It’s Christmas in June for voting rights activists all over the country today. The Brennan Center report on the vulnerablity of voting systems is out. Here’s the nut:

The Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, an initiative of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, today released a report and policy proposals concluding that all three of the nation’s most commonly purchased electronic voting systems are vulnerable to software attacks that could threaten the integrity of a state or national election.

“As electronic voting machines become the norm on Election Day, voters are more and more concerned that these machines are susceptible to fraud,” said Michael Waldman, the Brennan Center’s Executive Director. “In fact, we’ve learned a lot from our study. These machines are vulnerable to attack. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we know how to reduce the risks and the solutions are within reach.”

That’s it. That is honest-to-goodness practically all you need to know to be an expert activist in this field. There are serious problems with paperless electronic voting. Everyone knows it. The consequences for our democracy are enormous. The fixes are easy: mandated voter-verified paper ballots and proper audits.

Keep your high-priced, planned-to-be-obsolete, unsecure and unverifiable voting machines, which are now installed throughout the country. (offer void in CT and NY) They can be used as million dollar calculators that give the preliminary election results in time for the 11:00 o’clock news. But for the official results, proper audits of voter-verified paper ballots must be used. It’ll take a little bit longer to find out who the winners are, but when you do, you’ll know they were the winners that the voters picked.

The Democrats are nowhere on this story. blogtopia (hail skippy) has been scooped left right and center, which is what happens when a story is starved of oxygen at the top. Thank goodness for the Bradblog. Even the corporate media has put the lefty blogs to shame. (I had to wash my hands after typing that.) This is a partial list of today’s coverage of the Brennan Report:

Washington Post (USA)- A Single Person Could Swing an Election (June 28, 2006)
The Beacon Journal (OH)- Report Cites Flaws in Electronic Voting (June 28, 2006)
The Globe and Mail (UK)- Many e-Voting Systems Flawed: Report (June 28, 2006)
WWMT (MI)- E-voting Gets Thumbs Down from Report (June 28, 2006)
Free Internet Press (USA)- Cybersecurity Experts Say Voting Machines Have Security Flaws (June 28, 2006)
Reuters (USA)- Study Shows US Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable (June 27, 2006)
USA Today (USA)- Analysis Finds e-Voting Machines Vulnerable (June 27, 2006)
Fox News (USA)- Report: Many E-Voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Boston Herald (MA)- Report: Many e-voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Guardian Unlimited (UK)- Report: Many E-Voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Business Week (USA)- Report: Many E-Voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Fox News (USA- Study: E-Voting Systems All Flawed, but Also Easy to Fix (June 27, 2006)
ABC News (NY)- Report: Many E-Voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Computer World (USA)- Studies question e-voting security (June 27, 2006)
Canton Rep (OH)- Report Rips Security of Electronic Voting System (June 27, 2006)
Newsfactor Magazine (USA)- Report: E-Voting Machines Are Vulnerable (June 27, 2006)
Playsful Magazine (Romania)- Study Says E-voting Machines Pose Problems (June 27, 2006)
The Washington Times (DC)-Study Says e-Voting Machines Pose Problems (June 27, 2006)
Pierceland Herald (Canada)- Report: Many e-Voting Systems Flawed (June 27, 2006)
Short News (Germany)- Electronic Voting Flawed, Report Finds (June 27, 2006)
ZD Net (USA)- E-voting Gear at Risk of Hacking, Study Says (June 27, 2006)
Monsters & Critics (USA)- Study Says e-Voting Machines Pose Problems (June 27, 2006)
The Post Chronicle (USA)- Study Says E-Voting Machines Pose Problems (June 27, 2006)

Conspicuously absent is the NYT, whose reporting of the blockbuster story of the theft of our democracy via electronic voting machines has been among the worst in the country. Their editorial coverage, on the other hand, has been good. I’m predicting an editorial on this tomorrow with a fairly awful news story that casts the people opposed to unsecure paperless voting systems as conspiracy nuts and quotes voting machine vendor reps saying misleading stuff like this, which was a popular quote in the corporate media today:

To date, voting systems have not been successfully attacked in a live election,” said Bob Cohen, a spokesman for the Election Technology Council, a voting machine vendors’ trade group.

Ah, but they have been successfully attacked in quite a few demonstrations though. (via skippy) But even beyond that, the fact is that without voter-verified paper ballots and mandated proper audits of those ballots, we have no idea if a voting system was “successfully attacked” or not and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or so misinformed on the topic that s/he shouldn’t be talking to the press.

So it’s a good day. There’s even discussion in the House about legislation that will address the problem:

Republican Reps. Tom Cole (Okla.) and Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, joined Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) in calling for a law that would set strict requirements for electronic voting machines. Howard Schmidt, former chief of security at Microsoft and President Bush’s former cybersecurity adviser, also endorsed the Brennan report.

Remember, though, that the Help America Vote Act was supposed to address the problem of faulty voting systems and we saw where that led. It is imperative that we keep our eye on any leglislation that gets moving through Congress. Left alone, you can be sure that the people in charge - on both sides of the aisle - will not write law that makes it easier for people to vote or for those votes to be counted. Democracy is not a friend of the powerful.

This is the story of the century and we’re writing it.

cross-posted at my place because I never met an eVoting story I didn’t love