Arizona Election Fraud: Supervisors Accept County Shenanigans, Reject a Proper Audit

J.T. Waldron

The Pima County Board of Supervisors refused to conduct a proper hand-count audit of the 2012 general election ballots. This decision was made despite seasoned statisticians and computer experts in its own Election Integrity Commission indicating that the county's elections are not verifiable in their current state.

The primary reason? Timing. Pima County's use of this rationale is ironic because it appears that the county was in complete control its timing. As EIC member Mickey Duniho states in reference to Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry:

"Mr. Huckelberry unilaterally postponed the recommendation without consulting or informing the Election Integrity Commission. This violated the Commission’s right to advise the Board of Supervisors without interference, and it also violated basic rules of courtesy."

This postponement plays a role in solidifying the board's argument that 'it's too late'.

Huckelberry's recent memo, which is rife with distortions and errors, states that it's impossible to do a hand count audit. Such hyperbole was thoroughly eviscerated by Mickey Duniho's point by point response to the erroneous memo. Duniho provided his rebuttal in writing to each member of the board of supervisors.

"Your elections are being run by a sociopath," said EIC member Jim March. Elections Director Brad Nelson was held under a burning magnifying glass in the most recent Board of Supervisors meeting as March leveled a series of new charges against Nelson. First, March states that Nelson had his county-issued credit card yanked for fraud, yet he still keeps his job.

Other charges had to do with Nelson's management style with his employers. According to March, employees are willing to recall how they were retained because it was easy for Nelson to "make them cry" and "that's something he needed to do on occasion". Finally, March accused Nelson of breaking the law as he states that Nelson would ask temporary staff and poll workers to switch their party allegiance so that he can continue to retain these employees for future tasks.

Jim March's history of careful, meticulous analysis  before calling any one person's reputation into question adds significant weight to these charges.  We can only hope that an independent investigation into Brad Nelson's activities will take place. 

The only Supervisor concerned about having verifiable elections for this elections cycle was Ray Carroll, a Republican who has consistently moved to transcend party affiliation and improve transparency.

Arizona solidifies its national reputation as the 'meth lab of democracy' because those who can intervene refuse to make direct, immediate, substantive changes to the elections process.

Arizona Election Fraud: Pima County Issues Memo with Numerous Factual Errors

Memo King
Chuck Huckelberry

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry's primary PR activity occurs through the construction of memo's addressed to various department heads within his own purview.  These memos, of course, wind up in the hands of specific local press outlets.  Local  outlets provide nice fluff pieces favoring Pima County in exchange for continued access and future reservations at Pima's own PR staff's trough after ad sales for these less than substantive reports hit the dumpster.

In his latest offering, Huckelberry seems to have outdone himself with the number of distortions, omissions, and factual errors.  This latest memo is part of an exchange with the public as it learns about Pima County's efforts to circumvent its own Election Integrity Commission to obtain a waiver from sorting early ballots by precinct.   The following is retired NSA analyst Mickey Duniho's correction of factual errors in Huckelberry's memo:

(1)  Mr. Huckelberry stated that “one member” of the Pima County Election Integrity Commission “has championed the concept of sorting early ballots by precinct,” implying that only one member of the Commission really cares about such matters. He omitted the fact that the October 26 EIC recommendation was approved by a 7-0 vote of the EIC members.

(2)  In describing 300-400 staff hours to sort early ballots as an impossible task, Mr. Huckelberry omitted the fact that 300-400 hours of work by a dozen people could be accomplished in three days, and that the cost of 300-400 hours of work would be on the order of $2,000-$3,000. Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of time required to sort the ballots also omitted any reference to F. Ann Rodriguez’s offer to provide lists of precincts represented in the various batches, which would enable workers to extract ballots for a few precincts rather than sort all precincts. After extracting ballots for the chosen precincts from a batch, workers could move on to the next batch of ballots. This could shorten the time and reduce the effort required to select a small number of precincts for hand counting. With Ms. Rodriguez’s assistance, the time required might be only two days, since the three-day estimate is based on sorting all 288 precincts instead of just selecting a few precincts for the audit.

(3)  Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of $256,137 for hiring Runbeck to sort the ballots is factually incorrect. First, he based his estimate on 261,364 ballots, the total number of early ballots received at the time he wrote his memo; the EIC recommendation only referred to less than 200,000 early ballots received and processed by Election Day. Second, Runbeck’s price of $.98 per ballot is 100 times what it should be; it would make no sense for Pima County to pay Runbeck $200,000 to do a job that can be done in-house for $2,000. For $200,000, Pima County could buy several sorting machines.

(4)  Mr. Huckelberry’s estimate of $300,000-$500,000 to buy a sorting machine is a multiple at least five times too high. I asked Pitney Bowes about an earlier estimate of $125,000 given out by John Moffatt and was told that Pima County could buy a top-of-the-line Pitney Bowes sorting machine for “significantly less” than $125,000. The person I talked with, at Pitney Bowes Sales Headquarters, said the cost would depend on which features were included but that the cost would be on the order of $65,000.

(5)  Mr. Huckelberry’s distinction of sorting ballots in the envelopes versus out of the envelopes is incorrect. The sorter can handle ballots either way with equal ease.

(6)  Mr. Huckelberry disputed my report last week that the EIC members were not informed of the postponement of our proposal on the BOS agenda. He stated that we were notified on Nov 9. In fact, the EIC was informed only after we demanded an explanation of why the agenda published on Nov 8 did not contain the EIC recommendation. Mr. Huckelberry unilaterally postponed the recommendation without consulting or informing the Election Integrity Commission. This violated the Commission’s right to advise the Board of Supervisors without interference, and it also violated basic rules of courtesy.

(7)  Mr. Huckelberry’s statement that sorting early ballots is “impossible” is incorrect. The task is not impossible, merely tedious to do by hand. Mr. Huckelberry gave six reasons (the second two were actually the same reason, restated in different words) for avoiding the sorting of early ballots. None of these reasons is actually a valid argument for rejecting the EIC recommendation.

a.     The first reason: The fact that Pima County had already counted 100,000 ballots when the EIC made its recommendation is true but logically irrelevant to the current discussion.

b.    Reasons two and three: The risk of handling ballots in the face of a possible recount is listed as a reason for not sorting ballots but is logically erroneous. At this point, we are reasonably certain there will be no recounts and no legal challenges. In any case, an accusation of mishandling ballots would not be allayed by the County claiming that it did not touch the ballots while in its custody. A charge could easily be made that County election personnel manipulated the ballots while they were “in storage.” Sorting the ballots and performing a hand count audit by precinct is the only way to positively demonstrate that the ballots were counted honestly and that no manipulation of votes took place while the ballots were in Election Department custody.

c.     Reason four: That the audit should take place between the Hand Count Audit and the Canvass is true but logically irrelevant to your decision unless your decision is delayed until the date of your approving the Canvass, which it appears has been Mr. Huckelberry’s strategy all along.

d.    Reason five: The difficulties encountered by counters in the Hand Count Audit are well-known but not logically relevant to this discussion; they are manageable problems.

e.     Reason six: The difficulties of extracting early ballots for a precinct-based audit are real but manageable, and were considered manageable by the Election Integrity Commission before its recommendation was submitted to you.

(8)  In describing the sequence of events leading up to Pima County’s obtaining a waiver from the state requirement to sort early ballots by precinct, Mr. Huckelberry omitted the fact that Brad Nelson neither consulted nor even informed the EIC of the requirement or the waiver. In addition, Mr. Nelson’s arguments in his letter to the state that sorting is impractical are factually erroneous. Mr. Nelson claimed he could do a better hand count audit by not sorting the ballots but, in fact, the early ballot audit as currently performed is worthless in terms of confirming a lack of fraud in vote counting. It is also noteworthy that the Secretary of State’s Elections Director granted the waiver BEFORE Mr. Nelson wrote his justification letter, suggesting an improper sequence of events.

(9)  Mr. Huckelberry cited a successful hand count audit as proof that no further audit is needed, another distortion of fact. He touted the fact that Pima County counts four percent of polling place ballots; he omitted the fact that polling place ballots in this election made up only 27% of all the ballots cast; 70% of voters cast early ballots, and therefore a proper hand count audit of early ballots is needed to confirm the integrity of the overall election. Mr. Huckelberry also omitted the irrelevance of the current early ballot hand count audit to confirming a lack of fraud. [I might point out that the law requires an audit of 1% of all the early ballots issued (1% of 261,545 ballots would be 2,615 ballots) but Pima County only hand counted 1,985 early ballots. Not that it makes any difference, since the current early ballot hand count audit is useless for confirming an election’s honesty.]

(10)             In his concluding recommendation:

a.     Mr. Huckelberry said the election tabulation “is expected to continue for another 4 to 7 days.” In fact, processing of the ballots which your EIC recommended sorting and hand counting was completed by Election Day.

b.    Mr. Huckelberry referred to the physical impossibility of accurately selecting, sorting into precincts and auditing nearly 200,000 early ballots. In fact, the EIC’s recommendation could be satisfied by selecting and auditing approximately 2,000 ballots.

c.     Mr. Huckelberry reiterated the “risk of handling ballots when faced with possible recounts.” In fact, it appears there will be no recounts, and Pima County would be in a better position to defend itself against charges of malfeasance if it adopted a more transparent policy, following the state requirement to sort early ballots and audit by precinct instead of secretly obtaining a waiver from the state requirement.

d.    Mr. Huckelberry claimed the positive outcome of the present hand counts as a reason to not adopt the EIC recommendation, but the EIC took that into account when it made the recommendation. The present early ballot audit is worthless in terms of certifying the election’s integrity.

How does a community allow an institution like Pima County's government to display such arrogance with so many lies to the representatives?

Just to give you an idea of how absurdly simple it is to build a system that is far more verifiable than what we currently have, here is the ballot scanning presentation produced by CBS Miami:

Arizona Election Fraud: Mickey Duniho and Jim March Report Election Shenanigans to Pima County's Board of Supervisors

 County Board of Supervisors Comment for 11-13-2012

I have not spoken in this forum since I was appointed to your Election Integrity Commission four years ago. A sequence of events has brought me here today.

* * * * * * * *

The first event: In November 2011 the state added new election requirements, including one that counties must sort early ballots by precincts for the hand count audit. John Moffatt was involved, and reported to your commission on changes proposed and made – but did not report this new requirement to your commission.

The second event: In June and July 2012, Brad Nelson applied for and received a waiver from this requirement. Mr. Nelson neither consulted nor informed your commission of this action.

The third event: On October 26, with statistical evidence suggesting potential fraud nationally in computerized vote counting, an emergency meeting of your Election Integrity Commission unanimously approved a recommendation for today’s meeting that you order the sorting of early ballots and a precinct-based hand count audit to confirm the honesty of Pima County elections.

The fourth event: In response to a lawsuit the County included copies of two letters which revealed the existence of the new early ballot sorting requirement and Mr. Nelson’s successful request for a waiver of that requirement.

The fifth event: Without informing or consulting your Election Integrity Commission, your staff postponed your consideration of our recommendation to November 20.

The sixth event: In response to a query about why your Commission’s recommendation was missing from the November 13th agenda, Mr. Moffatt attributed the delay to ballot counting and possible recounts and challenges. The reasons given are clearly not relevant to delaying your consideration of our recommendation, and serve only to tighten the time frame in which to organize people to implement a precinct-based hand count audit before the ballots are moved to the Treasurer’s vault.

This sequence of events raises the question whether there is genuine importance or credence given to election integrity in our county. Your staff has been disrespectful to your Election Integrity Commission and by implication insubordinate to you.

The question now is whether you will take any action to address these acts of disrespect to you and the Election Integrity Commission you created four years ago, after listening to two years of public concern about the conduct of elections in Pima County, and after Pima County lost, at great taxpayer expense, a lawsuit having to do with election transparency.

If there is no election fraud to mask, there is no reason for Pima County’s continued tolerance of the obvious anti-transparency efforts demonstrated by your staff.

Thank you for your attention.

Michael A. Duniho

The State of U.S. Elections: Donna Branch-Gilby Talks About Why She Ran Against Supervisor Sharon Bronson

Arizona:  In light of Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson's campaign season shots at Republican rival Tanner Bell over money and politics, the public is slowly starting to learn that the real question should be "Who's your sugar daddy?"

COLORADO SETS THE STAGE FOR A BOGUS ELECTION

BlackBoxVoting

Colorado’s Secretary of State Scott Gessler
and Colorado State Rep. Kathleen Conti
Believe in America
Cheat for the America you believe in.

Bev Harris

Colorado election integrity and transparency is now officially out the window, with a series of corruption protection rules and new laws.

1. Let's begin with the unflappable Donetta Davidson, who collaborated with convicted embezzler Jeffrey Dean(1) to remove voter privacy, through a contract specification that required him to redo his absentee mail software in order to embed a method to tie voted ballots to the voters. This shifty business, which now includes all absentee ballots cast on Hart eSlate machines, has led to a blockade on ALL Colorado election accounting records (see #4, below).

2. Next, in a move that has most of us scratching our heads, Colorado Sec. State Gessler proposed new rules in December 2011 to remove requirements for continuous video surveillance.(2) Though billed as "cost saving," note that most video surveillance nowadays is simply piped into digital files stored on a Web site. Since cameras are already installed, there is no significant cost savings in allowing non-continuous surveillance.

3. Sec. State Gessler also decided to reduce the number of seals on voting machines,(2) to the chagrin of election integrity groups like Voter Action, whose investigations and litigation demonstrated vulnerabilities requiring the seals in the first place. The "cost savings" in this measure can be counted in pennies.

4. A number of protective accounting measures crucial for evaluating election tampering have been taken off the table though a new law to block election-related public records examination.

Donetta Davidson led the lobbying for this law. Davidson had become a commissioner of the U.S. Election Assistence Commission, then took a step down to take over the Colorado Clerks Association. In this capacity she led a fight to block the media and citizens from examining the ballots. And no wonder: She knew that due to changes made under her administration, private companies had marks embedded on the ballots enabling them to harvest data tying votes to voters.

Thanks to a lawsuit by Colorado citizen Marilyn Marks, of The Citizen Center, sponsored and assisted by Black Box Voting, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed right to examine ballots. Marks was shocked when she discovered that identifying marks on the ballots allowed her to immediately associate every voted ballot with the voter who cast it. Marks, The Citizen Center, (and Black Box Voting) are now involved in litigation to permanently prohibit this harvesting of personal political information. In the interim, Sec. State Gessler has required that the identifiers be removed for November 2012 only.

With ballot examination affirmed to be in the public domain, Davidson's next move was to block ballot examination until after all remedies had expired. Using her clout, she lobbied successfully for the removal of ballots -- AND OTHER CRUCIAL ELECTION RECORDS, SUCH AS POLL LISTS -- from any access by election watchdogs until 45 days after the election.(3)

One telltale sign of election tampering is when thousands more votes than voters show up. But in Colorado, neither the media nor the public will be allowed to examine the poll lists or the list of names for voters said to have voted absentee, until too late to do anything about discrepancies.

5. And then there is the matter of alleged Romney ties to the second-biggest voting machine manufacturer in America. These connections are being minimized by Internet outlets like Snopes, but the straight truth is that Hart Intercivic, the firm that supplies two-thirds of Colorado counties with their voting machines, is now owned by a spin-off of Bain & Company (H.I.G. Capital).(4)

A majority of Hart's directors are now H.I.G. guys, and the directors of H.I.G. are Romney bundlers and donors who don't hedge their bets by donating to any other presidential candidate.

This isn't the first time Romney has had his buddies in charge of crucial election processes this year. Some weeks after the misreported figures in the Iowa caucus, which incorrectly cited Romney as the winner, Black Box Voting uncovered that Romney staffers had been brought in to run the Iowa Caucus, and the Nevada Caucus too. Besides heading Romney campaign functions, these guys were associated with an odious Colorado political firm which narrowly escaped prosecution for maliciously misleading political ads.(5)

And the Romney affiliation with Hart Intercivic doesn't rule out his buddies -- or Obama's buddies -- or George Soros -- or the Chinese, for that matter -- owning the other companies. Election Systems & Software (ES&S) does not reveal who its owners are, and we don't know who owns Dominion either. ES&S directly handles voting machines in three Colorado counties; it co-produces elections on the old Diebold equipment with Dominion, with ES&S supplying technicians in some U.S. locations and Dominion in others. Dominion owns Sequoia Voting Systems (or does it? No one seems to be quite sure...), used in large metro Denver County and in Pueblo.(6) Confused? American elections are now so far removed from the hands of the people that self-governance is just a memory.

6. Romney's business buddies owning Colorado's main voting machine company demonstrates, at the very least, an appearance of impropriety, but it carries with it something more: Actual opportunity to alter results.

Unlike most Diebold voting machine locations, whose county technicians set up each election using voting company software, Hart has its customers send files directly to Texas, where its programmers and technicians have their way with the files, sending them back to the counties to put in their voting machines. This centralized control point does in fact enable tampering with results from a remote location. Paper ballots? Well, not all Colorado counties even have them, but thanks to Donetta Davidson and her cronies, they are off limits for human examination and will be interpreted only by the Hart machines.

United Nations should be kicked off US soil: US congressman

Press TV

Scrutinize us, will you?

Republican congressman Connie Mack has called on the US administration to stop funding the United Nations, saying the world body should be “kicked off US soil.”

Connie, who is the representative for Florida’s 14th congressional district, condemned the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for its plan to send monitors to polling places across the United States on Election Day to monitor the event.

OSCE, which is registered as an NGO with the UN, will send 44 observers across America to monitor the voting centers. The organization was asked by American civil rights groups to monitor the election, after being warned of “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans - particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities.”

The 45-year-old congressman stressed that the news should have outraged every American, because “the only ones who should ever oversee American elections are Americans.”

The Republican politician said that the idea that the UN “would be allowed, if not encouraged” to monitor the US election, “is nothing short of disgusting.”

“For years the United Nations has aggressively worked against the best interests of our country and many of our allies. The UN’s actions and intentions toward the United States have been nothing short of reprehensible," Connie added.

Connie is the Republican Senate nominee, running for 2012 US Senate election in Florida, which is scheduled be held alongside the 57th US presidential election on November 6.

CBS4 Investigates: Does Your Vote Count? The Recount Test

CBS Miami
Michele Gillen

INVERNESS (CBS4) – In the sleepy West Coast Florida town of Inverness, as horses graze and Spanish moss hangs still on a breezeless summer day, an elections experiment was about to get underway.


Lightening fast computer scanners, locked up ballots and a team of computer scientists from Boston, embarked on a first ever mission to verify that the votes cast in the August, Citrus County primary, are correct.

“Believe me we are not looking for trouble but we want to verify the results independently,” said Susan Gill, supervisor of elections in Citrus County.

She is one of 7 county supervisors across Florida, who agreed to allow a number of their elections to be part of the first large scale attempt to independently verify elections cast on paper ballots.



“Nelson Mandela once said ‘the thing looks impossible until it’s done.’ And we have done it,” the founder of Clear Ballot, Larry Moore told CBS4 Chief Investigator Michele Gillen.

CBS4 Investigates found the face of how America votes and whether or not every vote counts could be affected by a pioneering project unfolding in a room in which the news team camera captured this unique, independent, audit.

Gill explained that following the August election, state law required her to audit just one precinct in one race.

“One precinct, one race is not a terribly meaningful audit and we had 10 people for two days sorting the ballots so we could do that,” Gill told Gillen.

Now, Gill’s entire countrywide election, 26,000 ballots, will be scanned and audited in under three hours.

On ”audit” day, scanning began at 9:44 am. In essence, what unfolds is a high-speed, high-tech version of a hand re-count.

Asked what she would say to manufacturers who might claim that such an independent audit is not necessary Gill told Gillen, “I say, yes we do need to do that. If you have confidence in your product then you won’t be worried about us doing an audit with an independent verification.”

Haunting scenes from the 2000 Presidential Florida recount, of hanging chad ballots being examined, along with all hand recounts, could become obsolete.

One reason: the clear ballot method can instantaneously identify voter intent.

Projected onto the wall for all to see: votes cast in Citrus County for Connie Mack in the US Senate Race. Circled ovals, scribbles, check marks and X’s are visible, as are comment voters make, this one writing mouse next to Mack’s name and an empty oval. If a ballot is questionable, it is identified and examined on the spot.

“Human error is the real problem with the election process. As I say, I’ll give you perfect elections when you give me perfect voters,” Gill reflects.

Voter intent, is most critical in a close election.

“There’s nothing wrong with a close election. What’s wrong is when you can’t resolve it in a way that is transparent, quickly, cost effective and with integrity,” adds Moore.

Two hours and 38 minutes later, all 26,000 ballots had been recounted. It’s discovered that just one ballot had been missed on election night. For Susan Gill, the peace of mind is priceless.

“I think it’s wonderful. I think it’s really great and I think it’s a meaningful audit,” says Gill.

With 19 states deprived of exit polls, the blind are even blinder

Election Defense Alliance
JONATHAN SIMON

According to the "father of exit polling," the late Warren Mitofsky, exit polls are intended for academic analysis of voting patterns and opinions (e.g., what did 25 to 34 year-old white males regard as the most important issue?) and not as any sort of check on the validity of the votecounts. Unless, of course, you are anywhere else on Earth (other than America), where exit polls are routinely employed, often with the sanction of the government of the United States, as just such a check mechanism, and have frequently led to official calls for electoral investigations and indeed electoral re-dos.

In America, where votecounts in competitive and significant races consistently come out to the right of the exit polls (it is called the "red shift"), the media machine has waved off the exit polls, concluding, without so much as a quick peek under the hood of the vote-counting computers, that the exit polls must be "off" because they "oversample Democrats," conclusive evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. We're the Beacon Of Democracy, dammit--we don't need no stinkin exit polls! We're "one nation under God" so our elections must be honest!

Nonetheless, exit polls remain critical to whatever election forensics can be undertaken to assess the honest and validity of our concealed and partisan-controlled computerized vote counting system from election to election. This is because all "hard" evidence--memory cards, computer code, actual ballots where such exist, etc.--is strictly off limits to public investigation, being the protected proprietary dominion of a handful of secretive corporations (one of which is so aptly named "Dominion") with ties to the radical right.

So the announcement that this November the media consortium known as the National Election Pool (NEP) has canceled all exit polling in 19 states comes as a blow to "academic analysts" and election forensics experts alike. The non-exit poll states are AK, AR, DE, DC, GA, HI, ID, KY, LA, NE, ND, OK, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, WV, WY. Of course all these states are noncompetitive, solid reds or blues (with the exception of a Senate race or two) so what's the problem??

The problem is that Karl Rove now has 19 states to mine votes to cover a Romney popular vote loss (undermining and casting suspicion upon his easily arranged Electoral College "win"), without the remotest trace of the theft, not even the telltale "red shift". This was done in 2004 for Bush, and it showed up in the red shift in states like Alaska and New York, as millions of votes were shifted in noncompetitive states where there was little forensic vigilance. They'll likely need even more votes for Romney and, with the public now 100% blind to these 19 states, they'll have them by the millions.

The NEP and the networks will merely shrug and say, "Who needs exit polls (especially discredited exit polls) in noncompetitive states?" and "We needed to redeploy our limited resources." I feel their pain: exit polling is difficult/expensive and more so now with early/absentee voting and cellphones. Put it in context though: $2 billion per week for years to bring "democracy" to Iraq; you know $2 billion would buy approximately 200 years of biennial exit polls at their current cost here in the good old USA! I guess having democracy for seven generations in America is not worth one week in Iraq. Makes sense, doesn't it?

And, while we're at it, what a stupid way to insure democracy, a few volunteer democracy fans following along after the election circus with a forensic broom and dustpan, then having their evidence ignored or ridiculed by the media, which, just to show how accepting it is, accepts on 100% pure unadulterated blind faith every number that comes out of the partisan operated and controlled blackness that is our oh-so-convenient vote counting system. Again for that same $2 billion week in Iraq, we could fund hand-counted paper ballots (if we were unwilling to assume it as a civic responsibility on a par with jury duty) at a decent payscale for an entire generation.

Are we that cheap, that stingy, that lazy, when it comes to this democracy, this homeland that we profess to "love"? There is nothing to be done about all this but howls of protest. Am I wrong? Impotence--we're used to it; bend over.

Jonathan Simon
Election Defense Alliance

CBS4 Investigates: Palm Beach County’s 2012 Ballot Debacle

CBS Miami
Michele Gillen

Al Paglia yearned to hear that he had won the Wellington, Florida city council election.

“It was ecstasy I had 50 people at my house at 11:00 at night it finally came across the TV screen.” Paglia recalled. “On the election website Al Paglia upsets incumbent – it was wonderful.”

The supposed win took place earlier this year in March.



Even in the world of politics – his honeymoon was shorter than anyone could have imagined. Just days after being declared the victor in a city councilman race, he got a call saying he was indeed… a loser.

It was Palm Beach Supervisor of Elections, Susan Bucher, and her team who discovered the mistake. In two races, winners including Paglia were announced and certified… when they were actually the losers. Bucher said Palm Beach’s optical scan election system had – unbeknownst to anyone-mixed up the race results. As a result, the wrong winners and losers were called. When asked by CBS4 Investigative reporter, Michele Gillen, what is was like to declare the wrong winners? Bucher said, “It humiliating. It was awful. It was never our intent.”

Bucher is one of several election supervisors we’ve met, who are taking aim at Florida’s audit process — the review of the paper ballots– only a sampling is done, and only after elections are certified.

Bucher said that if the audit was done on all races there could be other elections where the wrong winner was chosen. However, what is most outrageous to Bucher is that this technical problem, she told Gillen, was known by the vendor. The company did not ever reveal this information to her.

“We took over this equipment in 2007. They never disclosed the error,” said Bucher “The company didn’t own up to it real quickly and neither did the state. And we had to prove that it was a software error and we did so.”

Bucher said its time to hold Florida accountable– the State of Florida tests and certifies the voting machines for the state. Florida is one of just a handful of states that opted out of the federal program that certifies voting machines… deciding to do it on its own. Bucher said she is not confident in the system and would love to change the system she uses. She also said that the pickings are slim when it comes to finding a better choice.

“What we’re finding out, is that there are problems with almost every system in the United States,” said Bucher. This issue is leaving some supervisors to shake their heads about the machines their constituents are voting on and how paper ballots in just random races will ever be checked.

“I’m a little bit concerned about the fact that we’re conducting random audits and we might not catch, in the future, any kind of software anomaly that could occur that would call the wrong winner,” Bucher said.

Candidates like Paglia are left to wonder if a change will ever come. “I hope to God it doesn’t happen in a few weeks with the presidential election,” Paglia said. Bucher said for that reason she refuses to be silent about her concerns.

“You know the first thing that they tell you is you’re going to scare the voters,” Bucher said. “Well you know what… we’re scared too.”

Victory! Political Files Go Online

Free Press
Molly Buckley

It’s here! It’s finally here!

Today’s the day we get our first glimpse into the deep, dark pockets of major network TV broadcasters all across the nation. The FCC’s online political files database launches today — and not a minute too soon.

In the post-Citizens United era, manipulative and misleading political ads are bombarding our public airwaves. Super PACs are throwing money at broadcasters at head-spinning rates. And with the 2012 presidential election looming, these rates are predicted to soar.

For decades, every broadcast TV station has been required to keep a “political file”: records detailing who has purchased political ad time from the station and how much they paid for airtime. Unfortunately, anyone wanting to see this information had to schlep down to their local stations to inspect it. And trust me, that’s no easy feat — some stations require advance appointments, some charge exorbitant fees for making copies and some keep their files so poorly organized that an outside set of eyes would have no idea which direction is up.

So how do we fix this problem and allow for more transparency and more convenience? Simple: Put the files online!

And the Federal Communications Commission agrees. This April, in response to the efforts of Free Press and other public interest groups, the agency voted to get the political files out of the filing cabinets and onto the Internet.

The FCC’s rule requires stations affiliated with the four major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) in the nation’s top 50 markets to post political ad records online starting today. The remaining stations can delay posting until 2014.

This decision is a huge step in the right direction — but the broadcasters fought it every step of the way, claiming the rule was too expensive and cumbersome to implement. In fact, the National Association of Broadcasters is currently in court challenging the rules — but Free Press has intervened in the case to help protect the FCC order.

While the ruling is a crucial win for media transparency, let’s be real here: It’s still the very first step in a long and extensive process. There are over 2,200 broadcast TV stations in the country. This rule requires only 200 of them to put their political files online as of Aug. 2. And the rule doesn’t require stations to upload all of their old files retroactively — it applies only to ads purchased from today forward.

Furthermore, an awful lot of political ad money will be spent in markets that are exempt from today’s deadline. Stations in small media markets that are big electoral battlegrounds (like parts of Ohio and Virginia)  have until 2014 to post their files online. Telemundo and Univision affiliates serving Spanish-speaking voters — a key electoral demographic — also have until 2014 to put their files online. This means that the millions of Americans who are about to get hit with political ads the most are left with no easy way to access information about local political ad spending.

To help fill those gaps in time for this election, Free Press has partnered with the Sunlight Foundation and the New America Foundation to recruit volunteers to collect files from the exempted stations in their own local TV markets. With the help of our activists all over the country, we’ve already started sorting and uploading these files to our user-friendly and accessible online database. Take a look and see if you can find out who’s been buying the rights to your eyes and ears. Or sign up here to find out how you can inspect the political files at your local stations.

Broadcasters have held the keys to our elections for too long; it’s about time we take them back. Maybe we can’t keep Super PACs from using their money to manipulate us, but with the help of the FCC, we can at least find out who’s trying to tell us what — and that’s a great first step.

Auditing the Fed Is a Sideshow: Who Audits the Auditors?

Daily Bell
Anthony Wile

No To Transparency:  Harry Reid vows to kill
bill to audit the Federal Reserve

On Wednesday, Ron Paul's bill to audit the Federal Reserve was overwhelmingly passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. The vote was 327 to 98. You would think that a bill with such overwhelming support would easily become law. But it won't, because Barack Obama and the Democrats plan to kill it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has already said that the Senate will not even consider the bill. But of course if Barack Obama called Harry Reid and told him that he wants this bill to get through the Senate so that he could sign it then Harry Reid would be singing a much different tune. Sadly, we all know that is not going to happen. Barack Obama's good buddy Ben Bernanke called the Audit the Fed bill a "nightmare scenario" last week, and Obama is certainly not going to do anything to upset Bernanke - especially this close to the election. – Daily Caller


An audit of the Federal Reserve would be nice but really it wouldn't change anything. In fact, it would likely prove a kind of sideshow from reality, which is that monopoly central banking should simply be abolished.
And that probably won't happen until people get so sick and tired of being driven into bankruptcy and despair that they begin to kick the doors down and arrest the criminals cowering inside.

And they ARE real criminals. The system is responsible for debasing currency the world over and driving billions into poverty and even suicide. In the West it has blighted the hopes and dreams of millions who scratched and saved and then found their portfolios devalued by half or whole on a single day.

But it is worse in Third World countries. The money never even trickles down in these countries. Billions of people live on literally a couple of dollars a day.

This despite the United Nations and other international institutions that are supposedly dedicated to eradicating poverty. In fact, these institutions create the poverty they supposedly wish to remove. They do so via institutionalized violence costing trillions. War is the health of the state but it sickens everyone else.
It's not as if people don't already know the depths of the depravity that is the modern money system.

There's really no justification for the Fed, a monopoly central bank that issues fiat money as it chooses.
The exposure is irrelevant to the evident reality. The reality is that a small group of white, middle aged men can never figure out how much money an economy needs at what price.

The reason to audit the Fed is to find out what "they" are up to. But we already know that. A limited audit examined transactions during 2008 when the world's financial system froze up. It found the Fed had loaned out more than 16 trillion dollars, almost interest free, to the "too big to fail" banks.

This is not exactly astonishing. The same men who have built this dysfunctional system handed out trillions to various cronies when the system was in danger of collapsing.

So here is what a Fed audit would discover: More of the same. It would likely also discover that a shadowy group of dynastic families control the workings of the Fed, as they do of other central banks, and use money-from-nothing to further implement world government.

Of course, even if an audit-the-Fed bill passed by some miracle it still wouldn't be effectively implemented. The best we've got is the "fox guarding the hen house," and that effectively precludes any real investigation into central banking, specifically or generally.

We can see this at work even with the audit-the-Fed bill the House just passed. Eight co-sponsors of the legislation actually voted against the bill and most of them, when contacted, refused to explain why.
This is to be expected. Money Power is a vast and intimidating force. If you want to get ahead in this world, one way to do it is to advance the agenda of Money Power, which seeks world government.

Money Power flourishes because it is resistant to the kinds of investigations offered by Ron Paul's audit. Money Power works busily many layers deep.

Money Power in aggregate is not fazed by an audit. An audit that blows up the current system would probably usher in a state-run gold standard or some new form of money, perhaps SDRs, also controlled by the power elite. Out of chaos, order ...

We don't know what societies would look like absent monopoly central bank money stimulation. The past 100 years have hyped the world's banking and industrial systems into overdrive. It's considered normal but there is nothing normal about China's empty cities or the razing of Detroit.

Long ago, the Rothschild family helped found the system under which we now labor but they've been aided and abetted by hundreds and thousands and then millions of others. The men at the top understand full well what is going on. Congress, both House and Senate, are complicit in what's taking place, which is no less than the slow-motion rape of the American people.

A Federal Reserve facility that can issue US$ 15 trillion in a weekend to preferred clients is not an entity that should stand another minute. And the political institutions that tolerate this sort of facility should be removed as well.

Congress is a bastion of bought-and-paid for front men. Those in Congress have created a US$ 3 trillion Leviathan that bestrides the world with tax collectors, murderous Intel agents, endless warfare and the poisoning of millions, including US vets, with depleted uranium.

Now this same Congress has brought down the curtain of fascism on the American people via "Homeland Security" with its groping, ID checks and poisonous radiation machinery.

This is the group that is supposed to audit the engine of this dysfunctional, murderous funding?
Even if it did, it wouldn't make any difference.

The cleansing must go far deeper. It starts with ... you.

Colorado Supreme Court Decision Assures That Ballots Remain Public Records

Aspen, Colo., June 28 ---The Colorado Supreme Court's decision has reaffirmed that election ballots are open public records. As a result, the public will be able to verify that untraceable votes are accurately interpreted and counted. This decision comes as election officials are preparing for the 2012 presidential election.

In September, 2011, the Colorado Appeals Court ruled that ballots are indeed open public records. The City filed requested that the Colorado Supreme Court reverse the decision. The Supreme Court has now decided not to hear the Koch v. Marks case. The Court chose to end the controversy in favor of election transparency.

"This is a welcome decision that reconfirms the vitality of the Colorado Open Records Act as a powerful tool that permits ordinary Coloradans to hold their state and local governments accountable," said Marks's attorney Robert A. McGuire of Denver.

"Colorado elections once again belong to the people. This decision puts to rest a long-standing controversy between the public and election officials across the state who improperly prohibit the public and press from verifying Colorado's elections. Just as Florida officials welcomed the press to analyze voted ballots in the 2000 Bush/Gore controversy, Colorado officials needed to accept similar transparency rights in our election battleground state," said Marilyn Marks, founder of Citizen Center, and plaintiff in the Aspen case that began in 2009.

"Colorado election officials have fought transparency, despite numerous pro-transparency court rulings and Secretary of State Gessler's guidance that anonymous, untraceable ballots are open public records. Voters' ballots must be untraceable, voted in private and counted in public, as the courts continue to affirm," Marks added.

The Court of Appeals awarded attorney's fees to Marks in an amount yet to be determined. Marks states that the fees incurred to date exceed $100,000. "Each party has well over $100,000 in resources invested in this litigation. The government must pay reasonable attorneys' fees when they improperly withhold records and the courts intervene. I trust that the City will want to put this controversy to rest and that we can come to a reasonable settlement without controversy that would be a further waste of public funds," Marks said.

The Court's decision is an important one for the work of Citizen Center, currently in litigation against the Secretary of State and six Colorado County clerks in Citizen Center v. Gessler, et al. The lawsuit seeks to vindicate Colorado voters' constitutional rights to a secret ballot. In recent years, many Colorado election officials have used computerized voting systems and record-keeping to compromise the voters' right to maintain private ballot choices and keep them secret from the prying eyes of government.

Secretary Gessler and the defendant clerks of Boulder, Chaffee, Eagle, Jefferson, Larimer, and Mesa claim that Colorado voters have no constitutional right to a secret ballot. These officials believe that Colorado election officials are not prohibited from knowing how individual voters' vote. "The Supreme Court of Colorado obviously disagrees with the outrageous position of these election officials," said Marilyn Marks. "We hope that the federal court will act in time to protect the 2012 presidential election from the clerks' improper continuing practices of creating traceable ballots."

Harvie Branscomb, election quality advocate who has worked with Marks since 2009 to seek the Aspen ballots for analysis of the Instant Runoff Voting process said, "The Supreme Court decision serves as a valuable reality check. Colorado election officials must now recognize that we ordinary citizens deserve the access we need to independently count our publicly owned and untraceable ballots."

Colorado Voter Group Trustee, Al Kolwicz, said, "The Court's decision strongly supports the concept that elections belong to the people, not to government bureaucrats."

Marks acknowledged the research, support and expertise provided by Bev Harris and BlackBoxVoting.org. as instrumental in helping achieve this victory. "The Colorado Project" of BlackBoxVoting.org also supports the efforts of Citizen Center through providing expertise and technical resources on matters of election transparency.

Citizen Center is a non-profit non-partisan organization based in Aspen, Colorado, with a focus on government transparency and election quality. For more information on The Citizen Center, visit:

http://www.thecitizencenter.com

Jim Mueller: Election officials, not machines, should count votes

The Cap Times
Jim Mueller

Dear Editor: In your June 20 editorial, you suggested 10 questions that the Legislative Audit Bureau study should answer about “real and potential irregularities.”

You missed the biggest, most important one: Are the machine-tabulated results the actual vote totals?
The best way to detect election fraud (not the nearly nonexistent voter fraud that the right-wingers use to distract us) is to allow our local election officials to legally count the votes and compare the totals to the machine tabulated results.

However, the voting machine companies, through their political allies, have turned our election laws upside down. The GAB has interpreted Wisconsin law to now be that it may be a felony for local election officials to count the votes to compare to the tabulated numbers created by the machines. By state law, optical scan ballots are put through the same machines that provided the tabulated results the first time.

There are numerous incidents of voting machines providing incorrect totals, accidentally and intentionally. In Pennsylvania, two people were convicted of felonies when they rigged the machines used in a “recount” to reproduce the original totals. Now, if a machine has a wireless modem, one person monitoring a “recount” can produce whatever totals they want.

The short-term protection against the election fraud of manipulated vote totals is citizen participation, citizens counting the votes as election officials handle the ballots on election night, at a recount or when citizens inspect the ballots under a public records request.

Over the long term, our laws need to be changed to require full transparency of the programming of the machines and the counting of our votes. The Legislative Audit Bureau should be encouraged to investigate these issues.

Jim Mueller
Wisconsin Counts! Protecting Wisconsin’s Elections

Google reports 'alarming' rise in censorship by governments

The Guardian
Dominic Rushe


Search engine company has said there has been a troubling increase in requests to remove political content from the internet

Over six months Google complied with 47% of requests
for content removal and 65% of court orders.

There has been an alarming rise in the number of times governments attempted to censor the internet in last six months, according to a report from Google.

Since the search engine last published its bi-annual transparency report, it said it had seen a troubling increase in requests to remove political content. Many of these requests came from western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

It said Spanish regulators asked Google to remove 270 links to blogs and newspaper articles critical of public figures. It did not comply. In Poland, it was asked to remove an article critical of the Polish agency for enterprise development and eight other results that linked to the article. Again, the company did not comply.

Google was asked by Canadian officials to remove a YouTube video of a citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. It refused.

Thai authorities asked Google to remove 149 YouTube videos for allegedly insulting the monarchy, a violation of Thailand's lèse-majesté law. The company complied with 70% of the requests.
Pakistan asked Google to remove six YouTube videos that satirised its army and senior politicians. Google refused.

UK police asked the company to remove five YouTube accounts for allegedly promoting terrorism. Google agreed. In the US most requests related to alleged harassment of people on YouTube. The authorities asked for 187 pieces to be removed. Google complied with 42% of them.

In a blog post, Dorothy Chou, Google's senior policy analyst, wrote: "Unfortunately, what we've seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data, in 2010, we noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it's not.

"This is the fifth data set that we've released. Just like every other time, we've been asked to take down political speech. It's alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect – western democracies not typically associated with censorship."

Over the six months covered by the latest report, Google complied with an average of 65% of court orders, as opposed to 47% of more informal requests.

Last month Google announced it was receiving more than one million requests a month from copyright owners seeking to pull their content from the company's search results.

Fred von Lohmann, Google's senior copyright counsel, said copyright infringement was the main reason Google had removed links from search terms.

He said the company had received a total of 3.3m requests for removals on copyright grounds last year, and was on course to quadruple that number this year. The company complied with 97% of requests.

SC justices scold GOP lawyer for ignoring order

The State
Seanna Adcox

As if it makes a difference.

South Carolina Supreme Court justices on Monday scolded a Republican Party lawyer for appearing to ignore a court order, and weighed whether to boot more candidates from primary ballots just one week before voters go to the polls.

The state high court heard arguments Monday on a case brought by Florence County Democrats. It accuses the county's Republican Party of defying the justices' order last month by certifying candidates for the ballot who had not properly filed economic disclosure papers.

The justices seemed most concerned with the practicality of enforcing their ruling, noting that absentee ballots have already been sent out. A decision could come as early as Tuesday. The primary is June 12. No matter what their ruling, it's expected to result in more lawsuits.

Florence County Democrats contend they obeyed the earlier order, decertifying some candidates as the county's Republican leaders recertified everyone. While the case heard Tuesday involved only Florence County, party leaders in other counties are suspected of doing the same.

Chief Justice Jean Toal chastised GOP attorney Kevin Hall, saying justices are puzzled by his written assurance to the court that the Republican Party carefully followed the May 2 ruling.

"It turns out that's not so. We're disappointed in you and your client," Toal said in an opening statement to Hall. "We feel you've let us down in terms of being straight with the court."

Other justices also pounced. Justice Don Beatty called the Republican attorney's argument creative but foolish, and said the document alleging careful compliance was an insult to the court's intelligence. He believes sanctions are in order.

At issue is a 1991 state law requiring candidates to turn in a "statement of economic interest" - meant to show voters any potential conflicts of interest - when they file their candidacy. The law exempted incumbents at all government levels, who must annually file the forms by April 15. Legislators say the law was written that way to avoid duplication in election years. But it contributed to confusion after a 2010 law required online filing. While the intent was to reduce paperwork, the Legislature didn't match up separate sections of the law pertaining to annual and candidate filing.

Arizona Election Officials Call Cops On Man Recording Them

The man was asking for public records regarding questionable election

Pixiq
Carlos Miller




Jim March, a member of the election watchdog group Black Box Voting, entered the Coconino County Elections Department in Arizona this week to request some public records regarding a recent election in which questionable tactics were involved.

He was accompanied by at least one person with a video camera, which prompted two public officials to tell him he wasn’t allowed to record.

Naturally, this makes for an entertaining video that we probably otherwise would never have seen.
It starts off with Candace Owens, Coconino County Recorder, confronting him, ordering him to turn off the camera, threatening to call police.

Then Patty Hansen, Coconino County Elections Director, informs him of the same, also threatening to call police.

A cop eventually comes, informing them that he would document it all in a “police report, but pretty much leaves it at that.

This is how March explains it on his Youtube description:

Getting public records out of the Coconino County Elections Department (a division of the County Recorder's Office) is like pulling teeth even without a camera. WITH a camera, it's like pulling teeth on a rabid wolverine. They've made a common mistake: "you don't have a right to film me without my permission"...well no, not true - not in a public place when you're doing a public job as a public official!

As to the public records: the main thing we've found is the use of a USB memory stick repeatedly the night before election night, on election night and for five *hours* the next day (when provisions were being processed - and in one election provisionals made up 20% of the vote). Each time the USB memory stick is used, it's a violation of election laws: in Arizona voting systems have to be certified and remain un-connected to any other system. With good reason: updates and anti-virus software aren't allowed. The only real security is an "air gap" between that system and the outside world and the county repeatedly violated it. Worse, each time they used it they did multiple insertions and removals in a pattern that suggests not just "doing a backup" or "uploading results", but rather copying critical files back and forth and very possibly modifying them on other systems. The main vote database is in MS-Access format and anybody with a copy of MS-Access on another system could literally do anything they want to the outcome of the vote - especially in the all-mail-in elections in Flagstaff and elsewhere.

But beyond that: these videos weren't taken during peak election times. During the main vote-processing observation period it's crucial to be able to pull out a camera and document something funky without lunatics screaming at you that they're going to call the cops, and then wondering if said cop will be a psycho. In this case, the cops called actually realized that "Photography Is Not A Crime" but the election officials still didn't seem to fully get it.

A repeat visit will be required.

Let's see if Owens and Hansen learn the law by the next time he visits.

---

Please send stories, tips and videos to carlosmiller@magiccitymedia.com.
CARLOS MILLER'S LEGAL DEFENSE FUND
I am immersed in a legal case where I not only want to clear my criminal charges stemming from my arrest in January, but I want to sue the Miami-Dade Police Department for deleting my footage, which I was able to recover.

My goal is to set some type of precedent to ensure this does not happen as often as it does today where cops simply get away with it.

So if you would like to contribute, please click on the "donate" button below and contribute whatever you can afford. 

You can also contribute to my Legal Defense Fund by purchasing a photographer rights lens cloth and/or laminated card to wear around your neck like a press badge through Zap Rag.Please write "carlos3" in the comments section of the Paypal transaction to ensure I receive a portion of the sale.

Bradley Manning: a show trial of state secrecy

The Guardian
Michael Ratner

On 24 April, a hearing in one of the most important court martial cases in decades will take place in Fort Meade, Maryland. The accused faces life in prison for the 22 charges against him, which include "aiding the enemy" and "transmitting defense information". His status as an alleged high-profile whistleblower and the importance of the issues his case raises should all but guarantee the proceedings a prominent spot in major media, as well as in public debate.

Yet, in spite of the grave implications, not to mention the press and public's first amendment right of full and open access to criminal trials, no outside parties will have access to the evidence, the court documents, court orders or off-the-record arguments that will ultimately decide his fate. Under these circumstances, whatever the outcome of the case, the loser will be the transparency necessary for democratic government, accountable courts and faith in our justice system.

In the two years since his arrest for allegedly leaking the confidential files that exposed grand-scale military misconduct, potential war crimes and questionable diplomatic tactics, army private Bradley Manning has been subjected to an extremely secretive criminal procedure. It is a sad irony that the government's heavy-handed approach to this case only serves to underscore the motivations – some would say, the necessity – for whistleblowing like Manning's in the first place.

The most well-known of the leaked files, a 39-minute video entitled "Collateral Murder", depicts three brutal attacks on civilians by US soldiers during the course of just one day of the Iraq war. The footage, recorded from the cockpit of a US Apache helicopter involved in the attacks, shows the killing of several individuals, including two Reuters journalists, as well as the serious injury of two children. Beyond the chilling images of US soldiers eagerly pleading for chances to shoot, the release of this footage placed a spotlight on the military's blatant mischaracterization of the events, in which a spokesman claimed that there was "no question" that the incident involved engagement with "a hostile force", and underscores the vital role that public scrutiny plays in government accountability.

As an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and a legal adviser to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, I continue to attend Manning's hearings and can only describe them as a theater of the absurd: the trial involves numerous and lengthy off-the-record conferences, out of sight and hearing of the press and public, after which the judge provides an in-court summary that hardly satisfies standards of "open and public". Perhaps more remarkable is the refusal even to provide the defense with a pre-trial publicity order signed by the judge – an order that details what lawyers can and cannot reveal about the case. Yes, even the degree to which proceedings should be kept in secret is a secret, leaving the public and media chained in a Plato's Cave, able only to glimpse the shadows of reality.

The press and advocacy groups, however, have not been quiet about the trampling of their rights. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, on behalf of 46 news organizations, urged the Department of Defense to take measures that would allow the news media to view documents prior to court arguments. The committee pointed out that the trial for the "alleged leak of the largest amount of classified information in US history" is of "intense public interest, particularly where, as here, that person's liberty is at stake". The Center for Constitutional Rights, too, has requested access in the interest of an "open and public" trial, but neither appeal has been answered.

This is a clear violation of the law, but it will likely take burdensome litigation to rectify this lack of transparency. The US supreme court has insisted that criminal trials must be public, and the fourth circuit, where this court martial is occurring, has ruled that the first amendment right of access to criminal trials includes the right to the documents in such trials.

The greater issue at hand is why this process should be necessary at all. As circuit judge Damon Keith famously wrote in Detroit Free Press v Ashcroft, "Democracies die behind closed doors." Yet it is evident from the many layers of secrecy around Manning's arrest, imprisonment and prosecution that the government shows no sign of relinquishing its claimed powers to obscure rightfully transparent judicial proceedings. The doors appear to be tightly shut.

Unless we challenge the growing culture of secrecy within our government, and counter the ever-increasing, reflexive claims of "national security" by claiming our own constitutional rights, we risk finding those doors shut indefinitely.

Moyers: Media Giants Fight Proposal That Could Shed Light on Who's Buying Our Elections

Alternet
Bill Moyers

The new rule would require the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates in the top 50 markets to make their files on political advertising available on line immediately. 

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about how the media giants who own your local commercial television and radio stations have been striking like startled rattlesnakes at an FCC proposal that would shed a light on who’s buying our elections. The proposed new rule would make it easier to find out who’s bankrolling political attack ads by posting the information online.

The stations already have the data and are required by law to make it public to anyone who asks. But you can get only it by going to the station and asking for the actual paper documents – what’s known as “the public file.” Stations don’t want to put it online because — you guessed it — that would make it too easy for you to find out who’s putting up the cash for all those ads polluting your hometown airwaves.

If approved, the new rule would require the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates in the top 50 markets to make their files on political advertising available on line immediately. Other stations would have a two-year grace period.

In the meantime, the mighty giants of broadcasting have been fighting back. A number of senators serving the industry have spoken up against the proposal and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) — led by their top lobbyist and president, the frozen food millionaire and former Oregon Republican Senator Gordon Smith – have been meeting with commissioners urging them to scuttle its proposal or at least water it down until it means nothing.

As Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic magazine wrote:

“The arguments against transparency offered by the networks show that, having experienced the windfall of advertising dollars that Citizens United unleashed, they have little interest in meeting their legal and ethical responsibility to serve the public interest.”

Army Tried to Delete Bales From Web After Arrest

Military
David Goldstein and Matthew Schofield

WASHINGTON -- Besides waiting nearly a week before identifying the Army staff sergeant accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers, the U.S. military scrubbed its websites of references to his combat service.

Gone were photographs of the suspect, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, as well as a recounting in his base's newspaper of a 2007 battle in Iraq involving his unit, a report that quoted him extensively.
But they weren't really gone.

Given the myriad ways that information remains accessible on the Internet, despite the best efforts to remove it, the material about Bales was still out there and available, such as in cached versions of Web pages. Within minutes of the Pentagon leaking his name Friday evening, news organizations and others found and published his pictures, the account of the battle - which depicts Bales and other soldiers in a glowing light - and excerpts from his wife's personal blog.

So why did the Pentagon try to scrub Bales from the Internet in the first place?

The military said its intention in removing the material wasn't to lessen the Army's embarrassment over the horrific attack - nine of the victims were children - but to protect the privacy of Bales' family.
"Protecting a military family has to be a priority," said a military official, who like several interviewed for this story spoke only on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

"I think the feeding frenzy we saw after his name was released was evidence that we were right to try. ... Of course the pages are cached; we know that. But we owe it to the wife and kids to do what we can."

A second Pentagon official acknowledged that one of the reasons for the delay in releasing Bales' name was to remove references to his Army service from the Internet. But when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan was arrested in the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, the Pentagon released his name immediately.

St. Charles MO Hijacked Caucus 2012 - No Video Allowed

Kenneth Suitter was required to turn off his recording device or be arrested. As you can hear from this video, the crowd felt it was OK to record this OPEN, PUBLIC, TRANSPARENT meeting.