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Over the past decade, The BRAD BLOG, has become one of the nation's largest repositories of articles documenting the folly of e-voting. Thousands of articles at this site, written over the years by multiple journalists, computer experts, scientists, whistle-blowers and election integrity advocates, have pointed to academic and government studies, electoral train wrecks in election-after-election and out-and-out system crashes resulting in long lines, lost votes and denial of both service and democracy on Election Day.

We've even documented instances in which the official results were not merely absurd, but in some cases, virtually impossible --- from the negative 16,022 votes registered for Al Gore by a Volusia County, Florida optical-scan system during the contested 2000 Presidential Election to the thousands of electronic votes which simply disappeared after election night in Monroe County, Arkansas' 2010 state primary, just to mention a couple.

With rare exception, these very real, scientifically-based and independently verifiable concerns about the threat to democracy posed by a lack of transparency in how, if at all, votes are counted within the confines of computer vote tabulators, have, at best, been all but ignored by the mainstream corporate media, or, worse, scoffed at by the likes of "journalists" like Chuck Todd, NBC News' supposed election expert, as little more than "conspiracy garbage." With rare exception (e.g. last year in Palm Beach County, FL where, as a result of a 100% hand-count of paper ballots, several "losing" candidates, as initially determined by the Sequoia optical-scan tabulators, were actually found to be the winners) election-after-election has been decided in this nation without so much as a single ballot having been counted by a human being before results, right or wrong, are announced to the public.

The extent to which the U.S. government has ignored these scientific concerns was encapsulated by the fact that, last Fall, the President of the United States saw fit to cast his early vote on the oft-failed, incredibly-vulnerable, easily-hacked and 100% unverifiable Sequoia AVC Edge Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting system in Chicago --- a system manufactured by the same voting machine company which, according to its former employees, deliberately sabotaged the punch card paper stock that was bound for use in Miami-Dade, Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election. That same tabulation system, relied upon by the President in Chicago, was also the one which declared the wrong "winners" in three different races in the Palm Beach County elections held earlier last year.

President Obama, in an apparent reference to the secrecy of the vote, said "I can't tell you who I voted for." He either didn't realize or didn't care how ironic that statement was given that it is scientifically impossible to ever know if his vote, or anyone else who cast a vote on that same 100% unverifiable e-voting system, was recorded accurately, or at all. It disappeared into the electronic black hole on equipment now ostensibly owned by Dominion Voting Systems, the Canadian corporation which purchased Sequoia in 2010. The Sequoia-manufactured, Dominion-owned e-voting machine Obama used to cast his vote last year was the trade secret Intellectual Property of yet another company: Smartmatic Voting Systems, a Venezuela-based, international e-voting systems manufacturer and supplier which had long ago been tied to the late President Hugo Chávez.

But a funny thing happened after the results of Venezuela's recent Presidential election were announced by the country's National Electoral Council (CNE). According to the electronic central tabulators of the country's 100% unverifiable Smartmatic DRE e-voting systems, Chávez protégé, Nicolas Maduro, had narrowly defeated the U.S.-backed Henrique Capriles.

At that moment --- and only for Venezuela's election, clearly --- both the U.S. government and U.S. mainstream corporate media suddenly became election integrity converts.

They insist on a 100% hand-count of the DRE-produced paper receipts because, as observed by ABC News, the CNE results are based upon "information that is sent electronically from each voting machine to the central vote counting hub," and not "from a manual count of the voting receipts deposited in ballot boxes." That, of course, is almost the exact same way that President Obama's vote in Chicago was tallied, either accurately or not, last year.

When asked by the AP's Matthew Lee whether the U.S. would recognize the Maduro government now that the election had been certified by the CNE, the State Department's Patrick Ventrell said earlier this month: "We're not there yet." His sentiment would be echoed by Secretary of State John Kerry, ironically enough, in an appearance before Congress. Both Ventrell and Kerry claimed to be concerned about the "confidence of the Venezuelan people in the quality of the vote."

Setting aside the fact that there is no way to know whether any computer-printed paper receipt accurately reflects the will of any voter in any election, the event underscores, once again, the striking duplicity of both the U.S. government and the corporate-owned mainstream media on the subject of democracy...

Unverifiable count

It is not altogether clear whether those calling for a hand-count in Venezuela understand that there are no actual paper ballots known to have been verified by any voter, to be hand-counted. As observed by the Chief Justice of the Venezuela Supreme Court Luisa Estella Morales, "the electoral process is absolutely automated in a way that manual counting does not exist." In fact, the Chief Justice observed, under a provision in that nation's constitution, adopted in 1999, manual counts were "eliminated."

The paper trail referred to by the ABC News report are simply printouts produced by the Smartmatic DREs, aka, a so-called "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail" (VVPAT), similar to the ones produced by many of the DRE machines still shamefully used in U.S. elections. Unlike hand-marked paper ballots, VVPATs do not provide a reliable source for determining the accuracy of the vote count. As revealed by an MIT/Caltech study of the Sequoia DRE system, the vast majority of voters don't even bother to check their VVPATs at the end of the voting process. Another study, performed as part of a doctoral thesis by Rice University's Sarah P. Everett, found that, during a mock election, nearly two-thirds of voters who did review the final confirmation of their vote on the computer, failed to notice when their votes had been flipped by the system.

Everett observed, "it is highly unlikely that voters will detect changes to their ballots on the VVPAT, that prints out on a roll of paper next to the machine, if they are not even noticing them on a screen presented directly in front of them."

In September 2008, the Computer Security Group at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) released a short video demonstrating how a single person can hack an election on a touch-screen voting system --- even one with a VVPAT --- in such a way that it is highly unlikely that the manipulation would ever be detected by either the public or by election officials.

In the UCSB video, posted again below, the hack of a Sequoia voting system being prepared for use in an entire county is done in approximately 3 seconds, by a single person with simple insider access and a $10 USB thumb drive. Every machine used in the county, in such a case, would be affected by the manipulation. Moreover, the hack would not be discovered by pre-election "Logic and Accuracy" testing --- in cases where election officials actually bother to perform such tests prior to elections --- nor would it likely be discovered even in the event of a complete, 100% post-election audit of the touch-screen "paper-trail" records. That is the same sort of 100% post-election hand-count that U.S. officials are now calling for, for some reason, in Venezuela.

Here's the demonstration of the UCSB Sequoia hack...

PART 1
PART 2

The UCSB video was made as part of the "Top to Bottom Review" carried out by CA Secretary of State Debra Bowen (D). As a result of that review, in 2008, the same Sequoia DRE on which the President of the United States cast an early vote in October 2012 was decertified for use within the Golden State, with limited exceptions for disabled voters who choose to use them, as per federal law. Indeed, during the 2012 general election in U.S., despite the findings of the world-class computer security experts who worked on Bowen's study, the Sequoia AVC Edge touch-screen was used in 234 jurisdictions across all or part of some 13 states.

Why conceal Smartmatic/Sequoia/Dominion connection?

A critical feature of the U.S. corporate media's response to studies like the ones cited above is not simply that it has chosen to ignore the documented vulnerabilities of our e-voting systems, but has also largely ignored Brad Friedman's in-depth reporting about the confirmed link between Smartmatic, Sequoia and Dominion, as well as the remarkable lengths to which Sequoia and Dominion have gone to downplay, or all together conceal, their connections to the Venezuela-based e-voting system vendor.

In May 2008, Friedman not only exposed the fact that Smartmatic retained the proprietary, trade secret protected IP rights in the Sequoia DREs, but documented that the connection was fraudulently concealed by Sequoia's then CEO Jack Blaine during testimony to Chicago Alderman Edward M. Burke and the Chair of Chicago's Board of Election Commissioners Langdon D. Neal.

Subsequently, in 2010, Friedman exclusively reported that Dominion lied about the company's Intellectual Property being owned by the Chávez-tied company when the Canadian firm initially announced their takeover of Sequoia's assets that year, becoming this country's second largest voting machine provider.

While the deception is, of itself, disturbing, the question naturally arises --- why?

The answer may have at least been hinted at in a civil complaint filed late last year by Smartmatic in the Delaware Chancery Court. The complaint alleges that Dominion breached a 2009 License Agreement in which Dominion allegedly granted Smartmatic "a worldwide license to market, make, use, and sell precinct count optical scan voting systems (PCOS) utilizing Dominion's optical scan voting system technology."

The legal dispute arose when Dominion began competing directly over PCOS international sales. The dispute gave rise to a concern, expressed by The Manila Times, that Smartmatic's ability "to correct errors" in PCOS machines it had sold to the Philippines would be compromised if Smartmatic lacked access to the Dominion software source code.

The flip-side of The Manila Times' concern could arise in Dominion's inability to correct "errors" in the Sequoia AVC Edge DREs because of Smartmatic's trade secret, proprietary control over that touch screen's source code.

Long time readers of The BRAD BLOG, who are familiar with the Clint Curtis story, however, realize that just one outrageous aspect, when it comes to issues of election integrity in this country, is that any private e-voting system vendor retains trade secret proprietary control over our public elections, even as they also conceal actual vote-counting from the public.

In a sworn affidavit, first published by The BRAD BLOG in 2004, and again in subsequent sworn Congressional testimony, Curtis, a computer programmer and former Republican, alleged that, in October 2000, former Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked the firm Curtis was then working for, to design a prototype for e-voting software capable of flipping the vote in South Florida. Feeney, according to Curtis, wanted the vote-flipping routines to remain undetectable even if someone gained access to the source codes. Curtis told him that was "virtually impossible," according to his affidavit and testimony, but that as long as the source code was not revealed, "any vote fraud would remain invisible."

The real problem is not whether private e-voting system vendors can conceal the source codes from one another, but why we the people permit any private e-voting vendor to conceal the source of an otherwise invisible electronic count. But even revealing the source code would not reveal if machines tabulate votes correctly, as there is no way to know if the source code examined on the Monday before an election is the same code used during the election on Tuesday.

We the people have permitted all of this even in the face of patently absurd results, such as the one which occurred when the 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronic DREs in South Carolina produced inexplicable results claiming that the unemployed and virtually unknown Alvin Greene had somehow defeated the respected, well-known Circuit Judge Vic Rawl to win the nomination for the U.S. Senate in that state's 2010 Democratic primary election.

Those same 100% unverifiable ES&S iVotronics are still in use in South Carolina and elsewhere. They will, next week, determine the outcome of this year's special election for a U.S. Congressional seat in the much-watched race between Elizabeth Colbert Bush (D) (Stephen Colbert's sister) and former Governor and disgraced philanderer Mark Sanford (R). And, if it runs true to form, the MSM will report on who "wins" that election just after the close of polls next Tuesday night without noting that almost every single vote cast in the race --- save for those cast on paper-based absentee ballots --- can never be verified by any human being as having been recorded or tabulated accurately.

'Democracy' as pretense

Whether one turns to the insider account provided by John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man or any of hundreds of available academic works, the one salient feature is that, for more than 60 years, U.S. foreign policy has been grounded upon the financial interests of a U.S. based, multinational corporate empire. The reality is that our government has had no qualms about aligning itself with harsh, right-wing dictatorships, so long as those dictatorships act in the interest of what Perkins dubbed "the corporatocracy."

Instead of supporting democracy abroad, our government has, time-and-again, used subversive means to overthrow democratically elected governments --- e.g., the CIA-supported coup d’états, which deposed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, Iran 1953, the democratically elected government of President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, Guatamala, 1954, and the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende, Chile Sept. 11, 1973. Although Iraq, in 2003, was under control of a dictator, only the deceived and the naive still actually believe the unprovoked 2003 invasion of that oil-rich nation had anything to do with either WMDs or the democratic aspirations of the Iraqi people.

And, as documented by Professors Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent, for more than half a century, the corporate-owned U.S. media has played the role of a propaganda outlet for the corporatocracy, slandering the integrity of foreign governments who do not hew to the corporate line while minimizing the anti-democratic and often brutal features of U.S. supported dictators who have sold out their own people for a slice of the corporate pie.

This pattern continued throughout the years of the Hugo Chávez Presidency, where the U.S. MSM, led by its paper-of-record, The New York Times, sought to portray the aborted attempt to topple the Chávez government by a U.S.-supported coup d’état as a "pro-democracy move."

Consistency in duplicity

Perhaps the best that can be said is that, when it comes to the gap between election integrity concerns at home and abroad, the U.S. government and the corporate MSM have been consistent in their selective outrage.

For example, as observed by Steven F. Freeman, Ph.D. and Joel Bleifuss in Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud and the Official Count, the U.S. and the corporate MSM will routinely cite significant variances between Exit Polls and official election results as evidence of election fraud --- but only as applied to foreign elections. When those variances occur in domestic elections, as was the case in the 2004 Presidential election in the U.S., the government and the media not only presume that the error is to be found in the Exit Polls, not the election results, but the pollsters actually "adjust" (corrupt?) their Exit Poll results to conform to the official count. That is not "conspiracy theory". That is simply a fact, which Exit Pollsters themselves will confirm.

The fact that John "can't concede fast enough" Kerry would ask for a Venezuelan hand-count in 2013, out of a supposed concern about the "confidence of the Venezuelan people in the quality of the vote", is particularly ironic --- and galling. Where was the concern for the confidence of the American people in the quality of the vote in the face of significant evidence of GOP election fraud in the Ohio 2004 Presidential Election, including what some have described as a classic man-in-the-middle manipulation of the computer-reported results?

So, if nothing else, U.S. government/media duplicity in the variance between their recognition of a need for hand-counts of paper ballots for foreign elections, while the need is all but ignored in the U.S., is, at least, consistent with past duplicity.

Who are we to judge?

It has been a consistent theme at The BRAD BLOG that election integrity is "not a matter of Right and Left but of right and wrong." The ideal would be for all nations, including our own, to adopt Democracy's Gold Standard --- hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at each precinct on Election Night, with results posted decentrally at the precincts before ballots are moved anywhere.

But one can best lead by example. As long as the U.S. refuses to adopt election integrity for its own domestic elections, it is hardly in a position to criticize a foreign government for a lack thereof. To the contrary, its duplicity has opened the door to the charge leveled by Bolivian President Evo Morales that the U.S. demand for a recount in Venezuela amounts to an "open meddling, which looks to create unrest, leading to further interference with a coup d’état."

So who are we to argue with him?

* * *Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). Follow him on Twitter: @Cann4ing.

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

From Raw Story

A 10-month-old infant in Idaho is recovering on Thursday after being shot in the face by its 3-year-old sister.

Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue told KTVB that the mother left the two children in the car while she went into the house to get something at about 4:15 p.m. on Tuesday. While she was in the house, the 3-year-old toddler found a loaded pistol in the car and shot the infant in the left cheek near the mouth.

“Those kids were in the car, which may not have been bad in itself except there was a loaded firearm in the car and unfortunately, children being children, found access to it and discharged it,” Donahue explained. “The bottom line is the two children were unattended in the car.”

“First and foremost, in a perfect world they wouldn’t be loaded, there would not be bullets inside the gun,” the sheriff added. “The most important thing is gun safety. If you’re going to have a loaded firearm in the car, you’re going to have to have it in a place where no one but yourself or an adult that knows about guns can access it.”

The 10-month-old boy was treated and released after being taken by ambulance to St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center.

No charges had been filed, but an investigation into the shooting was ongoing. Idahoans with the proper permits have the legal right to keep concealed weapons in their vehicles.

You can’t say he isn’t trying.

According to this morning’s Washington Post, eleven days after the amendment he co-authored to expand background checks for gun purchases was rejected by his Senate colleagues, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) sounded optimistic Sunday about a second try.

“I’m willing to go anywhere in this country, I’m going to debate anybody on this issue, read the bill and you tell me what you don’t like,” Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday,” reiterating his intention to bring his measure back to the Senate floor.

Manchin’s bill, which would have required background checks for all gun show and Internet sales, failed in a 54-46 vote earlier this month.

The bill faced opposition from the nation’s gun lobby which said it would criminalize firearm transfers between family members and could lead to the creation of a federal database of gun owners, claims the sponsors rejected.

Sen. Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.), the lead co-sponsor of the legislation, suggested this week that he has no plans to revive the bill.

“My own view is very simple: The Senate has had its vote. We’ve seen the outcome of that vote. I am not aware of any reason to believe that if we had the vote again that we’d have a different outcome,” Toomey said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Good pals...

We'll caption this one: "Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication."

From Think Progress

The Tennessee Firearms Association is raffling off one AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, the same weapon used by Adam Lanza to kill 20 children and six adults in Newtown.

According to the promotion, “TFA is giving away a BUSHMASTER AR15 to advance the effort to resist Barack Obama, the federal government and even a few in Tennessee state government who are determined to destroy your 2nd Amendment rights!!”

The promotion began earlier in April to coincide with the Senate’s consideration of gun violence prevention legislation. And while contestants do not have to be a TFA member to enter, the promotion notes TFA would “appreciate” donations, ending with, “Our rights under the 2nd Amendment and even the Bill of Rights are not safe in Tennessee! We must act with force and determination to protect, preserve and restore our rights!!!!”

The Tennessean reports that the raffle has already drawn more than 10,000 entries for the Monday drawing.

But Tennessee gun groups have little reason to fear for their representatives’ position on guns. Both Senators Bob Corker (R) and Lamar Alexander (R) voted against the Senate bill to expand background checks — two of 46 Senators who filibustered a safety measure that is approved by 90 percent of Americans.

“This may illustrate perfectly what I’ve been saying all along: They create these issues to raise money. That just stokes the fire to frighten folks,” former state Rep. Debra Maggart said of the motive for the raffle. Maggart herself was a target of both TFA and the National Rifle Association in her Republican primary last year.

From DCist.com

Shepard Fairey, the graphic artist who got famous in 2008 for his stylized reproduction of a photo of then-Sen. Barack Obama accompanied by the word “Hope,” will show off his latest political statement at a demonstration today when he debuts a new poster targeting the National Rifle Association.

Fairey’s new poster, almost fascistic in its effects, is a response to the setbacks to attempts to enhance federal gun laws following last December’s massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The poster is a slight modification of one Fairey released last month, depicting an assault rifle above the phrase “America: Where God saves and Satan invests—in assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

The original version was topped by the logo of Fairey’s graphic design and clothing company OBEY Giant; this one replaces that with the letters “NRA.”

Fairey released the first version as a reaction to the Newtown shooting and to other mass shootings across the United States last year. “I’m not a big fan of the absurd abundance of guns in the U.S.,” he wrote on his website. “I’m also perplexed by the claim of much of the nation to have ‘Christian values.’ If God tells us to love our neighbor and not to take another human life, where do the assault weapons and piles of ammo fit into these ‘Christian values’? I personally think assault weapons fall more in the ‘Satan’s values’ category.”

He repurposed the design to focus on the NRA earlier this month after the organization started lobbying against a bipartisan gun control bill introduced into the U.S. Senate that would have expanded background checks on all firearms purchases. But the measure was unable to overcome a filibuster, preventing it from being moved through the legislative process.

Copies of Fairey’s new poster were distributed Friday a rally in downtown D.C. organized by Occupy the NRA, a pro-gun control group. The demonstration, scheduled for noon at McPherson Square, featured speeches by several gun control advocates and relatives of shooting victims.

NRA President David Keene blasts President’s “tantrum” calls polls and fact-checkers “bogus.” (David Purdy, Des Moines Register)

When one creates ones own realitiy, one can say whatever he wants and it automatically becomes true.

Such is the case with the recent failure of background check legislation in the Senate and how this is being spun by NRA President David Keene.

In a speech to several Des Moines hunters and gun enthusiasts (who were asked to keep their guns in the car, thank you), Keene said President Obama’s “tantrum” over the failure of the legislation was “unseemly” and, oh yes, the polls are wrong and the fact checkers are lying.

According to a story by Jennifer Jacobs in the April 25 Des Moines Register:

Keene said that Obama and his spokespeople, in an effort to win over Congress, drove a narrative that gun owners didn’t matter, and the nation backed the president.

“They said, ‘Everybody wants what he wants.’ They even came up with bogus polls to show that was the case,” Keene said.

The “bogus” poll Keene referred to is the highly-respected Quinnipiac poll which showed 92 percent of voters supported the Senate’s version of expanded background checks.

Obama said the NRA “willfully lied” about the gun legislation.

In response, Keene told reporters (April 25): “I think it’s a little unseemly for a president to throw a public tantrum because he lost his first legislative vote in the Senate.”

Obama told the country the NRA claimed that the background check bill “would create some sort of ‘big brother’ gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation, in fact, outlawed any registry.” PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement true.

“That’s not true,” Keene said. “We’re very proud of the fact that people can rely on our information. What happened was he looks at it one way and says this problem doesn’t exist. We look at it another and said yes, this problem does exist.”

Earlier this month, the NRA successfully fought off a raft of gun reform proposals in the emotional wake of the shooting deaths of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. The killer used an assault weapon.

Huh. Looking back over the logo photos for our last three Green News Reports in a row (April 18, 23 and 25 of 2013), there seems to be a common thread developing. And it's not a good one.

And, with all of that, none of them even have anything to do with last week's bombing in Boston.

According to a story in the April 25 New York Times online, talks to revive gun control legislation are quietly under way on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan group of senators seeks a way to bridge the differences that led to last week’s collapse of the most serious effort to overhaul the country’s gun laws in 20 years.

The trick seems to be, making progress without arousing the anger or even the notice of the National Rifle Association, which sits like a hungry pit bull on the steps of the Capitol waiting for even a whiff of anything that smells like gun control.

Reporter Jeremy W. Peters writes that the Senate seems to be drawing on the lessons learned from battles in the 1980s and ’90s over the Brady Bill, which failed in Congress several times before ultimately passing, gun control supporters believe they can prevail by working on a two-pronged strategy. First, they are identifying senators who might be willing to change their votes and support a background check system with fewer loopholes.

Second, they are looking to build a national campaign that would better harness overwhelming public support for universal background checks — which many national polls put at near 90 percent approval — to pressure lawmakers.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA) are talking to other senators they see as persuadable. Only four Republicans supported the legislation, which was killed in a cloture vote last week.

Lwmakers such as Alaska’s senators, Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, and Mark Begich, a Democrat, are concerned by the provisions of the bill that would require background checks on person-to-person gun sales in rural areas. No such concern has been suggested about person-to-person sales of automobiles in rural areas, where people are required to drive to their nearest Department of Motor Vehicles office to register the transfer.

Another bill working its way down the legislative birth canal is an an anti-trafficking bill — the subject of talks between Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, and two Republican senators who voted no on the background check bill. The Republicans, Senators Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, are discussing ways they might support the bill, which would criminalize the shipping or transfer of guns to someone who is barred from possessing a firearm.

While the bill on its own falls short of what the families of victims of mass shootings have been pushing Congress to enact — and is therefore less controversial — some Democrats believe it could be a good starting point to build a broader bipartisan compromise.

“In a new Public Policy Polling poll of very pro-gun New Hampshire, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) has seen a 15-point drop in her approval rating in the state, and a full 50% of New Hampshire voters say that Ayotte’s vote against background checks will make them less likely to vote for her in future elections, including 66% of self-described moderates.”*

Voters are showing their distaste in Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte for siding with the NRA instead of what the people want- universal background checks. Her approval rating is on a fast track downward.

USA! 'Nuff said...

 

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: As the nation mourns the horrific West Fertilizer explosion in TX, the chemical industry pushes for more fertilizer plants and less regulation; Yet another fossil fuel explosion on the Gulf Coast; California now has more solar workers than actors; PLUS: East London's Chief Flusher is turning fat into electricity ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link: Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): New fossil fuel frontiers pose 'catastrophic' threat to global recovery; A master class on the state of clean-energy investment (video); State of the Air 2013: where does your city rank?; SF votes to divest from fossil fuels; Shale mining controversy under Great Barrier Reef; Fox News concocts conspiracy for the phrase 'climate change'; UN climate chief hopeful on climate treaty; US military faulted for 'burn pits' in Afghanistan... PLUS: VIDEO: Fox "News" concocts conspiracy for the phrase "Climate Change" ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• Amid Memorial, Questions in West, TX Fertilizer Plant Explosion:
• Texas Fertilizer Plant Fell Through Regulatory Cracks (NY Times)
• Texas fertilizer company didn't heed disclosure rules before blast (Reuters):
  [T]he company that owns the plant, West Fertilizer, did not tell the agency about the potentially explosive fertilizer as it is required to do, leaving one of the principal regulators of ammonium nitrate - which can also be used in bomb making - unaware of any danger there.
• Why Are Media Ignoring TX Fertilizer Plant's History Of Skirting Regulations? (Media Matters)
• Report: Federal agency charged with oversight of fertilizer plant security in disarray (Austin-American Statesman)
• From Texas to China: When Man-Made Problems Make Natural Disasters Worse (TIME)
• More Fertilizer Plants for U.S.:
• Fertilizer Plants Spring Up to Take Advantage of U.S. s Cheap Natural Gas (Scientific American):
  No ammonia plants—which produce 90 percent of the fertilizer used worldwide—have broken ground in the U.S. in more than 20 years. But in the next three to five years, that’s changing.
• Chemical Industry Pushes for More Fertilizer Plants, Less Regulation:
• Will the "Koch Brothers Bill" Make Industrial Accidents More Likely? (Mother Jones):
  Such accidents are all too common in chemical country. So why are congressmen fighting to keep the EPA from doing anything about it?
• Watchdogs Warned of Chemical-Plant Oversight Before Blast (Bloomberg)
• West Fertilizer blast raises questions about ammonia plants in Iowa (USA Today)
• EPA Must Close Gaps in U.S. Chemical Security, Ex-Chief Says (Bloomberg, 1/12/2012):
  The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must close “gaping holes” in chemical-plant security that put millions of Americans at risk, former administrator Christine Todd Whitman said.
• Tread on Me: The Case for Freedom From Terrorist Bombings, School Shootings and Exploding Factories (TIME Swampland)
• Alabama: NatGas Barges Explode in Mobile Bay, Injuring 3:
• VIDEO: Multiple explosions in fuel barge fire (Fox News Mobile, AL)
• Three injured in fuel barge explosion in Mobile River (AL.com):
  The official also re-iterated it is gasoline - not LNG - that keeps the fire burning. Firefighters are still standing by as the fire burns through the night. [Natural gas and 'natural gasoline' are both fossil fuels with high risk of explosion - ed.]
• Fuel barges explode, burn through night in Alabama (Grist)
• Fire out hours after fuel barges explode in Ala. (AP)
• HazMat crew finds no further dangers on barges after fires, 7 explosions (Mobile Press-Reigster)
• California: More Solar Workers Than Actors:
• America now has more solar energy workers than coal miners (Treehugger):
  [There are] more solar energy workers in Texas than ranchers, that solar workers outnumber actors in California, and that across the whole 50 states, there are more solar workers than coal miners.
• East London's Chief Flusher Turning Fat Into Electricity:
• VIDEO: Sewer fat to be used as energy for electricity plant (Guardian UK):
  Waste oil and fat from restaurants and takeaways will be used to power a new electricity plant in east London. Currently, excess fat and oil collects in sewers, forming masses called 'fatbergs', which have to be flushed out by sewage workers. Thames Water plans to install 'fat traps' directly under sinks in restaurants which it will then collect and use at the plant.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• New fossil fuel frontiers pose 'catastrophic' threat to global recovery: Warning comes amid a debate over dangers surrounding fracking, deepwater exploration and Arctic shelf development (Guardian UK):
  Energy companies need to adopt more sophisticated risk management strategies to take account of relatively low-likelihood but potentially "catastrophic" disasters, says the paper from the global insurance broker Marsh.
• What If We Never Run Out of Oil? (The Atlantic): New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare [emphasis added]:
  “[Methan hydrate] could help the world while we reduce greenhouse gases. Or it could undermine the economic rationale for investing in renewable, carbon-free energy around the world”—just as abundant shale gas from fracking has already begun to undermine it in the United States. “The one path is a boon. The other—I’ve used words like catastrophe.” He paused; I thought I detected a sigh. “I wouldn’t bet on us making the right decisions.”
• Japanese test coaxes fire from ice: First attempt to extract methane from frozen hydrates far beneath the ocean shows promise. (Nature Magazine)
• San Francisco Board of Supervisors Unanimously Pass Resolution Urging Fossil Fuel Divestment! (350.org)
• U.S. military faulted for burn-pit use (Washington Post):
  The U.S. military spent $5 million on incinerators at a base in Afghanistan that never became operable, forcing troops to use a type of open-air burn pit that has been linked to serious respiratory problems among veterans, according to a government report.
• Shale mining under Great Barrier Reef 'likely to be banned': Australia's coastline mining industry undergoing a boom as rules relaxed, but Unesco site to be protected under heritage rules (Guardian UK)
• VIDEO: The Global Warming Name Game: Fox Concocts A Conspiracy For The Phrase "Climate Change" (Media Matters):
  
  
  
  

• A master class on the state of clean-energy investment [VIDEO] (Grist)
• UN climate chief hopeful 2015 talks will produce global warming accord, despite 2009 failure (Washington Post)
• California suspends operations at Vernon battery recycler (LA Times):
  "This facility poses an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment and must suspend its operations until it comes into compliance," toxics department Director Debbie Raphael said.
• State Of The Air 2013: American Lung Association Report Reveals America's Most Polluted Cities (Huffington Post GreeN):
  California cities also dominated the list of areas most polluted by short-term particle and ozone pollution. The state's weather, combined with agricultural processes and the emissions from vehicles and machines needed to move goods, create an air pollution challenge for California.
• Closing the Consensus Gap on Climate Change (John Cook, Weather Underground):
  On average, the general public think less than half of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. The reality is 97%. There is a huge gap between public perception of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming and reality.
• TransCanada Lashes Out at EPA Over Keystone, Asserts Canadian 'Sovereignty' (InsideClimate News):
  The Canadian company calls the scope and tone of the agency’s comments on the pipeline that will bisect the U.S. heartland 'somewhat surprising.'
• Denying sea-level rise: How 100 centimeters divided the state of North Carolina (Earth Magazine)
• None of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they paid for the natural capital they use (Grist)
• How Far Can Climate Change Go?: (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  How far can we push the planet?

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. ...It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.
• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

On today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, we had a tremendous report from on the ground in West, TX, by RT America producer and reporter Ramon Galindo. He's been there since last Wednesday, having arrived on the scene just hours after the huge explosion at the West Fertilizer Company plant.

To date, 15 have been killed by the blast, including 12 first responders, with nearly 200 others injured. The explosion covered some 37 blocks and left a crater nearly 100 feet wide and 10 feet deep at the plant itself. Galindo offers the latest on how the tiny town of 2,600 is holding up, how they are dealing with concerns about governmental oversight of the plant (or lack thereof), and the continuing investigation into the mystery of what may have caused the disaster.

In an attempt to shed some light on the several other huge news events which received far less coverage than they would have otherwise, during last week's News Week from Hell, I also covered the new bi-partisan report on torture by the Bush Admin after 9/11 and the latest in the investigation of the attempted ricin attack on President Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and a judge in Lee County, Mississippi.

All of that, a few listener phone calls, and Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report and more, on today's KPFK BradCast...

Download MP3 or listen online below...
[See post to listen to audio]

P.S. The BradCast is now also heard on the Progressive Voices channel on TuneIn, Saturdays at 6p ET and Sundays at 4p ET.

According to a story published today on The Hill, the National Rifle Association (NRA) outspent supporters of new gun controls by hundreds of thousands of dollars as the Senate considered and ultimately rejected legislation, new documents show.

The NRA, along with its Institute for Legislative Action, spent about $800,000 on lobbying in the first quarter of the year, according to lobbying disclosure records. That’s an increase of roughly $100,000 over the same period last year, when gun legislation was dormant on Capitol Hill.

The NRA far outspent any of the major groups seeking to back Senate legislation to expand background checks.  Only the nonprofit arm of Mayors Against Illegal Guns came anywhere near the NRA’s spending, splitting $250,000 between four lobby firms.

The good news: When the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation gets its new voting system, perhaps as early as 2015, it will not including Internet Voting, according to Dean Logan, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles. The bad news: It will very likely include touch-screen computers and, with them, 100% unverifiable voting.

I interviewed Logan last week on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show [full audio interview is at the bottom of this article], and we had a very informative discussion about what voters in Los Angeles may have to look forward to in the coming years, as well as many of you in the rest of the country, since the new system is being designed with an eye towards selling it to other counties in California as well as in the rest of the country.

So this is not just a local L.A. story. It's likely to affect the way that votes are cast and tallied in much of the nation. It's well worth paying attention to, even if, unlike me, you don't live here.

Los Angeles County alone "has more voters than 42 of the 50 states," according to Logan's office. It features nearly 5,000 precincts. Well over 3 million votes were cast in this one county alone during the November 6, 2012 Presidential Election. When Logan took over the job of Registrar after our previous one resigned, suddenly, just months before the 2008 President Election, he had a monster of a job to take over. It's still a monster. And it may soon get even more gargantuan as he attempts to re-work, re-design and, indeed, re-think how voters vote here, and as we move from our current publicly-owned voting system to our next publicly-owned voting system. (L.A. is one of the very few jurisdictions in the nation which owns, maintains and designs its own system. Most similar systems in the rest of the state and nation are proprietary, owned by the private companies which make them, and don't allow even the election officials in those jurisdictions access to their "trade-secret" software and source code.)

While, happily, Logan offered me some assurance that we won't be casting votes over the Internet with his new system --- an assurance that should bring some measure of relief to both Election Integrity advocates as well as the consensus of computer science and security experts who are also experts in voting systems --- there is still much cause for concern, as this still-unknown voting system begins to take shape...

OUT WITH THE OLD?

Logan began the process of finding a new voting system back in 2009. At the time he said he was open to any and all types of voting and tabulation systems, and wanted to find out what it was that voters of L.A. wanted from such a system. He formed the Voting System Assessment Project (VSAP) to work with "stakeholders" of all sorts, hold discussion forums, survey voters, establish focus groups, review various ideas and even open up the process to design ideas submitted from the Internet.

I was invited to participate in some of the early meetings of the VSAP, but I asked him during our conversation on last week's show why he felt our current system --- known as InkaVote Plus, a variation of the old punchcard system, now modified to use inked bubbles instead of punched chads, producing ballots which are then optically-scanned by a computer tabulator --- needed to be replaced. He described the system and its software as "outdated."

"Similar to the parts on the physical equipment, it's hard to find people with the skill level or the background to make modifications to that software if and when it's necessary," he explained. "So, we end up being in a situation where we're really one regulatory or legislative change away from being obsolete."

"We came close to that when California switched to a 'top-two' primary system," he told me, referring to the 2010 state-wide ballot initiative which did away with our partisan primaries. All party candidates run in the same race now in our primaries, and the "top-two" vote-getters of any party end up going on to compete head-to-head in the general election. (The new system, sometimes referred to as a "Cajun Primary", has a number of undemocratic features that can adversely affect Democrats, Republicans and third-parties to boot, as The BRAD BLOG has detailed in past articles. None of those failings, however, are Logan's fault, of course.)

That change, he said, "required some modification to the system in order for the votes to be tabulated correctly. We almost were unable to accommodate that on the current voting system."

Nonetheless, the county was able to modify the source code on the system in order to accommodate the mandated change after all, because L.A. owns its own hardware and software. "It's one of the unique things about L.A. County," he said. "It's one of the things that important to us."

If a bill proposed by state Senator Alex Padilla (SB 360) now pending in the state Senate is adopted this year, it would remove California's long-time restriction against contracting and testing new voting systems before they are federally tested and certified. That would allow L.A. County to create its own system again. No federal testing would be required for it at all. But more on that in a moment.

'TRANSPARENCY, SECURITY, ACCURACY, VERIFIABILITY'

Logan explained that the principles for his new system were developed after focus groups, surveys and stake-holders described what was most important to them in a voting system. He says it has been a "user-driven project."

"We wanted to know what voters thought, rather than just what we thought," he said, explaining that they have now hired a design firm, IDEO, to help implement the ideas. He describes the firm as "a human-centered design firm which has done some incredible work in both the public and private sector."

IDEO will work to build a system based on the input received via the VSAP to date. That input includes the main principles Logan says voters, and his own office, were most concerned about: "Transparency, security, accuracy, verifiability. All of the things that those of who care about the integrity of elections value highly."

In a recent piece by KPCC on Logan's new system, the idea of voting with smartphones was said to be a popular idea among those submitting ideas to an open "design challenge" process that was part of the VSAP.

The idea may send shudders down the spines of those who understand the inherent insecurities of casting votes by the Internet, as well as Election Integrity advocates who understand the necessity of all citizens being able to oversee and authenticate the recording and tabulation of ballots.

So what is Logan beginning to see as the basis for this new voting system? I asked if it will involve computers and/or cellphones. Mostly, I wanted to know if we were talking about a computer-based system of some sort, since, depending on how such systems are designed, it can be very difficult and frequently impossible to verify if even a single vote has been cast and tabulated as per any voter's intent on such systems.

"I think there certainly will be computer-based or electronic-based components of the system," he told me. "Now what that looks like and where that plays into the final output of the ballot and how the ballot is tabulated, I think, remains to be seen."

"When it comes time to build the machine," he said, "it's gonna have to meet those standards" of "transparency, security, accuracy and verifiability".

Well, that sounds good, at least.

NO INTERNET VOTING FOR L.A.

We have long detailed the madness of Internet Voting. Among our coverage, we've documented a number of disastrous attempts at Internet Voting systems and the many dangers they pose to security and oversight, as well as the warnings against them by computer science and security experts, and Election Integrity experts.

One need only look back to Washington D.C.'s disastrous experiment in Internet Voting, which almost went live in 2010 for overseas and military voters. The plans to use the system were scrapped at the last minute after it was hacked and completely taken over by "white hat hackers" (University of Michigan computer students and their professor), who had gained such total command of the system in mere hours that they were not only able to change every vote already cast on it during a mock election, but inserted a script into the system to change all future votes invisibly as well. They even modified all of the system's main passwords to thwart similar attempts to hack the system that they discovered to be ongoing by computers from both Iran and China.

There have been many other disasters in Internet Voting --- from a 2012 online Canadian election attacked by some 10,000 computers, to a 2012 CA State University student body election that was hacked by one of the candidates in order to gain control of an annual salary and the student government's $300,000 budget, to this year's embarrassment by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences which attempted to use Internet Voting for the first time this year, to disturbing and questionable effect.

The non-partisan election integrity group, VerifiedVoting.org posted a "Statement on the Dangers of Internet Voting in Public Elections," signed by nearly a dozen top computer science and security experts with backgrounds in electronic voting systems. The letter explains that "Cyber security experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Homeland Security have warned that current Internet voting technologies should not be deployed in public elections," as they "cannot be properly protected and may be subject to undetectable alteration."

"We conclude that the evidence does not exist to support casting ballots online in public elections," the scientists note. "There are too many unsolved security challenges that have yet to be overcome. In fact securing networks from cyber attack is a major national security concern that is as yet unresolved. Financial institutions, the FBI, the White House, the Department of Defense have all been breached. Major corporations like Lockheed Martin, Sony, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, and Northrop Grumman have also been breached. It is unreasonable to assume that any Internet voting system vendor today can repel a well funded partisan operative or nation state determined to manipulate, disrupt, or violate voter privacy in an online public election."

After the infamous Washington D.C. hack, the scientists who testified about it to a D.C. Elections Committee unanimously agreed that the technology simply doesn't exist at this time --- and likely will not for a decade or more --- to even consider voting over the Internet.

J. Alex Halderman, the University of Michigan computer scientist who led the team that took over the D.C. Internet Voting systems (not long after her also hacked a touch-screen voting system, replacing its voting software with Pac-Man), testified that "the scientific consensus is that Internet Voting is just too dangerous today based on the limits of today's security technology," adding: "Indeed, it will probably be decades, if ever, before the technology is at a level where we can perform voting safely, purely over the Internet."

Verified Voting's Jeremy Epstein testified similarly at the same D.C. hearing: "What we found in forty years of experience is you can penetrate and patch, and then you penetrate again and you patch again, and you penetrate again and you patch again and you penetrate again and you patch again and it never ends. If it ended, Microsoft would have succeeded. We wouldn't all be having to reboot our computer and install patches once a month for the past ten years. ... This isn't a solvable problem that way."

From an Election Integrity standpoint, it's even larger than an issue of mere security. The fact is that even if such a system were 100% secure, it is impossible for citizens to know that it was 100% secure and that all votes were both recorded and tabulated as per the voters' intent.

Despite all of that, many elected officials, including, disturbingly enough, a number of misinformed Democrats in California, continue to call for Internet Voting in the state.

With all of that, I was very pleased with Logan's unambiguous answer to my direct question as to whether he has ruled out Internet Voting for L.A. County's new system, given the long-documented dangers and concerns.

"Yeah. I would say that Internet Voting, as it has been attempted and discussed in this country and outside of this country, would not fall within --- would not meet the standards that we've adopted for this project," he said.

"The principles that we've adopted, like paper-based ballots that are available for auditing and verifiability, and the security standards that are embedded in our principles, and the value of a secret ballot that allows for independence in voting, are outside the scope of any Internet Voting project that's been attempted at this point."

So that, at least, seems to be very encouraging news.

From there, however, our discussion became a bit more troubling...

UH, OH --- TOUCH-SCREENS AND COMPUTER-PRINTED BALLOTS

Long time readers of The BRAD BLOG will recall my own disastrous experience in L.A. County some years ago when I attempted to use the disabled-accessible part of the InkaVote Plus system to cast my vote in the June 2008 state primary. The system allows blind voters to use audio prompts to select their favored candidates and then the computer allows the voter to confirm the selections before printing out a paper ballot with the voters' selections marked for them on the paper. That ballot is then optically-scanned like all of the other hand-marked paper ballots in the election.

As I'm not blind, I was able to check to make sure the computer had printed my votes properly before dropping it into the ballot box.

I discovered --- after some 15 or so minutes studying the printed ballot, attempting to make sure I was reading it correctly --- that the computer system had misprinted 4 out of 12 of my own votes!

So, it was with that troubling experience in mind --- and Logan's own familiarity with it (his team did a terrific forensic job determining what had gone wrong to cause the error) --- that I asked him if we were looking at the possibility of computer-, rather than hand-marked paper ballots for L.A.'s future voting system (and, perhaps yours too!)

His answer was not encouraging.

"I think that it's likely that what we end up with will allow for hand-marked ballots, but that there very well could be some electronic interfaces for marking the ballot. But the key component there is the verifiability. Making sure that the voter has the ability to verify that the mark that they made electronically matches up to their choices."

A computer that marks the ballot for you, the way the current voting system's computer (mis)marked it for me, back in 2008, would seem to be stretching the idea of a "hand-marked ballot".

"How would I, as an Election Integrity advocate," I asked him, "how would I look at those ballots and know that the voter had approved them and approved them correctly, since we have studies showing that 80% of the people don't check the paper trails that are printed off by computers? Other studies show that, even when they do check them, they don't notice vote flips. So how would I, after the election, know that I was actually looking at the voter intent on a computer printed ballot?"

Logan's answer did not offer much me much confidence: "I think that there are a couple of different ways to address that, and that could be a whole show. But I would say that one fundamental thing that I hope we look at in this, is actually separating the front-end from the back-end of that. So, in other words, you might have a [computerized] ballot-marking device that you use some sort of interface, whether it be touch-screen or a keyboard where you make your selections. That prints out a ballot that's human readable, so you can see that I've made my selection for 'Brad Friedman' and for 'Yes on Measure J', and blah, blah, blah and you can actually physically see that. And then you take that and deposit that into a back-end system that does the actual tabulation, that is totally separate and independent from the marking system."

His answer didn't speak to my point about studies by MIT and Caltech that found most voters do not bother to check their computer printed votes, and that two-thirds of those who do look at the summary at the end of the computer voting process, according to a study by Rice University, don't notice when the computer has flipped one or more of their votes.

The biggest problem, however, is that even if voters do check their computer-printed ballots (and most don't) and even if they do notice if a vote has been flipped by the computer (and most don't), it is strictly impossible for anybody after the election to know that they did!

The result: 100% unverifiable voting.

Hand-marked paper ballots, presuming chain of custody is secure, are known, by their very definition, to be a reflection of the voter's intent. But with computer-marked ballots, it simply can't be known if they reflect the voter's intent or not after the ballot has been cast. A computer Ballot Marking Device (BMD) system would ultimately be equally as unverifiable as any of the touch-screen or similar electronic voting systems already in use --- often to disastrous affect --- across the country.

Adding to my worries that such a system of computer Ballot Marking Devices is in our future is the fact that Sen. Padilla's bill --- being deceptively sold to the public as a bill to allow L.A. to develop a publicly-owned voting system --- actually encourages the development of touch-screen computer voting systems like the one described by Logan. [NOTE: We requested comment from Padilla's office on this matter, and other concerns about the bill, but they have yet to respond. We hope to cover more about the troubling details in the current version of his bill in a future article.]

In a follow-up email after our interview, in which I wanted to verify whether Logan meant that all voters would always have the option, somehow, of hand-marking a paper ballot at the polling place, or whether his comment about a system that "will allow for hand-marked ballots" meant that a voter would have to use an absentee ballot, for example, if they wanted to hand-mark their vote, he responded:

Not to get ahead of the design outcomes and the iterative review and vetting process that will follow, but the focus on flexibility, adaptability and usability as important elements of a voting systems design --- grounded in security and accuracy, of course, would suggest that the voter will have options in the voting experience. I do not foresee hand-marking or other options limited to certain groups of voters or options that are exclusive to either a poll voting experience or a vote by mail voting experience. The full principles document, adopted by consensus with our Voting Systems Assessment Advisory Committee is available at www.lavote.net/Voter/VSAP/

Your interpretation of his response there is likely as good mine. In truth, I'm not sure if that means all voters will be able to vote by hand-marked paper ballot at the polling place or not. But I suspect we'll be revisiting the issue as his new system begins to take more physical shape.

NO FEDERAL TESTING?!

Given that Padilla's bill, if passed and signed as currently written, is set to remove California's requirement that all voting systems be federally certified by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), I asked Logan if he had planned to have the new system follow current state law requiring both independent federal testing and independent state testing before voting systems may be used in the state.

He made it clear that he would like to avoid federal testing, explaining that dysfunction at the EAC makes federal testing something to be avoided.

"The federal infrastructure for providing that certification or approval for voting systems is completely broken right now," he explained, somewhat inaccurately. "It's governed by the Election Assistance Commission which has no members right now. It's mired in the partisan political dynamic on Capitol Hill."

It is true that the EAC is a mess. Currently is has no Commissioners at all, and no Executive Director. (Without going into great detail here, this is thanks to Republicans refusing for several years to nominate any Commissioners for the two seats they control, holding up the confirmation of the nominees named by the Democrats in the process. Yes, we went through the 2012 Presidential election year with no Commissioners on the federal body created to oversee and assist with the nation's election systems.)

Nonetheless, even without Commissioners and an Executive Director, the EAC's testing and certification regime is still operating as per usual.

"We continue to test and certify voting systems uninterrupted by our lack of Commissioners," Brian Hancock, the EAC's Director of Testing and Certification confirmed via email after my interview with Logan.

Jessica Myers, an EAC Certification Program Specialist also confirmed that point as well, when asked if they were still up and running as usual. "Yes, that is correct," she wrote. "We are still testing and certifying voting systems. We post a weekly update of the progress of the test campaigns on the EAC blog."

Indeed, the EAC's website posts documentation of testing performed in January, February and March of 2013, as well as in recent years prior, and last week's EAC blog update included information on the newly published "Voting System Test Laboratory (VSTL) Program Manual, version 2.0".

When I followed up with Logan after the interview, explaining that I was confused about his response on this point, given that the EAC was, indeed, still testing new voting systems as normal, he responded as follows:

You are correct that the EAC testing and certification process is still in place; although with limitations. The current process is expensive and time consuming and is limited to testing and certification under dated (some would argue outdated) standards that cannot be updated without a quorum of EAC Commissioners to adopt them. None of the systems that have recently been certified or that are seeking certification --- all of which come from the limited commercial market --- are scalable to the needs of Los Angeles County. Additionally, the federal standards, as they exist, are voluntary. Several states have adopted state-based systems in lieu of reliance on or to augment the federal process. I believe the agency is similarly limited in contracting with any additional testing laboratories beyond those with which they are currently engaged and that their staffing capacity is depleted as well. The federal testing and certification process, as it exists today, contemplates a voting systems design that is end-to-end --- supported and marketed by a single vendor. We see exclusive reliance on the federal system both as insufficient for a new model of voting systems development and a process that doesn't have the capacity to meet the timelines and demands of the county's voting system needs. The Padilla bill continues to make reference to the federal process and to the EAC (or its successor), but provides for the possibility of a more robust and efficient state-based testing and certification process.

There are a number of question I have about a number of the details offered by Logan's response. I have asked the EAC to respond to some of those question in kind. If they do, I will update here with that information.

For now, and for whatever reason, Logan seems interested in avoiding the federal testing and certification process entirely. The provisions in Padilla's current bill, as I read them, appear to grant sole authority to the CA Sec. of State to approve voting systems, even without any testing whatsoever, if he or she so chooses. That makes all of this additionally disturbing.

UPDATE: The EAC's Hancock responded to my follow-up query via email. He says that "In simple terms, [Logan is] correct that we cannot test to updated Standards until we have a quorum of Commissioners. That said, we have made great progress in the past 2-3 years in the time and cost of testing and certifying voting systems. Please feel free to ask the manufacturers or VSTLs [Voting System Test Laboratories] and I believe they will agree with this statement."

More to the point, he also goes on to note that there is an "extensions clause" [PDF] to the EAC's current testing standards that Logan refers to as "dated (some would argue outdated)" above. Hancock explained that the clause allows for the testing of non-traditional systems, that do not meet the "end-to-end" design Logan referenced above as a reason why the EAC would not be an appropriate body to test LA's new system.

Finally, Hancock says he is a member of Logan's VSAP Technical Advisory Committee and, as such, is "continuing to talk at length with Dean regarding how certification might work when we eventually get a system in LA County."

While we have spent no small number of pixels here at The BRAD BLOG, and even in books, detailing the enormous problems and dysfunctions of the EAC, including in their testing and certification regime, it remains our opinion that more testing, rather than less, by more independent bodies, is a good and necessary thing. Skirting those requirements altogether is troubling, to say the least, and it remains unclear to me why a system of this size, put together over this many years, with an eye to voter confidence, would serve the voters better by not being federally certified in addition to state certified, before being used in an actual election.

WHY NOT "DEMOCRACY'S GOLD STANDARD" --- HAND-COUNTED PAPER BALLOTS?

As I explained at the beginning of this article, Logan began his search by stating that he was open to any and all types of voting and tabulation systems. I had asked him, several years ago, if he intended to look into what we regard around here as "Democracy's Gold Standard" --- hand-marked paper ballots, publicly hand-counted at the precinct on Election Night, with all members of the public, political parties and even video cameras watching, with results posted decentrally at the precincts before ballots are moved anywhere.

Such a system is used (and much beloved), for example, by 40% of the towns in New Hampshire.

While we ran out of time to go into detail at the end of our interview on my KPFK show last week, Logan stated in the seconds we had left that hand-counting "has been part of the research that we've done."

I promised to follow up with him for more details on that point afterward. He responded to my post-election email query with the following:

Hand marked, hand counted ballots was among the existing voting systems included in our assessment documents and data collection. Hand counting was also included among the voting systems referenced in voter surveys and focus groups early on in the project; which are summarized in our July 9, 2010 project report available on the VSAP web page. Additionally, our team has reviewed books and reports on the New Hampshire hand count process and we looked at a 2012 study out of Rice University on various hand-count methods for ballot tabulation. I don't have immediate access to that study, but I am sure you can access it through a search engine.

The July 9, 2010 report [PDF] Logan references describes telephone and online surveys commissioned by the county to try and determine what sort of voting system voters in L.A. County would most like to use. Most respondents, according to those results, would like to use Direct Recording Electronic (DRE, usually touch-screen) voting systems, despite the fact that they are 100% unverifiable --- a point that was not explained to respondents taking the survey.

The fewest percentage of respondents wanted a hand-counted paper ballot system, though that number, like those supporting DREs, varied among different demographic groups in the survey. It should also be noted that, of all the voting systems from which respondents were asked to choose, hand-counted paper ballots was likely the one they were least familiar with, as it is the most rarely used among our 50 states. Moreover, when hand-counting is seen by voters, it is usually in the event of post-election recounts, where all of the ballots in a race are counted at once in a central location, versus the type of precinct-based, publicly-overseen counting done in the aforementioned New Hampshire towns and a few other jurisdictions around the country, as described in Nancy Tobi's Hands-On Elections: An Informational Handbook for Running Real Elections, Using Real Paper Ballots, Counted by Real People.

But that too is a topic I suspect we will be returning to in some detail in the days ahead, as Logan's plans take shape, and as we do our best to keep an eye on it --- and as hopefully the Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of the world's largest voting jurisdiction will see fit to continue the discussion with us on his progress in the not-too-distant future.

* * *

My full interview with Los Angeles County's Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, from the April 17, 2013 episode of The BradCast on KPFK/Pacfica Radio, follows below...

Download MP3 or listen online:
[See post to listen to audio]

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

With the U.S. stock market hitting all-time record highs again of late, it'd be understandable for some to think strength and confidence has returned to the stock exchange.

But if today's mid-day "flash crash" --- which saw the S&P Index lose $136 billion in a matter of four minutes as AP's Twitter feed was hacked to announce, inaccurately, that a bomb had gone off in the White House --- is any indication, that's hardly the case...

You'll be delighted to know, of course, that the same casino, stock market immediately gained almost all of its losses back in almost the same amount of time it took to lose them, ultimately ending the day at another near-record high. Step right up!

 

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: They'd like to get their lives back: 3rd anniversary of BP's Oil Disaster in the Gulf; EPA victory over mountaintop removal coal mining; EPA slams State Dept's Keystone XL report; PLUS: Free at last: environmental activist Tim de Christopher freed - on Earth Day ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Listen online here, or Download MP3 (6 mins)...

Link: Embed:

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): America now has more solar energy workers than coal miners; Earth's cooling came to sudden halt in 1900; '800 Love Canals' remain; Jewell: 'One size doesn't fit all' on fracking; Denier myth: ‘Climate Change’ vs. ‘Global Warming’; Denying sea-level rise divides NC; Sichuan earthquake's threat to China's dams; WA: How Boeing killed water quality standards; TX fertilizer blast raises national security questions; EPA powerless over toxic flame retardant chemicals ... PLUS: Reality Gap: Americans clueless about global scientific consensus on human-caused climate change ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• The Fossil Fuel Industry Tool Who Told You the BP Deepwater Horizon Disaster Wouldn't Happen: Steven F. Hayward and the 3rd anniversary of an historic failure... (The BRAD BLOG)
• Kind Of A Big Deal: EPA Slams State Dept's Keystone XL Pipeline Report:
• How much does EPA’s objection to Keystone XL matter? A lot. (Washington Post)
• EPA Wants State Dept. To Rework Analysis of Keystone XL Pipeline (Washington Post)
• EPA Releases Harsh Revioew of State KXL Environmental Report: (LA Times):
  The Environmental Protection Agency issued a sharply critical assessment of the State Department's recent environmental impact review of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, certain to complicate efforts to win approval for the $7-billion project.

• Keystone Public Comments Won't Be Made Public, State Department Says (InsideClimate News, 3/25/13)
• How is the Keystone XL Protest Affecting the Broader Climate Movement? (Natural Capital)
• ANALYSIS: KXL: Better Know Your NEPA (Elana Schor)
• ANALYSIS: Oil-by-train may not be substitute for Keystone pipeline (Reuters)
• More than One Million Strong Against Keystone XL (Natl Wildlife Federation)
• EPA's Major Court Victory Over Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining:
• MTR: Appeals court backs EPA veto of Spruce Mine (WV Gazette):
  Coal industry officials and coalfield politicians have argued that EPA did not have the legal power to veto the Spruce Mine permit after it was issued. Their complaints about EPA's veto have been at the heart of their campaign to paint EPA as a rogue agency carrying out an illegal effort to destroy the Appalachian coal industry.
• Court backs EPA veto of mountaintop mining project: The appeals court remanded the case back to the federal district court to decide whether the EPA’s action was a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act... (The Hill's e2 Wire)
• Tim DeChristopher: Free At Last, Ironically on EARTH DAY:
• LISTEN: Brad's interview with Tim DeChristopher before his 2-yr prison sentence (The BRAD BLOG)
• VIDEO: Earth Day Exclusive: Tim DeChristopher Speaks Out After 21 Months in Prison for Disrupting Oil Bid (Democracy Now!) [emphasis added]:
  DeChristopher posed as a bidder, won drilling lease rights to 22,000 acres of land in an attempt to save the property from oil and gas extraction. The auction itself was later overturned and declared illegal, a fact that Tim’s defense attorneys were prevented from telling the jury. They were also barred from informing jurors that Tim had raised the money for the initial payment to the Bureau of Land Management, a payment the BLM refused to accept.
• A Dangerous Man: Tim DeChristopher Now Loose (Climate Crocks)
• VIDEO: Bidder 70 Film Trailer (Gathr Films YouTube Channel)






• BP Oil Disaster: 3rd Anniversary:
• The BP oil disaster: Three years later (Environmental Defense Fund) [emphasis added]:
  “Three years after the Gulf was inundated with BP oil, the wildlife, habitats and people of the Gulf are still feeling the effects of the disaster,” [National Wildlife Federation’s David] Muth said. “In 2012 alone, some 6 million pounds of BP oil was collected from Louisiana’s shorelines and 200 miles of coast remain oiled. We can’t allow BP off the hook for anything less than justice requires—a full payment for its recklessness so that real restoration of the Gulf’s ecosystem and economy can begin.”
• Full coverage on the ongoing BP Trial from the New Orleans Times-Picayune (NOLA.com)
• The Spilling Fields: How BP Made The Gulf Oil Disaster More Toxic While Covering It Up (Climate Progress)
• What BP Doesn’t Want You to Know About the 2010 Gulf Spill: The 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was even worse than BP wanted us to know. (Daily Beast):
  Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says.
• Florida Sues BP Over Gulf Oil Spill (NY Times)
• AUDIO: Louisiana Public Broadcasting Presents: "Louisiana Coastal Concerns: BP & Beyond" (Louisiana Public Radio)
• BP oil spill trial continues as demonstrators note upcoming 3-year anniversary of disaster (NOLA.com)
• New BP Data Show 20% of Offshore Responders Exposed to Chemical That Sickened Valdez Workers (NY Times)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• Closing the Consensus Gap on Climate Change (John Cook, Weather Underground):
  How many climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming? If you asked the average person on the street, the response might surprise you. On average, the general public think less than half of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. The reality is 97%. There is a huge gap between public perception of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming and reality.
• How Americans see global warming — in 8 charts (Washington Post)
• Earth's cooling came to sudden halt in 1900, study shows (CS Monitor): An international study used tree rings and pollen to build the first record of global climate change, continent by continent, over 2,000 years.
• America now has more solar energy workers than coal miners (Treehugger):
  [There are] more solar energy workers in Texas than ranchers, that solar workers outnumber actors in California, and that across the whole 50 states, there are more solar workers than coal miners.
• New Interior chief Jewell: 'One size doesn't fit all' on fracking (The Hill's e2 Wire)
• Debunking The Dumbest Denier Myth (Again): ‘Climate Change’ Vs. ‘Global Warming’ (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  [The] switch was championed by the GOP’s spinmaster, Frank Luntz, who, as it turns out, also championed switching from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ in 2003. Scientists, environmentalists, progressives, and frankly the whole darn planet have always used both terms — hence the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established in 1988.
• Denying sea-level rise: How 100 centimeters divided the state of North Carolina (Earth Magazine)
• EPA probes flame retardants but lacks power to ban (Chicago Tribune):
  As the Obama administration launches a broad investigation of flame retardants used in furniture and other household goods, the nation's top environmental regulators are running into the limitations of a federal law that makes it practically impossible to ban hazardous chemicals.
• 800 Love Canals: Toxic legacy's time bomb (Buffalo News):
  Nearly 800 hazardous waste sites are located in Erie, Niagara and Cattaraugus counties, and the majority of them are a threat to the largest source of fresh water in the world --- the Great Lakes.
• Sichuan quake highlights threat to China's dams (New Scientist) [emphasis added]:
  It's too early to know whether reservoir-building contributed to last week's quake. Of more immediate concern is the damage to dams and reservoirs, says Mian Liu of the University of Missouri in Columbia. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, two medium-sized and 52 small dams were damaged, with residents evacuated downstream of five of them.
• Less rainfall expected for the Hawaiian Islands (Eureka Alert)
• WA State: How Boeing, allies torpedoed state’s rules on toxic fish (Investigate West):
  Boeing asked to delay the process last year and allow more discussion because the company believed it would result in pollution limits that were “not economically viable, not technically feasible, and there’s questionable environmental benefit as well,” said Terry Mutter, Boeing’s director of environmental strategy.
• "Clout": What does an obscure Alaska road project say about Obama’s clout? (The Ticket, Yahoo News)
• West Fertilizer blast raises questions about ammonia plants in Iowa (USA Today)
• Report on U.S. Meat Sounds Alarm on Resistant Bacteria (NY Times):
  More than half of samples of ground turkey, pork chops and ground beef collected from supermarkets for testing by the federal government contained a bacteria resistant to antibiotics, according to a new report highlighting the findings.
• New Study Shows Once Again How "Climategate" Emails Were Distorted (Media Matters):
  [A] recent study re-confirms what that scientist was actually saying --- that much of recent heat has been trapped deep in the ocean.
• How Far Can Climate Change Go?: (Scientific American) [emphasis added]:
  How far can we push the planet?

New Research: World on Track for Climate Disaster:

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

Essential Climate Science Background:

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. ...It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.
• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

Electoral College math helps explain how Senate politics can so diverge from national sentiment on gun control. (Chet Susslin)

By Ronald Brownstein
NATIONAL JOURNAL

The outcome of Wednesday’s dramatic Senate vote on expanding background checks simultaneously demonstrated the difficult geography confronting gun-control advocates in the Senate and the potentially daunting math facing gun-rights proponents in the Electoral College.

On the one hand, the defeat showed how difficult it is for gun-control advocates to reach the 60-vote threshold required to break a filibuster in an institution whose two-senator-per-state apportionment magnifies the impact of small, heavily rural states where guns are interwoven into the culture.

On the other, the vote suggested that, after years in which gun-control has been sublimated as a political issue, support for expanding background checks and possibly further steps has again become a political norm in almost all of the blue-leaning states that underpin the recent Democratic advantage in the race for the White House.

One way to understand these divergent trends is to examine the Senate vote on the critical amendment to offer background checks through the prism of the Electoral College. The amendment drew unified support from both senators in 21 states representing 261 Electoral College votes. By contrast, both senators opposed the amendment in 17 states representing just 146 Electoral College votes. Senators from the remaining 12 states, with a combined 128 Electoral College votes, split their vote on the amendment. (The remaining three Electoral College votes belong to the District of Columbia, which of course does not vote in the Senate.)

The contrast between the tight balance in the total number of states that unified for and against the amendment, and the broad imbalance in their Electoral College strength, underscores how the Senate’s structure magnifies the influence of smaller states, most of them rural, preponderantly white, and culturally conservative.

This fundamental pattern shows how narrow a path that gun-control proponents must climb to win a Senate vote. The 17 states with uniform opposition to the amendment slightly overstate the conservative strength because it includes Nevada, where Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid voted against the measure for procedural reasons. But even so, the unbroken opposition to the amendment from 32 senators (including two Democrats) from 16 culturally conservative states that vote reliably Republican in presidential elections (all voted for the GOP candidate over Barack Obama both times) means gun-rights forces needed to win only nine votes from the remaining 68 senators to sustain a filibuster. Given the demography and political leaning of those 16 states, it is difficult to see how gun-control advocates today can bring much pressure to bear on senators from them.

In the aftermath of Wednesday’s vote, many analysts have focused on the four red-state Democrats who voted against the measure, but some red-state Democrats (and House members) have always opposed gun control. As a strategy for reaching 60 votes, it may be even more important for gun-control advocates to either pressure — or defeat — opposing Republicans from swing or Democratic-leaning states, who include Sens. Rob Portman in Ohio, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Dean Heller in Nevada, and Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.

But even as it demonstrated the difficulty of amassing a 60-vote Senate super-majority, the results also showed how the background-check issue could create hurdles for the GOP in the 2016 presidential race — if Democrats continue to press it, as President Obama on Wednesday signaled they will. The vote suggested that senators viewed it as safe (or necessary) to support the expanded checks in a swathe of states sufficient to put a presidential nominee on the brink of an Electoral College majority.

The vast majority of states where both senators supported the measure are states electorally shaped by the modern Democratic coalition of the millennial generation, minorities, and college-educated whites, especially women. Polls consistently show the latter two groups to be the strongest supporters of gun control in the electorate. And that means the issue could present another barrier, along with such social issues as gay marriage and abortion, for Republicans needing to crack the Democrats’ winning coalition in those states; given the overwhelming support for background checks in polls, it’s easy to imagine Democrats highlighting the issue in ads aimed at suburban voters in places like the counties outside Philadelphia, Denver, or Detroit, or in Northern Virginia, particularly if the GOP in 2016 chooses a nominee like Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, who opposed the measure.

These Electoral College raw results include some quirks that might need to be adjusted to understand the relationship between the Senate vote and the presidential map in practice. The Democratic tally includes West Virginia, which has moved sharply away from the party in presidential politics. But it does not include D.C.’s three electoral votes. Nor does it include Wisconsin, where Johnson, who was elected in the GOP’s 2010 landslide, opposed the amendment.

Johnson was the only senator in either party who voted against the bill who is from a state in what I have called “the blue wall”: the 18 states that have voted Democratic in at least the past six consecutive presidential elections. From those states, all 32 Democratic senators plus Republicans Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Mark Kirk of Illinois, and Susan Collins of Maine voted for the bill. Johnson’s opposition may be an anomaly for Wisconsin because he is accumulating an unwaveringly conservative voting record that could make it difficult for him to win reelection in 2016, when he must face a presidential-year electorate.

If West Virginia is subtracted from the Democratic column and D.C .and Wisconsin are added, the total Electoral College votes for states that showed support for gun control in the Senate vote rises to 269, just one short of the number needed for victory.

The Republican total needs some adjustment, too. It includes Nevada, where Reid voted against the bill for procedural reasons. But it does not include Arizona, Montana, Indiana, Missouri, South Dakota, and Louisiana, all states that now vote reliably Republican at the presidential level (though Obama carried Indiana in 2008). In the latter four of those states, the Senate vote split on party lines, with one Democratic senator supporting the amendment and one Republican senator opposing it. Arizona’s two Republican senators split, with John McCain backing the amendment and Jeff Flake opposing it; Montana’s two Democrats also split on the vote. Removing Nevada and giving the GOP those other six states, raises the Electoral College tally of states skeptical of gun control to 186.

After all these adjustments, this calculation still substantially favors Democrats in the Electoral College. That’s mostly because the states whose senators unified against the measure tend to be smaller than those whose senators unified for it. That comparison is irrelevant in the Senate struggle, but it is vital in the presidential race. Of the states in which both senators opposed the background-check amendment, just three (Tennessee, Georgia, and Texas) possess 10 or more Electoral College votes. That compares to 11 states with 10 or more Electoral College votes whose senators unified in support of the amendment.

The balance was closer on two other key votes during the debate. On the amendment from Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., to limit the size of magazine clips, both senators from 17 states representing 219 Electoral College votes supported it; both senators from 21 states representing 188 Electoral College votes voted no. On the amendment from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to ban assault weapons, both senators from 15 states representing 205 Electoral College votes voted yes, while both senators from 25 states with 209 Electoral College votes (including, notably, Colorado) voted no. In each case, the remaining states split their votes.

In a pattern likely to prove relevant for 2016, every Democratic and independent senator from a “blue-wall” state — plus Kirk— voted for the magazine limits and even the assault ban, except Maine independent Angus King, who peeled off on the assault ban. Wisconsin’s Johnson opposed both measures, as did Toomey of Pennsylvania and Collins of Maine, the remaining blue-wall Republicans who had supported the background checks. That means, except for King’s defection on the assault ban, each of the 32 Democratic and independent senators from the blue-wall states voted with gun-control advocates on the three critical measures. No Democrat from any state Obama carried in either election voted against the background checks, three Democrats from those states voted against the magazine limits, and eight Democrats and independents from those states opposed the assault ban.

That pattern suggests that if Congress does not resolve the issue before then, the 2016 Democratic nominee will face overwhelming demand from the party base to support expanded background checks, substantial pressure to embrace the magazine limits, and some, but less commanding, pressure on the assault-weapons ban. Conversely, the unanimous opposition to these measures by senators from the core Republican states (except for McCain on background checks) suggests the next GOP nominee may not support any of them. Which means that the two parties could be arguing about these issues long enough for their potential Electoral College ramifications to matter not just on the blackboard, but on the ground.

Stephanie Czekalinski contributed

It was quite a moving show last night in the Nevada State Senate, as a Joint Resolution was passed that would repeal the Constitutional ban on marriage equality in that state, as passed by voters over a decade ago.

All of the state Senate's Democrats supported the resolution, and one Republican jumped onto the right side of history in a surprise last-minute move. One Democratic Senator even came out as gay during the floor proceedings.

The measure passed the Nevada Senate 12 to 9 and will now head to the Assembly. If successful there, it will face one more vote in both chambers in 2015 before appearing on the 2016 ballot for approval by voters who, according to recent polls there, are now believed to be in favor of lifting the ban. So, as MLK famously said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Dramatic speeches on the floor during debate on the resolution led even jaded long-time Nevada report Jon Ralston, who covered the debate live via his Twitter feed, to observe: "Too often we who cover politics think of these people as automatons pressing a red or green button. Not tonight. Raw, emotional, human."

"Great to be not just a witness to history (or the beginning, at least), but to see politicians stripped down to who they are was something," he noted, before adding: "I feel sorry for reporters who weren't here to feel the electricity in this chamber."

But with Democrats across the country now seemingly falling over themselves to suddenly support marriage equality --- redefining the word "evolution" (or, perhaps, more accurately, attempting to redefine the word "flip-flop") --- even Republicans, at least Republicans in the Northeast, are also now showing signs of scrambling to get onto the right side of history as well.

This early evidence of that arrived in my inbox this morning, from the FreedomToMarry.org group...

04/23/2013

RI Republican Senate Caucus Unanimously Supports Marriage Bill

Providence - Today all five Republicans in the Rhode Island Senate announced their support for S38, the marriage bill to end the statewide exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage, and their intention to vote for it on the floor. The bill passed easily in the Rhode Island House of Representatives in January, and the state's Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hold a vote on it today. This will be the first time ever that a party caucus in a legislative branch --- Republican or Democratic --- will have voted unanimously in favor of freedom to marry legislation.

"Today's showing of support illustrates the irreversible shift in Republicans' understanding of why marriage matters to same-sex couples and their families," said Tyler Deaton, campaign manager of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry. "Same-sex couples want to marry for the same reasons as anyone else - to take vows in front of their loved ones, to protect their families, and to share in the responsibilities that marriage brings. As the Republican Party continues to evolve, these elected officials' united stance sends a clear message to the rest of the GOP: stand on the side of marriage and the right side of history."

Ed J. Lopez, a Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry leadership committee member who is National Vice Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, said: "Rhode Island Republicans are leading the way to a more inclusive GOP --- one that can continue to grow and stay relevant as America changes. Their actions today show that not only do they know the freedom to marry is completely in line with conservative values like personal liberty and the importance of family, they are working to make it a reality."

###

Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry is a campaign to highlight and build support for the freedom to marry among young conservatives across America. They represent the rapidly growing numbers of young conservatives across the country that agree all Americans should be able to share in the freedom to marry.

Of course, it's much easier for Republicans in the "liberal" Northeast to support such measures, even though marriage equality is clearly a conservative value (even if pretend "conservatives" have yet to be instructed on that.) But, as we have argued here for years, this fight is already won. The only question that remains now is how long it will take the cowards and bigots and misinformed to realize that.