Have we solved any of these problems? If not, then our discussion of which candidate – Obama, Paul, Clinton, Huckabee, Romney – doesn’t mean anything. Seriously, if this isn’t fixed what are we talking about? Just checking. I’m off to buy a yurt.

Many happy returns, friend. My apologies for being so bad with birthdays, I can hardly remember my own.

Everyone really should thank Brad for his efforts. There are bloggers, there are journamalists, and then there are champions of truth and democracy. That’s him.

Well, you saw this coming. Via MojoBlog, it’s so predictable I’m not even going to comment:

Remember Christine Jennings, the Florida Congressional candidate against whom the Republican Party spent $58 million on robo calls? The people who received such calls about Jennings were misled by the calls' content and thought that they were being warned about her by her own political party. They learned differently only if they listened to the entire call, which most of them did not. But when they hung up, they would be called again. And again. Most people, of course, did not want to listen to the entire call.

In Florida's 13th District, Jennings lost by under 380 votes. In Sarasota County, 18,000 votes did not register on the voting machines, making matters even worse.

Today, it was announced that a Leon County judge has turned down Jennings' request to access the secret software that operates the voting machines in the 13th District of Florida. Just as bad, House Democrats announced they would do nothing to obstruct the seating of the district's new Congressman,  Read more 

So I can bang my head on it.

A week after the primary election was plagued by human error and technical glitches, Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) called yesterday for the state to scrap its $106 million electronic voting apparatus and revert to a paper ballot system for the November election.  Read more 

These guys aren’t exactly Rabid Lambs:

y Thomas Ferraro 2 hours, 27 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The nation’s three most commonly purchased electronic voting machines are all vulnerable to fraud, a study released on Tuesday found.

The study also concluded, however, that steps could be taken to reduce the chances of hackers breaking into these systems and undermining the integrity of state and national elections.

They could be. But who’s making that happen? Anyone? Beuller?

“These machines are vulnerable to attack. That’s the bad news,” said Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School.

“The good news is that we know how to reduce the risks and the solutions are within reach,” Waldman said.

Which is why I’m so glad that Congress has authorized your task force to immediately begin implementing the fixes.

The Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, an initiative of the Brennan Center, conducted the study, which it called the most comprehensive study of electronic voting machines to date.  Read more