The election between Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray was marred, as reported in detail by The BRAD BLOG over the past two months, when the Diebold optical-scan and touch-screen voting machines used in the race were sent home with poll workers on so-called "sleepovers" for days and weeks prior to the election. That breach in security was in contravention of new state and federal security mitigation requirements enacted just months ago after dozens of severe vulnerabilities were recently confirmed in those specific voting systems.

According to the new state and federal security requirements, such breaches of security effectively decertify the systems for use in California. The election contest, to be filed on behalf of several CA-50 voters on Monday will charge the votes cast on those decertified machines are, in fact, illegal votes. The casting of illegal votes in one of several ground under which a contest may be filed in California state court.

Is it just me or do banana republics do a better job with elections than we do?

The BRAD BLOG : EXCLUSIVE: ELECTION CONTEST TO BE FILED IN BUSBY/BILBRAY RACE MONDAY MORNING!!

What's the GOP strategy for getting Blackwell back into the running? Imply that Strickland is gay.

Yep, Ken Blackwell, the guy who so horribly screwed up voting in Ohio in 2004 is in trouble in Ohio, so the other guy must be gay. So what. The proper place for Blackwell is probably the Ohio prison system where he can find out the hard way what that menas (he was head of elections at the same time that he was head of the Republican drive in Ohio, but there's no conflict of interest there, he used the position to make sure Republicans got elected, see the RFK Jr piece from Rolling Stone for more on that).

The GOP's Sleaziest Attack Campaign