The announcer then says: "If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America's future?"

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the ad deliberately distorts what McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, said.

The committee's chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, said he sent letters Monday to NBC, CNN and MSNBC insisting that they stop airing the commercial.

At issue is McCain's answer, in January, to a question about Bush's theory that troops could be in Iraq for 50 years.

McCain said: "Maybe 100. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that'd be fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day."

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said "there's nothing false" about the ad."

The article is here

Here is the ad:

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana's strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to deter fraud.

It was the most important voting rights case since the Bush v. Gore dispute that sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush mirrored.

The law "is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting 'the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,'" Justice John Paul Stevens said in an opinion that was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy.

Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also agreed with the outcome, but wrote separately.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented.

More than 20 states require some form of identification at the polls. Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's. Tuesday's decision comes a week before Indiana's presidential primary."

The article is here.

The opinion can be found here.

At first blush, it appears that the fact that ID cards in Indiana are free, and that Indiana permits voters without IDs to cast provisional ballots and complete affidavits after the election that would result in their ballots being counted, were significant to the Court's holding.

Update: I find it s bit ironic that the only evidence of election fraud in Indiana that the Court could identify to uphold the polling place ID requirement involved fraud in the use of absentee ballots. Of course, the challenged law does nothing to address that problem.

"It's old technology, but that means the bugs have been worked out," Bowen said. "It's reliable. It's transparent."

More than 200 people turned out for the Pass Democratic Club's fourth annual Unity Dinner fundraiser at the Morongo Resort Spa and Casino. Betty McMillion, the event's chair and vice president of the club, credited Bowen for the turnout.

Within months of taking office last year, Bowen conducted a first-of-its kind security review of the state's electronic voting systems amid growing concerns that the machines, and therefore the vote, could be tampered.

In August, she decertified the state's voting machines, but permits their conditional use to accommodate disabled voters."

The article is here.

(HT to Rick Hasen)

Denham's campaign spokesman Jeff Spillane today said nearly half of the paid signature gatherers who worked for the recall side to get it on the ballot live outside the 12th district and are, thus, in violation of California election laws.

A spokesman with the camp of Sen. Don Perata, the Senate president from Oakland who's leading efforts to recall Denham, has denied any wrongdoing and said the accusations have "no merit."

The article is here.

The problem with Denham's claim is that a California Court of Appeal recently ruled that this type of circulator residency requirement is unconstitutional.

"The United Technologies Corporation made public on Sunday an unsolicited $3-billion bid for Diebold, one of the largest makers of automated teller machines and voting machines.

United Technologies, which first approached Diebold two years ago, initially made the $3 billion offer in private on Friday. The bid is $40 a share in cash, or a 66 percent premium over Diebold’s Friday closing price of $24.12, United Technologies said.

Several unsolicited or hostile offers have been made this year despite an overall slowdown in deal-making activity. Among companies making unfriendly advances are Microsoft, which is pursuing the wounded Internet giant Yahoo, and Electronic Arts, which made a bid for Take-Two Interactive, the maker of the Grand Theft Auto series of video games.

In Diebold, United Technologies sees a chance to expand its electronic security business with one of the field’s largest players. Last year, United Technologies bought Initial Electronic Security Systems for about $1.2 billion.

“This transaction creates significant and immediate value for Diebold shareholders with no operational risk, while creating long-term value for U.T.C. shareholders,” George David, United Technologies’ chairman and chief executive, said in a statement Sunday.

James Geisler, United Technologies’ vice president of finance and the head of its mergers and acquisitions team, said in an interview Sunday that the company contacted Diebold about a possible deal two years ago, but was rebuffed.

On Feb. 19, Mr. David sent Diebold’s board a letter proposing deal talks. Two days later, Diebold’s chairman, John N. Lauer, responded that the company’s board had rejected any possible tie-up, saying none was in its best interests, and requested that United Technologies refrain from contacting any of its directors.

Mr. Geisler declined to say whether United Technologies would press the bid if Diebold formally declined it, saying only his company “knew what its options are.”

Founded in 1859, Diebold grew as a financial systems security provider. But it was thrust into a harsh public spotlight in the 2004 election, as the company was criticized for its electronic voting machines in Ohio and elsewhere."

Problems arose because many independent voters failed to properly mark two "bubbles" on the ballots to signal which party and which candidate they intended to support. That wiped out their votes for candidates in the Democratic and American Independent presidential primaries.

But Logan has told California Secretary of State Debra Bowen in a letter that he may be able to determine what some of those voters intended to do and count their ballots before he certifies the election results next week."

The article is here.

The county Registrar-

Recorder/County Clerk's Office has committed to taking at least a sample, but a spokeswoman said Friday that the department has yet to determine whether it can review every ballot, and whether new votes could be legally included in the final total.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen blamed the confusion on the county's ballot design.

"Secretary Bowen believes it's a uniquely flawed ballot design," said spokeswoman Kate Folmar. "She has responsibility for certifying voting systems, but California law does not give her authority to review ballot designs."

Unlike every other county in California, Los Angeles County residents cast their votes on a scantron form separate from the booklet that lists the names of the candidates and titles of the propositions, Folmar said. The ballot also featured the unique and now-infamous "double bubble," requiring non-partisan voters to fill in a bubble specifying which party they wanted to vote under."

The article is here

"Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city's 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district."

"It is hard to believe now what a darling touch-screen voting was seven years ago. After the Florida presidential vote recount debacle — which made traditional paper voting, especially the infamous "butterfly" ballots and hanging chads, look positively Third World — electronic voting was embraced as the way back from America's electoral humiliation. Some 50,000 touch-screen machines were bought in 37 states at a cost of almost a quarter of a billion dollars.

The reversal since then couldn't be more stunning — as indicated by a bill in Congress introduced this past week by Florida Senator Bill Nelson and Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, which would ban touch-screen voting (also known as direct recording electronic voting, or DRE) in federal elections starting in 2012. "We have to start setting a goal on this," Nelson tells TIME. "Voters have to feel confident that their ballot will count as intended."

"Republican donors are pumping new life into a proposed ballot initiative, considered all but dead by Democrats a month ago, that would alter the way electoral votes are apportioned in California to the benefit of Republican presidential candidates.

Though the financing remains uncertain, the measure’s leaders said Friday that they were confident they would get the signatures required by the Nov. 29 deadline to qualify the initiative for a statewide vote next June. The effort, begun in the summer by a prominent Republican lawyer, lay in peril in October after its top proponents quit over questions about its financing.

Last week, a new organization began raising the roughly $2 million thought to be needed to get the initiative on the ballot. The new effort is being spearheaded by David Gilliard, a Republican consultant in Sacramento, aided by Anne Dunsmore, a prolific fund-raiser who recently resigned from the presidential campaign of Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“You can’t just fold up every time somebody says they killed you,” Ms. Dunsmore, in a telephone interview, said of the effort to resuscitate the initiative.

The initiative would ask voters to replace California’s winner-take-all system of allocating its 55 electoral college votes with one that parses the votes by Congressional district. It has attracted strong opposition from Democrats because it would transform California from a reliably Democratic state in presidential elections by handing the Republican nominee roughly 20 votes from safe Republican districts.

If the initiative qualifies for the ballot, Art Torres, the head of the California Democratic Party, has promised a constitutional challenge, arguing that only state legislatures can determine how electoral votes are allocated."

"The "all but dead" proposed initiative to change California's method of allocating its electoral votes -- from winner-take-all to Republican-favored by congressional district -- may be coming back to life, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Political strategist David Gilliard said he was taking over the ballot initiative campaign, along with strategist Ed Rollins and fundraiser Anne Dunsmore. Consultant Mike Arno will oversee the signature-gathering effort."

A voting machine company already under fire for potential ballot counting problems in San Francisco is fighting a possible $9.7 million fine from the state for allegedly selling uncertified voting equipment to San Francisco, Solano, Marin, Merced and Colusa counties.

At a hearing Tuesday, officials from the secretary of state's office accused Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software of selling 972 of its AutoMARK A200 voting machines in California, even though only an earlier version, the A100, had been approved for use by the state.

While the company has admitted selling the machines to the five counties, it argues that the machines did not need to be certified because they were modified versions of the older certified model, and that the changes in the newer model had no effect on how votes were recorded. State election law, however, requires written notification of any change in any voting equipment, said Lowell Finley, deputy secretary of state for voting systems.

"The vendor may be confident that the changes are inconsequential, but that decision is not for the vendor to make," he said.

In the next few weeks, Secretary of State Debra Bowen will decide whether to file suit against the company for what could be a huge amount of damages. The state could fine ES&S up to $10,000 for each of the 972 machines sold in California and order them to refund the estimated $5 million the counties paid for the disputed machines.

The state also could decertify the AutoMARK system for use in the state and ban ES&S from doing business in California for up to three years, prospects that worry local election officials.
The AutoMARK machines have worked well and are desperately needed for upcoming elections, said Elaine Ginnold, Martin County's registrar of voters.

"We borrowed (A100s) from Contra Costa County to use in the November election, but we won't be able to (borrow) them for the Feb. 5 primary," she told the panel of officials from the secretary of state's office. "You have to find a way to allow the five counties to use the AutoMARK 200s in February."

The AutoMARKs are designed to allow blind and otherwise disabled voters to cast ballots without outside assistance. Unlike the more controversial touch-screen systems, the AutoMARKs are used only to mark paper ballots and do not count or electronically store votes.

Counties that use the AutoMARK typically have one of the machines in every precinct because new federal election rules require that disabled voters have equal access to polling places.
An ES&S executive urged state officials not to penalize the company for a problem that was at most a matter of misunderstood communications.

"The company has acted in good faith," said John Groh, an ES&S vice president. "We have always complied with what we understood to be the practices and procedures relating to certification."
The differences between the two AutoMARK models were just minor fixes designed to make the machines easier to manufacture and service, he said, adding that the company always believed that California and other states have not required notification of those changes, which had been certified on the federal level.

Groh also argued that the state had approved the use of the modified AutoMARKs when it allowed San Francisco to use the disputed AutoMARK machines in last November's election.
But ES&S never told the city - or the state - that San Francisco had received the A200s, said John Arntz, the city's election chief.

"All the documentation ES&S provided stated that we had the A100, not the A200," he said. "I had no idea we were using different machines."

The tribes involved say the answer to both questions is yes. And today, they filed a formal lawsuit in Sacramento Superior Court to block the referendums from appearing on the February 5 statewide ballot.

Earlier this week, opponents of the new gaming agreements submitted what they say were enough signatures to qualify the four referendums. Each measure would ask voters to accept or reject the formal compacts for the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians, and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.

But today's court filing argues it's too late, and says that the anti-compact campaign and Secretary of State Debra Bowen have both misinterpreted the California constitution.

The language at issue is found in Article II, Section 9: A referendum measure may be proposed by presenting to the Secretary of State, within 90 days after the enactment date of the statute, a petition certified to have been signed by electors equal in number to 5 percent of the votes for all candidates for Governor at the last gubernatorial election, asking that the statute or part of it be submitted to the electors.

With that in mind, did the 433,971 signatures have to be certified within 90 days? Or did they merely have to be gathered within 90 days?

Secretary Bowen, using guidelines established by her predecessors, said that it's the latter, that the 90 days only refers to the gathering and submitting of signatures. And that's consistent with a bench ruling by a state judge in 1998 about how the referendum process works (ironically, a case that also revolved around Indian gaming).

But the new legal challenge argues that the constitution intends for the entire process to be over in the 90 days. And if that's true, then there will be no referendums on the ballot; local elections officials have not yet sent their final tabulations to Bowen's office."

The article is here.

I think the tribes have a difficult road ahead with this argument.