Lately, The Brad Blog has been
en fuego!
Ever since the election, The Brad Blog has been dutifully and painstakingly breaking stories relating to voter fraud.
Most recently, on October 20, 2005, The Brad Blog broke the news about the non-partisan GAO's 107 page report report[PDF] on Election Voting Machines in America.
Considering how important elections are, one would think that the shocking revelations contained in the GAO Report (set forth below) would somehow find their way into the mainstream media ("MSM"). But as The Brad Blog noted in today's blog entry, "Silence: Mainstream Media Completely Ignores GAO Report, Joint Congressional News Release on E-Voting!"
The Government Accountability Office ("GAO") is the investigative arm of Congress. It is typically referred to as the "congressional watchdog," and as such, is independent and nonpartisan.
"It studies how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. GAO advises Congress and the heads of executive agencies (such as Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Department of Defense, DOD, and Health and Human Services, HHS) about ways to make government more effective and responsive. GAO evaluates federal programs, audits federal expenditures, and issues legal opinions. When GAO reports its findings to Congress, it recommends actions. Its work leads to laws and acts that improve government operations, and save billions of dollars. From the GAO website.
So when the GAO reports that recent elections have been plagued by a range of security vulnerabilities and violations in Electronic Voting Machines, one might assume that the MSM would pay attention. No such luck.
And when the GAO states that issues brought to the attention of the GAO by elected representatives, activists and other concerned citizens, "merit the focused attention of federal state and local authorities responsible for election administration," one might rightfully presume this to be newsworthy, to say the least. Apparently the MSM doesn't think so.
As it relates to certain electronic voting machines, the GAO's report reveals that, inter alia:
Cast ballots, ballot definition files, and audit logs could be modified.
Supervisor functions were protected with weak or easily-guessed passwords.
Systems had easily picked locks and power switches that were exposed and unprotected.
Local jurisdictions misconfigured their electronic voting systems, leading to election day problems.
Voting systems experienced operational failures during elections.
Vendors installed uncertified electronic voting systems.
Considering how close the Presidential election of 2004 was, you would think the MSM would look into the matter. Nope!
As The Brad Blog points out today:
It's been nearly a week and a half since the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its 107-page report [PDF] confirming what many of us have been reporting for what seems like forever: That electronic voting machines are not secure, are hackable, and employ secret software that is frequently neither certified nor adequately inspected.
The GAO report which The BRAD BLOG broke on October 20th, confirms that "[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."
Furthermore, it was released in tandem with a joint bi-partisan news release which lauded the report. The extremely rare joint news release was issued by six high-level U.S. Congressmen in the House of Representatives (three R's and three D's) all Committee chairman and ranking minority members including the Chair and ranking member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
And yet, not a single wire service (AP, Reuters, UPI, AFP, et al) nor the NY Times nor the Washington Post has even run a single paragraph on the landmark GAO report or even the news release to our knowledge. Not one. Even though many of those same outlets reported on numerous occasions that the claims now confirmed as very real by the GAO were little more than "conspiracy theories" forwarded by "leftwing blogs" such as this one. (Emphasis Added.)
The GAO Report needs to be covered. Actually, that is an understatement! The GAO Report is an earth shattering report which reveals the truly remarkable ease in which our election system is corruptable. Therefore, it MUST be covered.
The GAO Report raises major questions about the health of our democracy. (Note: To all right-wingers that feel the need to correct me on the fact that this is a Republic, not a Democracy, I issue you a preemptive "Go to hell, you Pahvlovian dog!"...but I digress.)
We can all do something about the MSM's silence. First, we can send letters and email to the MSM. Second, we can continue to blog this subject ad nauseum until the pricks in the MSM figure it out. (As The Brad Blog says, "If you aren 't happy with the media, be the media.") Third, we can visit The Brad Blog and donate some money to his blog. Just imagine if we didn't have The Brad Blog. Who would have brought this to our attention?