Setting aside for a moment whether or not the ballots of Ohio voters were and are counted accurately, a new investigative report by the Cincinnati Enquirer's Barry M. Horstman finds that some 40,000 provisional ballots cast during the Buckeye State's 2008 Presidential election were never even counted at all.

Worse, thousands of them, as the paper details, were disqualified due to no fault of voters...

The report goes on to warn that, unless there are changes made to the state's election laws and procedures --- including the implementation of changes recommended by state election officials after the 2008 contest --- "tens of thousands of ballots are likely to be disqualified" in the key swing-state, once again, during the 2012 Presidential election...

Ever wonder what one of my blog items sounds like inside my own brain when I write it? On today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio (audio posted below), listeners got a bit of an idea, as the terrorist-enabling NRA, in the wake of their Aurora, CO Massacre, was squarely in my sites.

Sadly, they were too busy praying or lying or raising money off the tragedy or something, to show up and defend their deadly positions, so today's show was just me, and a bunch of great callers who, unlike the terrorist-enabling NRA, were not afraid to come on our public airwaves to offer their positions in the public square over our public airwaves.

For the record, here are the folks who declined to show up and support their deadly positions on the show today, or who simply didn't respond at all to our invitation to appear. Yes, we really believe in offering opportunities for all legitimate positions to be heard over our public airwaves...

• National Rifle Association (NRA): "We believe that now is the time for families to grieve and for the community to heal. There will be an appropriate time down the road to engage in political and policy discussions."

NRA Official State Associations

• Colorado State Shooting Association: "While we appreciate your efforts to present the perspective of gun rights organizations such as CSSA on your program, we are unable to accommodate your request."
• Arizona State Rifle & Pistol Assocation: "I am sorry but all we are doing is concentrating on our total support and prayers for those families. I know many are jumping on the bandwagon to ban this or do away with the Constitutions guarantees and such but they are always ready to strike out at folks like us in the gun culture. ... Please forgive me for forgoing the interview. When emotions are more level, I would possibly do an interview. ... Thanks so much for your understanding."
• California Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc.: no response
• Arkansas Rifle & Pistol Association: no response
• Florida Sport Shooting Association, Inc.: no response
• Texas State Rifle Association: no response

Politicians with A+ or A grade from the NRA

• Rep. Paul C. Broun (R-GA): declined
• Former AZ State Senator Russell Pearce (R): declined
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA): no response
• Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA): no response
• Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MI): no response
• Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO): no response
• Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX): no response

Here's today's show, which also includes a few minutes on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's stunning admission that there is no known case of in-person voter fraud --- the only kind of voter fraud that might be deterred by the GOP's new polling place Photo ID restriction there --- in the history of the state, and a quick visit from Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report...

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

P.S. KPFK's BradCast is now available on your smart device via the Stitcher Radio app! Plug it in and listen every week automagically!

Last night we offered some very encouraging news about an apparent federal challenge, in the works by the U.S. Dept of Justice, against the state of Pennsylvania's disenfranchising, GOP-enacted, polling place Photo ID restriction law. Today's news is even more encouraging!

The Commonwealth of PA and the plaintiffs in the state challenge to the law have filed a remarkable one-page, 6-point stipulation [PDF] in advance of the trial in that case which is set to begin tomorrow.

The stipulation agrees, in plain language, that there has never been a known case of in-person voter fraud --- the only type of voter fraud that can even possibly be deterred by such restrictions --- in the history of the Keystone State, or even in other states, for that matter...

I don't think it can be stated any plainer. The GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction, which they have passed under the guise that it is needed to prevent "voter fraud", is, itself, a fraud.

Of course, we've been arguing this point for some time (going on 10 years, in fact). In state after state where these laws have been passed by Republican legislatures and signed by Republican governors on the basis that they are needed to curb "voter fraud", the proponents of the laws in every state have been unable to offer even a single historical case of voter fraud in their state which would have been prevented by these measures.

In other words, these laws are not meant to curb "voter fraud", they are meant to curb voting --- specifically, by people who don't have the type of state-issued Photo ID required under these new laws. In the case of PA, that amounts to some 750,000 legally eligible voters, by the state's own numbers --- more voters than Obama won the state by in 2008. The voters most effected by these laws, as study after study have shown for years, are far and away more Democratic-leaning than Republican.

That's the entire story on these purposely disenfranchising voter suppression laws. Period. Always has been, always will be. That, despite the unforgivably poor reporting by many in the corporate mainstream media suggesting there is some legitimate reason to enact these laws. There isn't. There never has been. And it is that poor reporting which has allowed the GOP to keep this issue alive, as if it is anything but a blatant attempt to suppress the Democratic-leaning vote...

Good news for fans of democracy and voting rights, and for foes of discrimination! Bad news for Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, his GOP state legislature, and perhaps others like them in different states.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice may soon be filing a legal challenge to Pennsylvania's new GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction. The law will affect the ability of some 750,000 legal voters to cast their once-legal vote in the Keystone State this November, unless it is overturned. If the feds choose to bring suit against the new law, it would be the first time the federal agency has used the anti-discrimination provisions of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 to block such a law.

Last February, as a civil rights group had filed a federal challenge against the state of Wisconsin, charging that state's new GOP-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction violated the federal constitution, we explained how the moment presented a "golden opportunity" for the U.S. Dept. of Justice to join the case and challenge it, as well as similar laws in other states, under Section 2 of the VRA.

As Ernie Canning detailed at the time, the DoJ has, to date, only challenged recently-enacted polling place Photo ID restriction laws in jurisdictions which are covered by Section 5 of the VRA. That section of the landmark federal law requires that new election laws in some 16 states, or parts of states with long histories of racial discrimination at the polls, receive federal government preclearance for the new laws before they may be enforced. Section 5 places the burden on the jurisdictions themselves to demonstrate that the new laws will not have a discriminatory effect.

Since these particular laws have been shown, indeed, to be designed to discriminate against largely Democratic-leaning voters, the states where the laws have been denied preclearance by the DoJ --- states like Texas and South Carolina, for instance --- have been unable to demonstrate their laws did not have the effect of discriminating against legal minority voters. In both of those cases, using data supplied to the DoJ by the states, it was simple to show the discriminatory effect of the new laws. (For example, in South Carolina, African-American voters were found to be 20% more likely to lack the type of ID needed to vote under the new law than white voters. In Texas, the state's own data showed that legal Hispanic voters were as much as 120% more likely to lack the requisite ID to vote under the new law than non-Hispanic voters.)

But similar laws passed in states not covered by Section 5 --- states like Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kansas, and Pennsylvania --- have yet to face the same kind of legal scrutiny from the federal government --- until now...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

This week, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard the League of Women Voters' argument against language set to be used in a ballot initiative this November which, if passed by the electorate, would amend the state's constitution to require that valid, Government-issued Photo ID be presented at the polling place before voters are allowed to vote.

The initiative was placed on the ballot by the GOP majority in the state legislature, but, as we detailed earlier this month, the League has filed suit charging that the language used in the ballot question is extremely deceptive and that it fails to accurately explain how the constitutional amendment would change the voting system in Minnesota, while putting the legal rights of voters at risk.

During oral arguments (video clip posted below) in League of Women Voters of Minnesota v. Ritchie [PDF], veteran MN Supreme Court Justice Paul H. Anderson suggested that the issue before the Court, of whether the ballot question was misleading, was more profound than even the League's attorney, William Pentelovitch, was characterizing it.

The hearing produced the following remarkable colloquy...

If there was any doubt before, after several findings by several courts that the Wisconsin GOP's attempts to institute polling place Photo ID restrictions were in strict violation of their state Constitution, yesterday's verdict ought to (but probably won't) put a hard end to that question...

Last Thursday, in Cudahy, CA, a small city near Los Angeles, top city officials, including former Mayor David Silva and former City Manager and Code Enforcement Director Angel Perales, agree to plead guilty to federal charges of bribery and extortion.

But as Kevin Roderick of "LA Observed" notes, the filing also includes details on "tampering with city elections" which he describes as "really chilling".

How did the Cudahy officials tamper with the elections? Via absentee ballots, according to the explanation of the plea agreement offered by federal officials:

We've said it before, we'll say it again: Voting by mail is a terrible idea. Political parties love it, for a whole bunch of reasons (this story underscores just one of those reasons), but we're not concerned with political parties. We're concerned with democracy and whether your vote will be counted and counted accurately, no matter which party you may happen to associate with (or not.)

(Note to Oregon voters who love their all Vote-by-Mail system: Yes, we're familiar with what happens in your state, and we still stand by our long-held assessment of the perils of Absentee/Vote-by-Mail. Please read this article and, as importantly, the link in the paragraph just above, before sending us your hate mail. Thanks!)

Unless you have no other reasonable option --- eg. you're going to be out of town on Election Day and can't vote on a paper ballot during Early Voting, or you live in one of the few places in the nation where you are otherwise forced to vote on 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems on Election Day --- voting on hand-marked paper ballots, at the polling place on Election Day, increases exponentially the chance of your ballot actually being counted, and counted accurately.

We've also discussed, many times, the rarity of voter fraud --- that is, fraud by individual voters, versus the concerns of systematic election fraud perpetrated, most frequently, by election insiders who have easy access to flip results of entire elections with little possibility of detection, via manipulation of results on electronic tabulators or by gaming the voting rolls themselves.

While voter fraud is exceedingly rare --- and virtually non-existent at the polling place, particularly by those impersonating other voters (the only type of fraud which can even possibly be deterred by the polling place Photo ID restrictions Republicans are cynically attempting to put in place across the country, solely in hopes of suppressing the Democratic-leaning vote) --- where actual voter fraud does occur, it's almost always via absentee balloting.

In this latest case in Cudahy, however, though the stolen elections involved absentee ballots, it was still accomplished by election fraud, not voter fraud, since the voters themselves appear to have done nothing wrong. Rather, as is almost always the case when it comes to fraudulent elections in this country, it was a matter of insider officials gaming the system.

[Now UPDATED with commercial-free audio archives below!...]

Mike has the night off! So we're back guest hosting the nationally-syndicated Mike Malloy Show, and that means it's the RETURN OF "Friday the 13th! Nightmare on Malloy Street!"...

We'll be BradCasting all the horrors, LIVE from 9pm-Mid ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from L.A.'s KTLK am1150 in beautiful downtown Burbank. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG, as usual, while we are on the air. Please stop by and join the fun while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Scheduled tonight (so far):

• SHARON HARRINGTON, Republican Supervisor of Elections of Lee County, FL on her "rogue" purge of purportedly "non-citizens" voters on the heels of Gov. Rick Scott failed and often dishonest attempt to purge some 182,000 "potential non-citizens" from the voting rolls.
• MARGY LAMBERT (Democrat) working with WisconsonWave.org and JOHN WASHBURN (Republican) on the effort to handcount the paper ballots from WI's June 5th Gubernatorial Recall election between Gov. Scott Walker and his challenger Tom Barrett (D) via open records requests, in light of concerns about the computer-reported results.
• JASON LEOPOLD, investigative journalist from Truthout.org on his exclusive this week, written with Jeffrey Kaye, on the forced drugging of detainees held by the U.S.
• PLUS! All the other nightmares of the day, along with your phone calls over your public airwaves at 877-520-1150 and your tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates across the country and also on SiriusXM Ch. 127. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at our Sante Fe affiliate KTRC 1260, or our Minnesota affiliate KTNF 950 (use code 55447 when asked). Also, you should be able to listen live at WhiteRose Society if the radio gods are with us.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: It was a nightmare indeed! You'll not want to miss a single, terrifying second! Lucky for you, all of those seconds are now posted below, commercial-free! It was a jam-packed show, with a LOT of good stuff! And, Mike returns Monday! Enjoy 'em all below...

In case you're wondering, it's not just The BRAD BLOG trying to warn folks on the Right, Left and everywhere in between of the pending disasters of our oft-failed, almost always wholly-unverified and quickly disappearing system of once-overseeable, theoretically-democratic system of electoral self-governance.

As Steven Rosenfeld, veteran journalist of the 2004 Ohio mess, writes this week at Alternet in "Not Again! How Our Voting System Is Ripe For Theft and Meltdown in 2012" [emphasis added]:

Rosenfeld covers a lot of ground in his piece, so you should read it in full.

That said, as much ground as he covers, he and the experts he quotes still manage to understate the concerns, while failing to define what, in nearly a decade on this beat we have found, so far, to be the only apparent solution: Hand-marked paper ballots counted publicly, by hand, on Election Night, at the precinct, in front of all parties, observers and video cameras, with decentralized results posted at those precincts, before ballots are allowed to move anywhere.

You have been warned. Again.

Now back to your bickering about off-shore bank accounts and "socialism", or whatever it is you feel your time is better spent on between now and November 6.

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?...

Unless civil rights groups suing, incredibly enough, for the right of legal voters to cast their legal vote in Pennsylvania this year are successful in blocking the new GOP law, hundreds of thousands of voters --- of all parties, but disproportionately Democratic-leaning --- could be disenfranchised in the Keystone State alone this November, under the Republicans' new polling place Photo ID restriction.

At the same time, AP reports today that based on its study of recent elections in Indiana, Georgia and Tennessee --- states where GOP-backed polling place Photo ID restrictions have already been in effect for some time --- "legitimate votes rejected by the laws are far more numerous than are the cases of fraud that advocates of the rules say they are trying to prevent."

That, of course, is the point.

As the AP story points out in its opening grafs, perfectly legal votes of Republican voters will also be tossed out (in the story they mention a 90-year old WWII veteran and his wife who had no idea their votes for Romney in this year's Indiana primary were never counted) along with the disenfranchisement of untold numbers who don't even bother to show up to vote at all because they don't own one of the very narrowly defined state-issued Photo IDs approved for use under these new voter suppression laws.

And, yes, when Republicans lose their right to vote, it pisses us off just as much as when Democrats lose their right to vote, even when it happens under voter suppression laws passed by Republicans.

We can think of little that is more blatantly and appallingly anti-American than what the GOP is now doing in hopes of purposely and systematically undermining the very core of democracy in this nation.

Far be it for me to call TPM's Josh Marshall "stupid", though it does make for a more eye-catching headline. It also happens to be a fact, as I see it, that Romney's refusal to release his tax returns from any year prior to 2010, and especially his local state return from 2010, is about hiding evidence of a felony crime, as much or likely more than it is about hiding embarrassing details of off-shore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Switzerland, etc.

Josh argued yesterday that the latter is the reason for the presumptive GOP nominee's continuing refusal to publicly disclose those tax returns. It's almost certainly a part of the campaign's calculations and, as he posits convincingly in his blog item headlined "Kryptonite", hard visual confirmation of Romney's foreign tax shelters would be difficult to shake off with explanations to Mr. and Mrs. America.

But the use of legal off-shore tax shelters can be massaged through the "conservative" "messaging" machine with a legitimate-sounding case that avoidance of federal taxes is somehow a patriotic "conservative" duty and/or otherwise yet another example of Romney's keen business insight and smart, fully legal fiscal discipline which every American should someday aspire to.

What cannot be so easily brushed off or propagandized away --- not without completely undermining the current culmination of the GOP's nearly-decade long effort in creating the imaginary notion of massive Democratic "voter fraud" which must be rectified immediately with polling place Photo ID restrictions (actually little more than the GOP's attempt to suppress the legitimate Democratic-leaning vote while preventing almost no existing voter fraud) --- is the likelihood that those tax returns would reveal indisputable evidence that this year's GOP standard-bearer is an actual voter fraud felon himself...