democracy

Ari Melber of The Nation adds his thoughts to growing speculation about the future role of Barack Obama's unprecedented army of linked-in netroots supporters. "More than a million people asked for campaign text messages on their cellphones. Two million joined MyBO, a website fusing social networking with volunteer work, while more than 5 million supported Obama's profile on social sites like Facebook. Most famously, 13 million voters signed up for regular e-mails, fundraising pitches and other communications. On election day, a staggering 25 percent of Obama voters were already directly linked to him -- and one another -- through these networks. Campaigns largely dissolve after elections, but this infrastructure remains intact. ... Since the election his aides have been experimenting with how to use the networks, for governance and for postcampaign politicking. ... After the election, half a million activists responded to an e-mail survey about the road ahead. The most popular goal was to help the administration 'pass legislation,' according to campaign manager David Plouffe." Other liberal online campaigners include MoveOn with an email list of millions that supported Obama's election and that is working to promote Obama's legislative agenda.

As part of its bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China pledged to expand press freedom. (To see how that went, read our 2008 Falsies Awards, in which China won dishonorable mention.) Now that the Games are over, "China has resumed blocking access to the Internet sites of some foreign media," including the BBC, Voice of America, Hong Kong's Ming Pao and Asiaweek. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the sites have been blocked because they broke Chinese laws, such as "recognizing Taiwan as an independent nation." He added that if the foreign sites "exercise self-discipline," they would enjoy "better Internet cooperation." An Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch observed that with the Olympics over, "The spotlight has moved out of China. ... It's easier to suppress dissent when you don't have 10,000 journalists in town." Perhaps concerned that its weakening economy will embolden dissidents, China is cracking down. Authorities have arrested and harassed signatories of an online appeal, "Charter 08," which calls for multiparty democracy and greater freedoms in China.

The Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the peak body for PR professionals and lobbyists in the UK, is horrified that the opposition Conservative Party is proposing that government agencies be banned from hiring lobbyists. APPC is urgently seeking a meeting with the shadow minister for the cabinet office, Nick Hurd, after he told the Times that "the hiring of lobbyists by government bodies to grab more government cash is a financial scandal." The controversy follows the Conservative Party documenting that state-funded agencies had spent over £9.7 million (US$14.4 million) on at least 71 separate contracts with lobbying firms over a five-year period. Hurd has proposed that, if the Conservative Party is elected, it would emulate the Byrd Amendment, which banned U.S. government agencies from hiring lobbyists. The amendment was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1989.

The election of Barack Obama as America's next president has prompted a number of analyses of what has been described as "one of the most effective presidential campaigns that's ever been run." Now the Obama team is showing that it intends to use some of the same new internet technologies that made it "kind of the Google of politics" to reinvent the way the White House communicates with the public. The presidential inauguration committee has launched "a campaign-style social networking web site, pic2009.org." They've created another website, change.gov, to communicate with the public during the transition period until Obama takes office. And as Micah Sifry noted on Wednesday, change.gov is starting to "go interactive, intensively. ... A few hours ago, the Change.gov blog led with a post called 'Join the Discussion' and pointed readers to a video from two members of the health care transition team," which invites readers to "join the discussion" with suggestions for how the healthcare system should be changed. Already the forum has attracted thousands of comments. "Imagine what happens if those numbers -- on not just any 'centralized site' but the one that symbolically and perhaps literally has the attention of the President-elect -- start climbing into the five- and six-digits," Sifry writes. "Before our eyes, we are witnessing the beginning of a rebooting of the American political system."

In November 2005, activists from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network peacefully protested against the failure by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr to significantly curb pollution from coal-fired power stations in Maryland. After their protest, Maryland police categorized them as terrorists and added them to a federal database of people to be monitored. Lisa Rein and Josh White report that other groups spied on by an undercover police operation included those opposing the death penalty, the Iraq war, "the manufacture of cluster munitions, globalization and the government's expansion of biodefense research at Fort Detrick." The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, which has been acting for some of those spied on, commented that records made public so far reveal the "infiltration of activist meetings, dossiers on activists’ political affiliations ... and more spying on individuals who have never committed any crime and were never suspected of committing any crimes."

A coalition of open records, good government and research groups submitted "a lengthy to-do list for President-elect Barack Obama and Congress." Their recommendations include overturning the "Ashcroft memo," which made it easier for federal agencies to refuse requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA); rescinding Executive Order #13233, which limits access to historical presidential records; directing the new Attorney General "to advise agencies how to increase the presumption of openness" under FOIA; encouraging Congress "to establish a criminal penalty for willful concealment or destruction of non-exempt agency records requested under FOIA." The Obama transition website, Change.gov, "once contained pages describing how it would use technology to provide more information to the public," reports ProPublica, "but the transition team took down the pages to 'retool' them." The since-disappeared transparency ideas included establishing a public "contracts and influence" database of federal contractors and their lobbying expenditures, and posting all non-emergency bills on the White House website for five days, before they're signed into law.

What went wrong with voting in last night's U.S. elections, and what went right? The election itself is over except for a few recounts, but the election process is still being scrutinized.

The Election Protection Wiki, online at http://www.EPWiki.org, is the Center for Media and Democracy's non-partisan collaboration of citizens, journalists and researchers, a one-stop-shop for exposing voter suppression and other threats to election integrity. We collect just the straight facts that are fully referenced to external, verifiable sources. You can get directly involved; we need your help!

On Election Protection Wiki you'll find links to sites such as Voter Suppression Wiki and TwitterVoteReport, a non-partisan coalition using real-time text-messaging to reveal what's working, what's not, and what needs to be done at polling places to ensure that everyone's vote is counted. See the full list of Election protection and reform organizations and go to our Election Protection map and click on the state of your choice to find its election protection and reform groups.

The British government's second public consultation on nuclear power, "which was run by a company linked to the Prime Minister's personal pollster," has been criticized for material that was "inaccurately or misleadingly presented." In response to a complaint from the environmental group Greenpeace, Britain's Market Research Standards Board ruled that the Opinion Leader firm presented "imbalanced" information that risked leading focus group participants "towards a particular answer." Prime Minister Gordon Brown's pollster, Deborah Mattinson, used to co-chair the firm and "remains a senior figure in its parent company." The Brown government supports building new nuclear plants. The Liberal Democrat energy spokesman said the Standards Board ruling "shows that the Government isn't even competent enough to rig its own consultation." The Brown government says the ruling won't affect its nuclear plans, declaring that "the outcome of the consultation stands." The second consultation was launched after Britain's High Court ruled the government's first consultation on nuclear power a "sham."

Professor Andrew Appel of the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University has released a previously-suppressed report finding that electronic voting machines in New Jersey make it easy to engage in undetectable election fraud. "It takes about 7 minutes, using simple tools, to replace the computer program in the AVC Advantage with a fraudulent program that cheats," states the report, which was written by Appel and five other leading computer security experts. The researchers completed their report on September 2 but were forbidden until Friday from publishing it by a court order that has finally been reversed on appeal. The local elections board in Princeton has also denied a request by Appel and CITP fellow Grayson Barber to observe poll workers on election night, stating that the election is "too important" to permit extra people in the polling place. "In particular, they cited Andrew's status as an expert on Sequoia voting machines as a 'concern,'" Grayson noted. You can monitor this and other U.S. election integrity concerns on the Election Protection Wiki.

Volunteers at the Center for Media and Democracy's Election Protection Wiki have collected unbelievable reports of voter suppression nationwide in the nine days since it went online.

Among the reports on the EPWiki:

• In Colorado and New Mexico there are not enough voting booths or machines for Election Day.
• Students in Virginia are receiving probing questionnaires from voting officials falsely implying they don't have the right to vote there.
• In Ohio alone, more than 600,000 newly-registered voters are threatened with purging.
• There are reports of sometimes-illegal mass voter roll purges in Michigan, New Mexico, Florida, Georgia, Colorado and other states. Several states are even purging voter rolls of people who are "Bob" on driver's licenses and "Robert" on voter registration forms.
• Officials in Indiana are avoiding setting up polling places in areas of the state heavily populated by minorities.
• The Republican Party in Michigan planned to challenge the registrations of every voter whose home had been foreclosed on recently.
• ACORN, which has been held out as a bogeyman for voter fraud (though only 26 TOTAL cases of voter fraud were prosecuted nationwide from 2002 - 2005), has bad registration rates below the California Republican Party's and a lawsuit alleging fraud in 2004 was dismissed by a judge for lack of merit?
• And, of course, there are ongoing worries across the country about electronic voting machines.

The Election Protection Wiki (at EPWiki.org) is the only website trying to document and centralize these reports, which were found scattered across the Web by volunteers. We are trying to get everything ready so activists, advocates and the media have a central place to go on Election Day for immediate information about these issues.

We need your help to collect more reports. No experience is necessary and CMD staffers are here to help with ready-to-go simple tasks and any support you need. Please join us in protecting the right to vote - go to EPWiki.org and click on "things you can do" to begin.