Posted on behalf of and at the request of luaptifer by GreyHawk.

The following video was posted on the Velvet Revolution site on 27 August 2008.

It documents Stephen Spoonamore's confrontation of the Maryland Board of Elections with an unredacted version of the "Risk Assessment Report" of Diebold's electronic voting systems as commissioned by the state of Maryland from the Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in 2003." as reported on Brad Blog 11/5/06. Those who commissioned the report were provided only a 40 page redact and limited to 'borrowing' a copy of the full 200 page document, Diebold considered it such sensitive material.

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"Computer cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore got a copy of the 197-page unredacted report which listed hundreds of serious problems, and he released that report to us.

Well, Spoonamore did more than that – he took the report to the Maryland Board of Elections and confronted them with it at a public meeting. He told them that if he were handed such a report in the private sector, he would "shut down the system and open a fraud investigation." The elections officials expressed shock that they had not ever seen the same unredacted report. And when the meeting was over, Spoonamore, with a concealed microphone, personally confronted the officials. And what did one of them say to him –that him having the report was "a security risk." Following the confrontation, Spoonamore was contacted by law enforcement officials who demanded to know how he got the report. We can say now that the report came from a high official in the Executive Branch who wanted to expose Diebold."

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I'm catching up on some history of the electronic voting machine story and, as a result, coming to realize the potential for these machines to profoundly undermine the integrity of this November's election.

Take a read of Bradblog's 'THE PENTAGON PAPERS OF E-VOTING' while understanding that machines like this are found in most of these United States. This report doesn't touch upon the recently revealed defects found in all lines of Diebold / Premier systems since their production began.

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"Trust, but verify."

        -- Ronald Reagan¹
          40th US President

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As each election cycle approaches, more and more articles about alleged voter fraud, voter caging, vote manipulation and voter intimidation begin to come out.

Sometimes, they are simply examples of fear-mongering used to attempt to move the public in one direction or another with regard to Voter Identification laws.

Sometimes, they appear to be conspiracy theories by nutcases.

And sometimes, they turn out to be grounded in reality.

In all cases, you never know what you'll find unless you first look at the facts -- and sometimes getting to those facts takes Herculean efforts.

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"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

        -- Josef Stalin (1879-1953)
          Georgian Soviet politician

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Why?

Over the fold, some quotes, some reflections, some news about ongoing developments over at the Velvet Revolution and a list of related stories.

This is an Open Thread.

Via BradBlog, (and h/t Buzzflash) anyone can have their very own Diebold voting machine master key now:

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else... now comes this.

As the hand recount begins at Dennis Kucinich's request, The Brad Blog was going through recount results as they were coming in:

As mentioned earlier today, NH SoS Bill Gardner told WMUR in NH that "We did nine of the 12 wards in Manchester, and a lot of the votes were exactly the same...Some went up by a vote or two." He didn't, of course, note that a lot of the vote counts (most of

It's the New Hampshire Primary

Image Credit

"1^st in the Nation" with Corporate Controlled,
Secret Vote Counting

Joe Guillen/Cleveland.com: 20 percent of election printouts were unreadable
"If it is as close as it's been for the last two presidential elections and it's that close again in 2008, God help us if we have to depend on Cuya- hoga County as the deciding factor. . ." said County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, a longtime opponent of the county's touch-screen voting system. [Vendor? Diebold. Via Election Law @ Moritz]

Kevin G. Hall/McClatchy: Democrats' health plans echo Nixon's failed GOP proposal
WASHINGTON — Even before Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton unveiled her new health-care plan, Republicans attacked it as socialized medicine. They neglected to mention, however, that her plan bears a striking resemblance to changes that were proposed in 1974 — by the late President Richard M. Nixon.

PEJ: Journalists in Iraq - A Survey of Reporters on the Front Lines (Nov 28, 2007)
The survey, conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism from September 28 through November 7. . . will be followed, later this year, with a content analysis of coverage on the ground from Iraq.