About one third of Afghanistan's eligible voters came to polling stations on Saturday to elect a new parliament, the head of the Afghan Independent Election Commission said. According to preliminary data, a total of 3.6 million people out of 11,4 million [numbers corrected by this editor] eligible for voting casted their ballots to elect the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, the lower house of the country's parliament, Fazil Ahmad Manawi said. Taliban fighters launched dozens of attacks across the country to prevent people from voting in the polls, Afgnanistan's second general elections since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

WaPo: Afghan turnout low amid violence
Reuters: Fraud concerns weigh on early Afghan vote count
Tom Peters: Another rigged election in Afghanistan
RAWA: Fraud casts doubt over Afghan election

A new poll indicates that only about a third of Afghans have any confidence that Saturday’s parliamentary elections will be “transparent and fair,” a serious paucity of confidence for what US officials are calling a very important election. The pessimism is perhaps understandable, considering the massive number of fraudulent votes cast in last year’s presidential vote. Very little has changed in the meantime, except that the Karzai government has managed to cut the level of international oversight. Yet international concerns have focused almost exclusively on security. And even here officials have remained optimistic about the vote despite large numbers of pre-vote kidnappings, and insist that the sites will be secure even though security forces were unable to stop the killing of at least five candidates and the kidnapping of two others. But the reality is considerably less rosy, as security officials concede that roughly one in seven polling places won’t even open on Saturday because it is simply too dangerous.

PressTV: Afghanistan begins vote count
PressTV: Afghans cast ballot despite violence.
RAWA: Fraud casts doubt over Afghan election.
Axis of Logic: Voting in a Karzai-style election
WSWS: Another rigged election in Afghanistan
NYT: Afghan Votes Come Cheap, and Often in Bulk

Since the stolen presidential election of 2004, Jonathan Simon has been at the forefront of analysis and research into election fraud in America. Yesterday, Simon published the result of his inquiry into the special election last January in which Ted Kennedy's Senate seat (from the nation's most solidly Democratic state) was offered up by the Democrats to a Tea Party Republican. This was an election with crucial national significance. The Democrats had exactly the 60-vote margin in the Senate needed to push through Obama's health care initiative over united Republican obstruction. Ted Kennedy had been a lifelong champion of that legislation, and his was widely regarded as a safe Democratic seat. State Attorney General Martha Coakley was supposed to be a shoo-in.

But Coakley campaigned half-heartedly -- some would say incompetently. The RNC shoveled money into the race. A media campaign before the election proclaimed that challenger Scott Brown was unexpectedly competitive. Most inexplicably -- perhaps this is the biggest clue -- Coakley conceded the race at midnight, with a quarter of the votes still uncounted.

Police have arrested the person who showed Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) can be tampered with in India in a sting operation. Today, at wee hours Maharashtra police landed up at the residence of Hari Prasad in Hyderabad, a technologist and Technical coordinator of VeTA to arrest him. The arrest was made on the flimsy charge of ‘theft of EVM’ used for vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science, University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from Netherlands along with a team of their colleagues. Earlier, police came to Hyderabad in the first week of August and recorded a statement on the EVM they had used for exposing the vulnerability of EVMs. They summoned him to Mumbai for further questioning. Hari Prasad could not go as he was busy with his professional work. Then, the sudden arrest happened this morning. Over the past one year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has been lying blatantly and willfully to ensure continued use of EVMs at all costs. It attributed all kinds of qualities to its EVMs: “totally tamper proof, perfect, fail safe and requiring no improvement” etc. etc. When Hari Prasad agreed to meet the ECI’s challenge to demonstrate tamperability of EVMs, the ECI backed out imposing silly, unscientific restrictions.

Do you ever just sit back and wonder what in the world has happened to America? The truth is that the America that so many of us once loved so much has been shattered into a thousand pieces. The "land of the free and the home of the brave" has been transformed into a socialized Big Brother nanny state that is oozing with corruption and has accumulated the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. The greatest economic machine that the world has ever seen is falling apart before our very eyes, and even when our politicians actually try to do something right (which is quite rare) the end result is still a bunch of garbage. For those who still love this land (and there are a lot of us) it is heartbreaking to watch America slowly die. The following are 50 random facts that show just how dramatically America has changed....

Vic Rawl says inexplicable Democratic primary contest casts 'cloud' over state election; Notes 'irregularities', problem reports from voters, poll workers, vows 'electoral reform', calls for 'full and unblinking investigation of overall integrity' of state's ES&S voting system. A formal challenge to the announced results of South Carolina's Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate has now been filed by Judge Vic Rawl, the candidate who wasn't announced the winner by the state's oft-failed, easily-manipulated, 100% unverifiable ES&S e-voting system. Rawl released an official statement on his website today, in conjunction with the filing and a press conference he held in Charleston this afternoon.

After all these years, not much has changed for the denialist jurisdictions that still insult their voters by using 100% unverifiable electronic voting machines. Pittsburgh's WTAE filed a report last week with a ring of exhausting familiarity --- at least to long time readers of The BRAD BLOG. This one stars, as usual, both an open, unsecured door to the warehouse, and an election official --- in this case, Allegheny County Pennsylvania's Election Division manager, Mark Wolosik --- claiming he's "seen" no problems before, so everything is just dandy, nothing to worry about when it comes to his support of the use of 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems by his county's voters...

I made some graphs. And yes, I am a nerd. But these make the scale of the unfairness clear.

The US has expressed deep concern over the Afghan president's recent remarks, which implicated "foreign governments" [the US] in vote rigging during the country's elections. In an April 1 speech to Afghan election commission workers in Kabul, Hamid Karzai said "foreign powers" were to blame for the fraud that occurred during last years elections. “There was fraud in presidential and provincial council elections -- no doubt that there was a very widespread fraud, very widespread,” he said. “But Afghans did not do this fraud. The foreigners did this fraud,” he added, referring to the August presidential election. AntiWar: Karzai Faces Fallout: Will Vote Fraud Claims Undermine War?

Admits 'Vast Fraud' in August Vote, Claims UN Conspiracy Against Him. For the first time since the vote, Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted today that there was “vast fraud” in the August election which gave him a second term as president. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the fraudulent votes were cast on his behalf, however, Karzai maintains innocence. Instead he claims there is a UN conspiracy behind the fraud that was intent on denying him reelection. The claim is perplexing since then-UN official Kai Eide was reported to have tried to cover up the extent of the fraud. The allegation comes as Karzai is locked in a battle with the Afghan parliament over his attempts to seize unilateral control over the UN electoral watchdog, a move which is poised to lead the international community to deny funding for the parliamentary election later this summer.

Over three weeks have passed since the Iraqi election, and its resolution seems as uncertain as ever. The top two factions, the Iraqiya bloc of Ayad Allawi and the State of Law party of Nouri al-Maliki remain at each others throats, and neither seems to be making much progress in gaining partners among the smaller blocs.

The west's acclaim of a democratic dawn rings hollow as long as Allawi and Maliki refuse to observe the rule of law. The idea that elections are the be-all and end-all of democracy is naive at best. At worst they are a shallow and unsustainable justification for the carnage that followed invasion and regime change. Iraq's new ruling elite was brought back to the country by US and British troops; they are now presiding over a country that has repeatedly gone to the polls but received precious little beyond politically motivated violence, widespread corruption and now a flagrant disregard for the rule of law by their elected politicians. AntiWar: Move Could Ban Six Allawi MPs From Office. The Independent: Links to Ba’athists could end Allawi’s hopes of seizing power.

"No way we will accept the results," Mr. Maliki said. "These are preliminary results." Gesturing angrily, he said he would challenge the vote count through what he described as legal process. Former U.S.-backed prime minister Ayad Allawi and his secular, anti-Iranian coalition narrowly won Iraq's parliamentary elections in final returns Friday, edging out the bloc of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who angrily vowed to challenge the results. The Economist: Iyad Allawi wins most seats in Iraq, but long wrangling will decide who rules.

'Stolen votes' claim casts cloud over Iraq poll. Ayad Allawi told Western officials that aides to Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, had hidden ballot papers and falsified computer records in an effort to retain power. “They are stealing the votes of the Iraqi people,” his spokesman told a press conference called to set out the main claims. The Australian: Iraqi opposition leader Iyad Allawi alleges widespread election fraud. Al Jazeera: Early results show close Iraq race: Thursday's results put al-Maliki's State of Law coalition ahead in Najaf and Babil provinces south of Baghdad, while Allawi's secular Iraqiya alliance topping the list in two provinces north and east of Baghdad, the capital. In northern Iraq, a list representing Iraq's two major Kurdish parties is apparently far ahead of a reform-minded challenger, according to partial early results. Twenty eight per cent of the votes counted showed the bloc including the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talbani, the Iraqi president, and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Masoud Barazani, the regional president of Iraqi Kurdistan, are far ahead of the Goran Party, running on a reform platform.

The largest voting machine company in the country bought its biggest competitor six months ago without advance fanfare. Now the Justice Department is investigating whether to unwind the merger that put a privately held Nebraska company in control of the voting machines in nearly 70 percent of the nation's precincts.

The supposed international electoral watchdog has been credited by the UN and Western governments with helping to expose a massive fraud in last year's presidential poll, forcing Karzai into a second round of voting that was eventually cancelled due to his rival's withdrawal. The move gives President Karzai the power to appoint all five members of Afghanistan's Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC).

TruthIsAll 1) The GOP needed votes in solid Blue states to decrease Democratic margins (see NY and CA) in order to pad the Bush popular recorded vote "mandate". 2) The GOP needed to steal fewer votes in Battleground states where their objective was to win the Electoral vote. 3) The GOP pretty much ignored the Red states; most of them were rural with small populations. But they did not ignore the Red states with large minority (Democratic) voting blocs, such as TX, MS, AL, TN, SC, VA. They could pad the popular vote by not counting minority votes.

Sri Lankan state television reports that President Mahinda Rajapaksa has won re-election in a hard-fought contest against his former army chief. Rupavahini television reported Wednesday that Rajapaksa decisively beat Sarath Fonseka. The election pitted two men considered war heroes by the Sinhalese majority for winning the country's quarter-century civil war. VOA News: Sri Lanka President Declared Re-Elected, Top Rival Claims Results Rigged. The choice was between a mass murderer and his henchman. The mass murderer won. Democracy lost. TimesOnline: Troops surround Sri Lanka opposition leader Sarath Fonseka's hotel.

Electronic voting equipment that cost the State some €50 million but has never been commissioned is now likely to be cast off completely, the Minister for the Environment John Gormley has confirmed.

The same types of machines that helped put George W. Bush in the White House in 2000, and “re-elect” him 2004, may now decide who wins the all-important “60th Senate seat” in Massachusetts. The fate of health care and much much more hang in the balance. As Bay Staters vote to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, most will be marking scantron ballots to be run through easily hackable electronic counters made by Diebold/Premier. BIN: Martha Coakley Scott Brown For Senate Poll Coakley May Surge. + Coakley vs Brown Poll Shows Massachusetts Senate Race National Barn Burner.

Since writing today's piece for Upstate New York's right-leaning Gouverneur Times, a new poll has come out this morning showing the Republican Scott Brown now leading the Democrat Martha Coakley by 4 points in the race for the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by a Democrat named Kennedy for nearly 60 years.