Well, this sounds familiar, and for good reason...

The summary above comes from ThinkProgress' Alex Brown who offer a hat-tip to Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald who opens his report this way:

The entire matter echoes back to our initial 2004 exclusive on then Republican software programmer turned whistleblower Clint Curtis who had filed a sworn affidavit charging Florida Republican Tom Feeney had asked his company, Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), to create a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000.

At the time of his alleged meetings with Feeney, Curtis says the Congressman --- who had been Jeb Bush's Lt. Governor running mate in 1998 before becoming Speaker of the FL House and one of the most powerful elected officials in the state by 2000 --- discussed methods that he said the Republican Party had in place to "reduce the black vote" in the 2000 Presidential election.

According to the December 6, 2004 affidavit [PDF] filed by Curtis, just days before he would testify to a U.S. House Judiciary Committee panel...

We had a jam-packed hour on today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio. We covered this afternoon's latest breaking news from MS to TX to WI.

Then we spoke with Dr. Daniel A. Smith, political scientist and election expert from the University of Florida, and with our own legal analyst Ernest Canning about the latest revelations in Gov. Rick Scott's Florida Voter Purge Deception.

Next up was journalist Jason Leopold discussing his new Truthout.org exclusive today, written with Jeffrey Kaye, on the forced drugging of detainees held by the U.S. And, of course, as always, our own Desi Doyen checked in with the latest Green News Report.

And, if you listen closely, you'll get a heads up on who is likely to be our guest on next Wednesday's show. Yup. Him. Really.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

By the way...I'll be sitting in to guest host the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show again this Friday night. So you know what that means, dontcha?...

In completely related news...Yesterday, the NYTimes' statistical wunderkind Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight tweeted: "Our model currently projects ... an exact tie in Florida. #SignsOfMayanApocalypse".

Little wonder then that Florida's Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Sec. of State Ken Detzner are more than happy to blatantly mislead the public, the media and the federal court system, as The BRAD BLOG detailed exclusively last week, about their attempted purge of suspected "non-citizens" from the voting rolls.

And it's similarly no surprise that, as University of Florida political scientist and founder of ElectionSmith, Dr. Daniel A. Smith detailed on Friday, the "Failed Florida Secretary of State's Voter Purge" has, to date, earned a 98.4% failure rate in its initial list of 2,625 voters identified as "potential non-citizens."

That, of course, is if you take the Sec. of State's word for it that the 41 registered voters they claim to have confirmed as "non-citizens" actually are. (How many of them even knew they were registered or actually ever voted is another question.) To date, the state has provided no actual evidence to verify those 41 non-citizens voters they say they've identified. And given both Scott and Detzner's documented track record of blatant dishonesty, we see no reason to give either of them the benefit of the doubt.

Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL-19) joined me live on today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio to discuss two things:

1) Our exclusive from earlier this week on FL Gov. Rick Scott's voter purge/DHS database deception (an issue which Deutch has been raising hell about for several weeks) and 2) His OCCUPIED Amendment to get corporate money the hell out of our electoral system, particularly in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Montana's 100-year old anti-corruption law on Monday.

I was delighted to hear the Congressman was nearly as furious about both as I was. He also confirmed that nobody has been able to verify the "100 or so" alleged "non-citizens" that Scott says have been found on the rolls (out of 182,000 identified in the initial purge list and out of 11.2 million voters), and also that there are still three FL counties --- Lee, Collier and Bay --- where the Supervisors of Elections may still be carrying out the faulty and disenfranchising systematic purge.

My rant explaining Scott's scam kicks off the show, before Deutch then joins us. Then, Desi Doyen joins us with the latest Green News Report and we take a couple of quick amusing calls.

Oh, and though I mentioned it at the top of the show, I forgot to reiterate it again at the end of the show, so I'll do so now: FL Gov. Rick Scott, FL Secretary of State Ken Detzner and/or their spokesmen were invited to appear on the show to offer their response to our Monday exposé. They declined to even respond to the invitation.

Download MP3 or listen online below...

I was on Thom Hartmann's Big Picture yesterday to discuss The BRAD BLOG's special exclusive report on Monday in which counselor Canning and I detailed how Gov. Rick Scott (R) and the state of Florida is attempting to deceive the media, the public, and apparently even the federal court system about this year's attempted voter purge in the Sunshine State. The Dept. of Justice has filed suit alleging that the systematic removal of voters within 90 days before Florida's federal primary is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).

As documented in our investigative report, claims being made by Scott, his Sec. of State Ken Detzner and their surrogates in a recent media blitz, charging that the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security was purposely restricting them from access to a federal immigration database in order to keep the state from using it, appear to be baseless. FL had hoped to use the SAVE database to help purge some 182,000 "potential non-citizen" voters they claim are on the rolls.

But FL's claims (which is used to underscore a dark conspiracy the actions of the federal government are all being done to enhance President Obama's re-election prospects), are belied by documented email concessions from the FL Dept. of State's Asst. General Counsel Maria Matthews who acknowledged, as long ago as October of 2011, that the state simply didn't have the unique numeric identifiers required by DHS to check those "suspected non-citizens" against their immigration and citizenship database.

Here's my conversation with Hartmann last night about our story...

For more on all of the above, see our original investigative report, including email documentation from public records requests, etc., revealing Florida's attempted deception. We have now also added a Timeline page for the entire story right here.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I will be discussing all of the above and more with Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL-19) on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today (Wednesday) at 6p ET/3p PT. You can listen live at http://KPFK.org/listen-live.html.

-Special Report by Brad Friedman and Ernest A. Canning, The BRAD BLOG

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), his recently appointed Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R), and their surrogates are attempting to deceive the media, the public, and possibly even the federal court system about their state's effort to use a federal immigration database as part of a state program that could result in the purge up to 182,000 registered voters who, the state says, are "potential non-citizens".

A review of public documents and internal emails obtained by The BRAD BLOG on the heels of a federal lawsuit filed against the state last week by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) --- charging that Florida's attempted purge of voter rolls violates federal law --- reveals that claims being repeatedly made by the Florida officials about both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DoJ are disingenuous at best.

Admissions made to DHS officials on at least two occasions, by a high-ranking attorney at the FL Dept. of State (FDOS), undermine the public assertions of both Scott and Detzner, who each claim that the federal government is purposely withholding access to a federal immigration database so that it cannot be used for scrubbing illegal voters off the state rolls.

The false allegation that the DHS has "refused" to provide access to the database, so as to prevent the state from lawfully removing illegally registered non-citizen voters, was also repeated in Florida's own federal complaint, which it recently filed against DHS.

In offering this deceptive claim, Scott and Detzner are knowingly inflaming an unsubstantiated conspiratorial scheme that the Obama Administration is working to keep illegal voters on the rolls in order to enhance the President's 2012 election prospects.

The first-hand evidence reviewed by The BRAD BLOG, obtained via public records requests under Florida's Sunshine Act, reveals that both Scott and Detzner are advancing the "refused access" canard --- echoed by both the Rightwing and non-Rightwing media --- in order to confuse the public and obscure the reality that the state's controversial purge could potentially disenfranchise thousands of perfectly legal citizen voters...

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org sends out the following notice this morning...

The full takedown notice is here. The "highly problematic" Accenture voter registration software --- used by TN, WI, PA, CO, KS and others --- is still posted here, as of now if you'd like to download it, poke around into some of the source code, and/or mirror it on your site.

Other than "crap-on-a-stick high-school sophomoric completely insecure [and] malfunctioning", Harris previously described the software this way: "This voter registration and voter history system has been widely criticized --- in Colorado, where it reportedly assigned voters who are Republicans as Democrats, and vice versa, and in Tennessee where it has been proven to lose voter histories."

Perhaps we should call it the David Gregory Technique, since the dreadful Meet the Press host seems to use it, and little more, week in and week out during his usually useless interviews with public officials.

Here's how the David Gregory Technique works: Ask a public official for "your response to that charge?" Get that response. And then move on to the next question. No follow-up. No challenge. It's that simple. Just get their "response" on record --- like an in-person performance of the public official's already-published press release responding, either accurately or not, to the same issue.

Afterword, news consumers are no more informed or enlightened than before going in, other than to become familiar with the political talking points in play, whether they are based in fact or reality or not. Who knows?

Such was the treatment that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) enjoyed last week from Michele Martin on the apparently ironically named TELL ME MORE program on National Public Radio concerning his spate of allegedly unlawful, attempted voter suppression programs in the Sunshine State. NBC's David Gregory couldn't have done it better himself...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Last week, after notifying the state of Florida of its intention to do so, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit [PDF], seeking to halt what Asst. U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez described in his June 11, 2012 letter [PDF] to FL Sec. of State Ken Detzner (R), as "a new program for systematic voter removal, which may ultimately target more than 180,000 registered voters."

A longtime respected election official in the state went further, describing the attempted scrubbing of the rolls to be "un-American".

The lawsuit alleges that the ongoing, systematic voter removal program violates the provisions of the National Vote Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which "expressly forbids such removal programs during the 90-day period before an election for Federal office."

The complaint seeks not only an immediate federal court injunction to stop the purge, but an order directing FL officials "to take all steps necessary to ensure that no registered voter identified as potentially ineligible based on the [faulty FL Department of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicles] database and voter verification procedures...is removed from the voter rolls within 90 days of a primary or general election for Federal office."

The injunction may prove to be necessary only in three of the Sunshine State's 67 counties --- Lee, Collier and Bay --- where election officials have signaled they intend to continue the allegedly unlawful voter roll purge, even after the actions taken by the DOJ.

When interviewed last week by Brad Friedman on the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show, Leon County (Tallahassee), FL's legendary Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho --- the man placed in charge of the aborted 2000 Florida Presidential recount --- explained the reasons why most of the Supervisors of Elections (both Democratic and Republican) in each of the state's 67 counties have now refused to carry out the state-ordered purge. He described the ongoing effort by the Governor and Sec. of State as "shameful."

The DOJ's 6/11/12 letter also responded to, and seemed to debunk, the claim made by FL that it had been denied access to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration database. The state, in its own lawsuit filed against the DHS last week, has cited lack of access to that database as their reason for using the less reliable state Dept. of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) database for the basis of its voter purge.

The purge, to date, has identifies hundreds of perfectly legal citizen voters for removal from the rolls.

The state of FL, in its response to the DOJ, appears not to be offering the full facts about their attempt to use the DHS database and, as it turns out, Republican Gov. Rick Scott should, by now, be very well acquainted with the perils of voter purges based on inaccurate information...as an apparent victim of one such purge himself...

Last night, The Daily Show destroyed --- destroyed --- Florida Gov. Rick Scott and all of his recent voter suppression schemes in the Sunshine State: onerous restrictions on registration, early voting and his recent attempted voter roll purging in a two-part slam. Here's PART 1...

As a bonus in the must-see PART 2 of this piece, wherein correspondent John Oliver travels down to Florida, you'll also get a few moments which highlight Republican mercenary, hack for hire and esteemed "voter fraud" fraudster (and well-paid liar) John Fund for the dangerous mope that he is...

Two of the best lines from the above: 1) Oliver says to Fund after he claims we must stop voter fraud that we don't know is happening but could be happening: "So voter fraud statistics are limited only as much as your imagination?" 2) Oliver's last line of the piece: The alleged voter fraud scourge "hasn't happened, and it won't happen, and that is why it must be stopped!"

For a more serious take on the latest nightmare(s) for voters in Florida, here's my interview from last night on the Malloy Show (which I was guest hosting) with the great Leon County, FL Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho. He notes that between this and the failure of the e-voting system, "we are playing with fire"...

Download MP3 or listen online below...

And if, after listening, you're looking for that "righteous rant" I promised near the end of the above interview, which surprised me as much as anybody, it's in the very first segment of this subsequent final hour of last night's show:

Download MP3 or listen online below...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

The state of Florida and it's Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) are knowingly violating Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in their attempted purge of "potential non-citizens" from the Sunshine State voting rolls, according to a new federal lawsuit [PDF] filed by the ACLU and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

The complaint follows on the heels of a May 31, 2012 two-page letter submitted to FL election officials by T. Christian Herren, the chief lawyer of the U.S. Justice Department's Voting Rights Division. In his letter, Herren opined that the state's voter roll purge is in violation of Section 5 --- at least in the 6 Florida counties "covered" by that section --- because the state has not sought preclearance from either the DOJ or a federal court, as required by that section of the 40-year old federal law.

Additionally, the DOJ notes in its letter, the purge, coming as it does within the 90 days before Florida's federal primary election, is also in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) which covers the entire state.

In response, FL State Department spokesman Chris Cates initially said they would continue the purge nonetheless, as they were "firmly committed to doing the right thing and preventing ineligible voters from being able to cast a ballot." In his official response to the DOJ a few days later, Detzner all but challenged the feds to bring a suit in order to stop the state from continuing their efforts.

Of the original 180,000 names identified by the state as potential non-citizens, out of some 11.3 million registered voters in the state of Florida, 2,700 were sent to county election officials with instructions to notify those voters that they had just 30 days to prove their citizenship or be removed from the rolls. As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, "Before heeding DOJ’s order to stop the purge" county election officials had identified just four noncitizens who "may have voted in past elections, making them potentially guilty of voter fraud," while clearing hundreds of voters who had, in fact, been legally registered voters. Hundreds of others may have been removed from the rolls, despite being legally registered citizen voters.

As The BRAD BLOG previously reported, Herren had demanded that FL officials "advise whether the State intends to cease the practice," but stopped short of issuing an actual "order" that FL immediately cease and desist. Such an order would have to come by way of an injunction issued by a U.S. District Court. The ACLU lawsuit now seeks that injunction even though, according to the Miami Herald, county elections supervisors across the state, led by Leon County's Ion Sancho, are now refusing to carry out a purge which Sancho describes as "illegal."

The ACLU lawsuit alleges facts that suggest the FL GOP is relying upon a FL Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DMV) database that it knows cannot provide an accurate basis for establishing non-citizenship until 2017.

Unfortunately, this year's purge in Florida continues a tradition that has been affecting legal voters in Florida --- and, along with them, the rest of the nation --- cycle after cycle since at least the 2000 election...

As I'm on the road and largely off the grid this week, I was about to post the following video from last night's Rachel Maddow Show, thanking her for covering so much of what we've been covering here at The BRAD BLOG, for so long, in one nice long top-of-show segment.

I'm still going to do that, but below that, I'm happy to post a press release just sent out by the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, breaking the news that a federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction blocking the "key provisions of a restrictive voting law in Florida today." The Brennan Center describes the ruling as "a breakthrough victory for Florida voters and voting rights advocates nationwide."

The new law, H.B. 1355, had included onerous criminal restrictions on third-party voter registration workers. The new rules were so onerous, in fact, that the League of Women Voters of Florida was forced to call off their registration drive in the state for the first time in 70 years. In the wake of the FL GOP's new law, high school teachers had been charged with crimes for registering their own students to vote, and a registration worker had received a threatening letter from the Sec. of State for turning in voter registrations one hour late after a holiday weekend.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Hinkle blocked most of the FL law's new registration requirements today, finding they accomplished little more than suppressing the registration of new voters without serving any legitimate state interest. "If the goal is to discourage voter-registration drives and thus also to make it harder for new voters to register, this may work," wrote Hinkle in his frequently scathing decision [PDF].

The Brennan Center quotes from Hinkle's ruling this way: "Together speech and voting are constitutional rights of special significance; they are the rights most protective of all others, joined in this respect by the ability to vindicate one's rights in a federal court. … [W]hen a plaintiff loses an opportunity to register a voter, the opportunity is gone forever ... And allowing responsible organizations to conduct voter-registration drives --- thus making it easier for citizens to register and vote --- promotes democracy."

See the Brennan Center's full release today posted below. It's very good news, as once again another law passed by the GOP with the intention of nothing more than suppressing the vote of largely Democratic-leaning voters is found to be in violation of the Constitution and/or federal law, as has been the case with almost every single one of these GOP-passed laws over the past year --- at least when someone (too often not the U.S. Dept. of Justice, unfortunately) bothers to go to court to challenge them.

Yesterday, at Rolling Stone, Ari Berman had calculated that some 35,000 Florida voters stand to be purged this year if the Republicans' new voter suppression efforts there are carried out in full.

As to Rachel Maddow last night, here's some of the very important coverage she offered at the top of the show, including details on the state of Florida's current effort to purge thousands of legal voters from the rolls by claiming, inaccurately, that they are non-citizens. (NOTE: That effort is a separate voter suppression measure by Republicans in the state of Florida, and is not related to today's federal court ruling blocking the earlier voter suppression measure by Republicans in the state of Florida)...