SCOTT NOVAKOWSKI Novakowski is a senior policy analyst with Demos and the author of the recent report “Provisional Ballots: Where to Watch in 2008.” He said today: “When implemented correctly, provisional ballots can enfranchise voters. However, when states adopt unnecessarily stringent standards for counting them and poll workers are not adequately trained in their administration,…

CHRIS STROHM A reporter for CongressDaily [subscription required] who has been writing about initiatives on the ballot in Tuesday’s election, Strohm said today: “There are initiatives on a wide variety of issues including Michigan Proposal 2, which would repeal a ban and allow government funding of stem-cell research, and Montana Initiative 555, which would give…

PENNY VENETIS Venetis is plantiff’s counsel in a four-year lawsuit spearheaded by the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law. According to expert reports conducted as a part of the lawsuit, “approximately 10,000 voting machines used in 18 out of the 21 counties in New Jersey can be manipulated to throw an election.” The…

MARJORIE COHN Cohn is the president of the National Lawyers Guild, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law. She recently wrote the piece “A Palin Theocracy.” Cohn said today: “The next president will almost certainly appoint one to three…

DAN WALLACH Wallach is an associate professor at Rice University and also the associate director of the National Science Foundation’s ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections), a $7.5 million research effort across six different institutions to improve U.S. election systems. He said today: “Present-day electronic voting systems have a variety…

BBC reports: “Syria has protested angrily to both the U.S. and Iraq after what it said was a U.S. helicopter raid inside its territory that killed eight civilians. Syria summoned U.S. and Iraqi envoys to condemn the ‘aggressive act.’ Iraq said the area targeted was used by militants to launch cross-border attacks in Iraq.” JOSHUA…

The lead piece in the Washington Post today is “Greenspan Says he was Wrong on Regulation.” (The piece is critiqued by economist Dean Baker, who continuously warned of the ramifications of the housing bubble since early in this decade.) ROBERT AUERBACH Professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, Auerbach wrote the…

JOHN BONIFAZ A coalition of Pennsylvania voters and civil rights groups, led by the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania, yesterday filed a lawsuit in federal court in Philadelphia seeking to ensure that voters receive emergency paper ballots on Election Day when 50 percent or more voting machines become inoperable at any polling site in the…

JOHN R. MacARTHUR MacArthur is publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author of the new book “You Can’t Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America.” MacArthur said today: “Obama’s number one bundler is Goldman Sachs. He is advised on economics by Robert Rubin, the extremely wealthy director and senior counselor of Citigroup, the former…

LAWRENCE NORDEN Norden is the director of the Voting Technology Project at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center, Common Cause and Verified Voting recently issued a 50-state report card that grades each state on its preparedness for election system breakdowns. Norden said today: “There’s no question that in the last few years, election…