supervisor Brenda Snipes, a Jeb Bush appointee with ties to the White House.

The same software is used in Martin and Miami-Dade counties.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Jenny Nash said all counties had been told that such problems would indeed occur if the votes got above the 32,000 mark.
Lieberman replied adamantly, "No election employee has come to the canvassing board and made the statements that Jenny Nash said occurred."
Late Tuesday night, ES&S issued a statement changing it's tune. It now claims that it found out about the problems in 2002 and said the software upgrades would be submitted to Secretary of State Hood's office next year. The company released the following statement: "While the county bears the ultimate responsibility for programming the ballot and structuring the precincts, we regret any confusion the discrepancy in early vote totals has caused."

Omaha-based Elections Systems and Software initially refused to return any calls, but as pressure mounted late Thursday, an ES&S spokeswoman sheepishly admitted she did not know whether ES&S contacted the Secretary of State two years ago or whether the software is designed to count backwards.

Crack Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg who broke this story locally, found that while the problem surfaced two years ago, current Broward County Elections Supervisor Snipes claimed it was under another supervisor and a different secretary of state and hence, she could not be held accountable.

In the pre-election issue of the Broward-Palm Beach New Times, an expose on Snipes revealed, " Snipes calls herself a Democrat, but Jeb Bush and local Republican power brokers like William Scherer pull the strings."
The New Times article goes on to state: "You might remember Scherer - a co-chair for the governor's campaign and a fundraising Ranger for the president's campaign. He's the charming fellow who started yelling on live television during the 2000 recount and had to be removed from the Broward County Courthouse."
"Scherer works closely with lobbyist Jim Blosser, who is perhaps the most influential Republican power broker in South Florida," explains New Times.
Snipes a black Democrat, chose Dorsey Miller to emcee her appointment ceremony, "Miller an opportunistic and oft -investigated black Republican was tapped by Jeb {Bush} to engineer Snipes' ascension." explains New Times.
More later.

Yesterday kicked off the first day of the Minnesota recount and while a whole host of ballots still need to be tabulated, things are looking good for Al Franken. There is still substantial ground to be made up, but a net gain of 43 votes is a pretty good start. Nate has more.

According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state's recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota's certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes.

Minnesota reports that it has thus far re-counted 15.49 percent of its ballots. If the first day's results are indicative of the pace that the candidates will maintain throughout the recount process, Franken would gain a net of 278 votes over Colmean, giving him a narrow victory. For any number of reasons, however, the results reported thus far may not be indicative of future trends.

We'll just have to wait and see how things shape up. In case you forgot, a Franken victory would put us at 59 blue Senate seats (counting Lieberman and Sanders). If Franken does manage to pull this off -- indeed, even if he doesn't -- all eyes will turn to Georgia on December 2 for the run-off between the execrable incumbent Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin.

The Franken campaign is optimistic. Keep your fingers crossed.

The Daily News:

Former Rep. John Sweeney was charged with aggravated DWI when he was pulled over by State Police early this morning on the Northway with a 23-year-old woman in his car, police told the Daily News.[..]

State Police had no comment when asked the identity of the passenger in Sweeney's 2004 BMW sedan. Sweeney was also ticketed for driving erratically. A law enforcement source said Sweeney's car had been swerving and the woman was seated partially on his lap when Trooper Phillip Dickson first spotted him.

Sweeney's blood alcohol content registered at .18 (fixed) percent when he was checked at the Clifton Park station, according to Lt. Scott Coburn. He was ordered to appear in Clifon Park Town Court Wednesday night at 7 p.m.

Sweeney got his political start as executive director of the state GOP, where he helped Rudy Giuliani win his first mayoral campaign in 1993 and also worked on George Pataki's successful bid to oust former Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1994. He served as Pataki's first Labor Commissioner and ran for Congress in 1998 to succeed retiring Rep. Gerald Solomon. Sweeney earned the nickname "Congressman Kick-Ass" from President Bush for his role in the 2000 Flordia recount protests.

The ex-congressman has a history of alcohol-related incidents, and he and his estranged wife have indicated alcohol was a factor in the domestic incident which led to an embarassing police report that was leaked to the Daily News, the Albany Times Union and Newsday shortly before last year's congressional election. Sweeney lost that race to Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand.

During the campaign, Sweeney was severely embarrasased when photos of him at a Union College frat party were publicized. In 2001, he drove his Jeep into a telephone pole in the Adirondacks, shutting off electricity to the nearby Willard Mt. resort and stranding skiers on a chair lift.

Oops. Sweeney's campaign was embarrassed further with news that he physically abused his wife and that both he and his son had incidents with alcohol and violence. Duncan has more...

NY Times:

Gov. Charlie Crist announced plans on Thursday to abandon the touch-screen voting machines that many of Florida's counties installed after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The state will instead adopt a system of casting paper ballots counted by scanning machines in time for the 2008 presidential election.

Voting experts said Florida's move, coupled with new federal voting legislation expected to pass this year, could be the death knell for the paperless electronic touch-screen machines. If as expected the Florida Legislature approves the $32.5 million cost of the change, it would be the nation's biggest repudiation yet of touch-screen voting, which was widely embraced after the 2000 recount as a state-of-the-art means of restoring confidence that every vote would count.

[..]"Florida is like a synonym for election problems; it's the Bermuda Triangle of elections," said Warren Stewart, policy director of VoteTrust USA, a nonprofit group that says optical scanners are more reliable than touch screens. "For Florida to be clearly contemplating moving away from touch screens to the greatest extent possible is truly significant."

Michael Collins of Scoop Independent News reports that the new Ohio Secretary of State (the other location of voter irregularities during 2004) will make sure that the sins of Blackwell not revisit her state again.

There's a certain amount of "outrage fatigue" you experience when blogging about the state of our union. The amount of bad news that I recount here makes it harder and harder for me to stay positive.

So thank heavens for Katrina vanden Heuvel for focusing on positive changes we could make to benefit us all. How does this list look to you? What would you add, subtract, or expand upon?

Alternet:

...House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will begin to answer that call (of the November 2006 elections) by pushing a "100 Hours" agenda -- including common-sense legislation to increase the minimum wage, cut interest on student loans and open the way for Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices.

That's a good beginning, but it's only a down payment on a broader agenda. Progressives now have the opportunity to develop a new vision that returns power to the American people for the first time in generations. But to-do lists don't add up to a vision. But Democrats must show they are serious by passing bold measures that define a new "people's agenda." With that in mind, here are ten existing pieces of legislation that deserve to be passed by our new Congress.

Read Katrina's list here

Confined Space: The final post at what has been one of the most consistently informative sites in the blogosphere. Good luck, Jordan, we'll miss you

War and Piece: Iran hysteria begins in earnest, but there're indications that Iranian President Ahmadinejad is already in trouble

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Islamic scholar Gudrun Krämer discusses tolerance and freedom of religion among Muslims, the role of the Crusades and colonialism in today's conflicts

Hot Johnny and All of His Pants: A blow by blow account of Cheney's various acts of boredom during the SOTU address

The BRAD BLOG: Two Ohio election officials convicted of rigging the 2004 presidential recount

House of the Rising sons: A cartoon breakdown for the Bushbots

Truthout:

The announcement yesterday that the top two lawyers for the Federal Election Commission had resigned helped spread an undercurrent of concern about the diminishing role of a once-prominent public voice on the intersection of money and politics.

The stated reason for the departures of FEC General Counsel Lawrence H. Norton and Deputy General Counsel James A. Kahl was that the two men had landed private-sector jobs at a large firm with offices in six states. Norton and Kahl, reached yesterday, said their resignations were not intended to send any broader message.

But those who monitor campaign finance law with some dedication said the departures coincided with a perceived shift in the way the commissioners have worked with the general counsel.

Paul S. Ryan, a lawyer who monitors the FEC for the Campaign Legal Center, said the general counsel was once free to opine publicly about pressing policy matters but that has not been the preference of the commissioners as of late.

"The influence of the general counsel has clearly been diminishing," Ryan said. The commissioners "no longer seek the general counsel's opinion publicly with respect to answering difficult questions of law."

Meanwhile, Michael Collins of Scoop Independent News gives us some good news on the election front: Three Wyoming Democrats Take a Stand for Democracy; They Ask for and Get a Recount in a Very Tight House Race. Now if we could get the same kind of concern for the democratic process in Florida.

It would be nice if every Secretary of State could speak with such confidence on their voting system. I thought this tied in nicely with my earlier post about Dianne Feinstein.

WaPo :

This month, as controversies emerged in other parts of the country over polling place problems and malfunctioning touch-screen machines, we here in Oregon prepared to swear in a new crop of elected officials with nary a question about the legitimacy of the count or the functioning of our electoral process. We accomplished this with a turnout on Nov. 7 that was, once again, among the highest in the nation. How?

With Vote by Mail.

One episode that highlights its success occurred in Tillamook County, where 13 inches of rain on Election Day sent many citizens scrambling to the safety of shelters under a declared state of emergency. Despite the fact that many roads were impassable and parts of the county were inaccessible -- conditions that would have crippled turnout in a state that relied on conventional polling places -- 70 percent of the voters cast ballots. Only voting by mail could have led to this outcome.

Continue reading »

The evidence is already compelling that Republicans are in the midst of stealing Florida's 13th, and as Paul Krugman noted today, this is a clear instance in which paperless voting machines “delivered the race to the wrong candidate.” Indeed, state officials, who already unfairly certified Republican Vern Buchanan the "winner," tapped an FSU professor as an “independent” expert to oversee an audit -- despite the fact that this prof made an appearance on the steps of the Florida Supreme Court during the 2000 recount battle wearing a “Bush Won” sign.

Krugman pointed to the big picture.

I’ve been shocked at how little national attention the mess in Sarasota has received. Here we have as clear a demonstration as we’re ever likely to see that warnings from computer scientists about the dangers of paperless electronic voting are valid — and most Americans probably haven’t even heard about it.

As far as I can tell, the reason Florida-13 hasn’t become a major national story is that neither control of Congress nor control of the White House is on the line. But do we have to wait for a constitutional crisis to realize that we’re in danger of becoming a digital-age banana republic?

I hope not, but given the reaction thus far, it's hard to be optimistic. E. J. Dionne Jr. has more.

-Steve Benen

Ben Stein: "Fitzgerald a thug"

Tucker transcript

CARLSON: But it looks bad, though. I mean, it looks bad. Here you have a prosecutor who apparently...

STEIN: Of course it looks bad.

CARLSON: ... is holding out for hard time. You have him claiming he‘s caught Scooter Libby in seven separate documentable lies.

STEIN: You know something? You know something? If you—I hope I‘m not excessively criminal person, but if you—if you were giving me 30, 40, 50 phone calls a day, conversations with people, then called me in before a grand jury and said to recount what happened in each of those conversations two years later, I‘m sure you would catch me in 700 inconsistencies.

That is just standard business as usual. It is standard business as usual to pass out leaks to reporters in Washington. This prosecuting business as usual in Washington is just a way to break the political process down, and make it into an illegal, criminal process. It doesn‘t have any role in the Constitution. This guy is a thug. This Fitzgerald is a thug.

Outing a CIA agent, not to mention smearing a man's wife is standard business? So what does that make Nixon, Ben? (hat tip KF)