Simultaneously, at the stroke of 8pm ET, all of the major TV news networks and news agencies declared Mitt Romney the winner of the all-important "First-in-the-Nation" GOP New Hampshire primary.

It's so important, in fact, that the "winner" was declared before any of the optically-scanned paper ballots --- 90% of votes in the state are tallied by easily-hacked Diebold voting systems, which sometimes simply just drop votes, as programmed by a company with a criminal background --- were examined by any human being to make certain the results actually reflected the voters' intent. (In NH in 2008, they often did not.) The vast majority of them hadn't even been tallied at all yet by one of those secret vote counting computers, as the news outlets declared their winner of the NH GOP primary based on Exit Poll results.

You remember Exit Polls, right? They're the things that, as we were told over and again back in 2004, are neither accurate nor reliable for use in selecting the winner of elections. In NH in 2008, we were told they were wrong as well.

Nevertheless, with 51% of precincts reporting (and, again, none of the paper ballots from any of the Diebold-tallied towns actually examined to make certain the computers tallied them correctly), the media-reported results declare Ron Paul coming in second, followed by Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and then Buddy Roemer.

One positive note: There was a dearth of problem reports, at least that I was able to find, coming from the polls today --- where voters enjoyed the freedom to both register and vote on the very same day, and no voter was denied their right to cast their legal vote due to a lack of Photo ID in the "Live Free or Die" state.

And one cautionary note: As usual, our standard reminder that concerns about tallies and related problems do not often come to light until days, weeks (and sometimes even months) after Election Day. But for now, if you trust the results of your elections to Exit Polls, Diebold voting systems and LHS --- the private, unaccountable company whose Vice President Ken Hajjar, a convicted drug trafficker, was barred from working on elections in the State of Connecticut after leaving profane remarks here in comments at The BRAD BLOG in 2007 --- which programs them, well, there you have it.

It could be worse. It could be South Carolina...

Poor Buddy Roemer. The former Lousiana Governor, 4-term U.S. Congressman and now GOP Presidential candidate who, even though he's out-pacing Texas Governor Rick Perry in the latest NH pre-election polls, was still not allowed to participate in either of last weekend's GOP Presidential debates, can't catch a break.

For a while this morning, thanks to what National Journal describes as "a glitch", Google was displaying "Results for New Hampshire Republican Primary" with "100% of precincts reporting" during some web searches.

The "results" showed Newt Gingrich finishing first, followed by Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, John Huntsman, Michele Bachmann (who has dropped out of the race) and then Mitt Romney (currently leading in the pre-election polls) in 6th place. Thereafter Perry and some eight obscure candidates are listed --- but not Buddy Roemer!

Adding insult to injury, the "results" glitch --- which, National Journal reports, had been corrected by 7:05am ET --- were coming up this morning during searches for "buddy roemer"!...

Clearly, the results displayed by Google this morning do not reflect the actual intent of Granite State voters. On the other hand, they are at least as well-verified as the computer-reported results of 90% of the paper ballots cast will be tonight when the media announces their "winner" of the "First-in-the-Nation" primary --- based on wholly unverified Diebold op-scan results --- after the close of all polls this evening at 8pm ET (some close at 7pm ET).

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For those masochists who'd like to relive all the "fun" of the 2008 New Hampshire primary election disaster, when Hillary Clinton defied dozens of independent pre-election polls and even same day Exit Polls to inexplicably be named the "winner" over Barack Obama in the "First-in-the-Nation" primary, you can check out an index of the key reports in our exhaustive coverage here.

It was an election that Keith Olbermann characterized that night, while unverified Diebold optical-scan computer results were announced, as "a titanic upset victory." NBC's Tim Russert called it "the most stunning upset in the history of politics." Two days later, Chris Matthews, still justifiably mystified by the unverified computer-reported tallies, demanded an explanation from the pollsters and politicos he featured on his show that night:

"Why were the polls taken, of people coming out of the booth, so off?," Matthews tried to ask of each of his guests again and again and again. They had no good answers. Only speculation about how Clinton's teary moment at a campaign event over the weekend may have swayed the electorate. Though that still didn't explain the Exit Poll results taken the day of the election, as voters left the polling place.

All of the pollsters and pundits simply presumed that somehow, all of the independent polls had been wrong. None wondered if the results produced by the easily-hacked, oft-failed Diebold system were actually right. Even though, by that time, not a single one of the ballots tallied by those machines had been examined to make sure the computer had read them correctly.

A well-known pollster had confirmed to The BRAD BLOG, via an email, which we never received permission to run publicly, that he too was looking at the raw exit poll data throughout the day (raw exit poll data that us mere mortals outside of corporate media are no longer allowed to see) and it was clear to him also that Barack Obama, fresh off his victory at the Iowa Caucuses, was going to handily defeat Clinton.

He didn't. At least not according to the very same computerized optical-scan computer systems made by Diebold and programmed and serviced by a company with a criminal background, that will once again be used in tomorrow's all-important "First-in-the-Nation" primary contests in the Granite State...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

Did you know that Democrats will have a progressive alternative to President Barack Obama on the ballot in New Hampshire tomorrow? We're guessing you didn't.

Moreover, how ironic is it that Darcy G. Richardson, the only progressive Democrat with the courage to challenge the incumbent Democratic President in tomorrow's "First-in-the-Nation" primary, at one time managed the 1988 Presidential campaign of the late Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy? It was McCarthy's receipt of 42% of the vote in the 1968 NH Democratic primary which led to the announcement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for President.

How predictable is it, given the utter failure of the corporate owned media to fulfill its constitutionally envisioned function of insuring an informed electorate, that so few Americans are so much as aware of the fact that President Obama is not running "unopposed" in tomorrow's 2012 NH Democratic Primary?

Finally, what impact, if any, will there be for the fact that President Obama reportedly failed to timely submit a slate of national convention delegates to the NH Secretary of State as mandated by the NH Elections Code?...

Before we move on to the nightmare of democracy and secret, concealed "trust-me" vote-counting which will comprise the bulk of the "First-in-the-Nation" primary in New Hampshire, I'd like to offer a few final thoughts, for now, and for the record, on last Tuesday's "First-in-the-Nation" GOP Caucuses of Iowa. What happened there ought to remain firmly in all of our memories as we move into what is likely to be a nightmare of democracy and secret, concealed "trust-me" vote-counting across almost the entirety of the nation in this important Presidential Election year.

I had planned to post this article (or one like it) on Friday, when I was suddenly side-tracked by the report from Ron Paul supporter Edward True that he had noticed a mis-reported tally on the Iowa GOP's caucus results website. It was a small mis-report to be sure, but in a race that had previously been "called" for Mitt Romney by just 8 votes out of some 122,000 cast at 1,774 different caucus sites, the 20 vote error noticed by True and called to the attention of the media (and since confirmed by the Appanoose County GOP Chair) could prove to be decisive in the final certified total promised a week or so from now.

The discovery of the error --- a reporting error, apparently, as opposed to a counting error --- and the ability to quickly and independently verify the real tally of that particular precinct through a number of different, independent sources, is a tribute to the way the Republicans allowed their own voters to vote and those votes to be publicly counted.

As we spent some time detailing over the last week or two, the Iowa GOP, in a remarkable display of almost indescribable hypocrisy, allowed their voters to use processes they fight virulently against allowing for almost everybody else, particularly in elections where non-Republicans will be participating. In the Iowa Caucuses, however, where the party, not the state, sets all of their own rules for access, vote-casting and vote-counting, caucus-goers were allowed to register and vote on the same day, without disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions, on hand-marked paper ballots which were immediately and publicly hand-counted at the caucus site with results announced to all before they were called in to the central party headquarters and before the ballots were moved anywhere.

That is largely the essence of Democracy's Gold Standard for elections and it is because of that process that there are so few questions about the overall results today.

It's important to make this point, loudly and clearly, before we get lost in what is to come. It's one that even MSNBC's Rachel Maddow --- whose political analysis, whether you agree with her personal perspective or not, is usually spot-on --- missed by a country mile on Friday night while reporting on this issue. She was broadcasting from New Hampshire on the True incident back in Iowa, and on one other quickly-cleared-up question that came up about the results late night on Tuesday, when she offered an assertion that seemed more cheap-shot at Republicans than supportable assertion. It was far beneath her usually excellent standards of fact-based analysis...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

In the latest tracking poll released out of New Hampshire, the Suffolk University/7 NEWS poll [PDF], TX Governor Rick Perry receives 1% support from 500 likely voters in the Granite State. Former LA Governor and four-term U.S. Congressman Buddy Roemer also received 1%. In fact, Roemer received approval from a higher number of respondents (6) than Perry did (4). And yet, Perry was allowed to participate in both last night's GOP Presidential debate in NH as televised on ABC, as well as this morning's on NBC. Roemer was not allowed to participate in either of them.

In fact, out of some 16 GOP Presidential debates to date, Roemer has not been allowed to participate in a single one of them.

The exclusion of Roemer from every single Republican Presidential Debate provides but the latest example of how the corporate-owned media limits the ability of the American people to elect --- or even hear from --- individuals who challenge oligarchic corporate control of our ostensibly democratic institutions.

A candidate like Roemer, who has embraced Occupy Wall Street and spoken (and Tweeted) powerfully and openly and passionately and continuously against the corrupting influence of corporate money on our democratic institutions, poses a direct threat to the corporate media bottom line --- a corporate media which is looking forward to approximately $3 billion in political ad revenues in 2012, courtesy of Citizens United --- the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous 2010 decision which has flung the door wide open to the corrupting influence of unlimited anonymous corporate campaign expenditures.

Whether it entails ending coverage of the Rose Parade before thousands of Occupy demonstrators, their signs and floats could be seen or limiting the scope of discourse in both Presidential Debates and the selection of the nominee in general, exclusion provides a powerful means by which the corporate media maintains the status quo...

[UPDATED mid-story with screenshots from True's original Facebook postings of his recorded results on caucus night, and UPDATED AGAIN at bottom with the affidavit True has filed, and a few additional details from GOP officials and elsewhere on the current status of results. UPDATED YET AGAIN at bottom after we spoke at length with True late this afternoon and after GOP county chair confirms True's numbers.]

Thanks to the transparent, open counting process at Tuesday's night's Iowa GOP Caucuses, and a Ron Paul supporter who was paying close attention to the results, we may now be learning that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, actually won the "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa Caucuses this week.

According to a report tonight from television station KCCI NewsChannel 8 in Des Moines, Edward True, a supporter of Paul's says he participated in the counting at the Washington Wells caucus in Appanoose County and wrote down the results he witnessed there on a piece of paper which he posted to Facebook that night. Later, in comparing his totals to the precinct results made available on the Iowa GOP website [CSV version here], he noticed that Romney is shown as receiving 22 votes at that precinct, rather than the 2 that True recorded him as receiving that night at the caucus.

If True is correct, and if no other anomalies are discovered in the coming days, it would mean that Santorum will have won the Iowa Caucuses by 12 votes, rather than lost it to Romney by 8, as reported by the GOP in the early morning hours on Wednesday...

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

This week, the Montana Supreme Court stood up to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, rejecting the much-criticized 2010 federal decision by declaring that, in their state at least, a century-old prohibition on corporate money in local politics will be allowed to stand.

By way of a 5-2 decision in Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. vs. Attorney General of Montana [PDF], the state's high court upheld the constitutionality of the long-standing Corrupt Practices Act of 1912, which prevents direct contributions by corporations to candidates or political committees. The law does not, however, prohibit voluntary individual contributions to separate segregated funds created by shareholders, employees or members of a corporation.

The state law also mandates disclosure of who pays for political communications, while the 2010 Citizens United ruling allows for unlimited secret money to flood into campaigns, for use either for or against any particular candidate.

The majority opinion in the Montana case, written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, sought to distinguish their state law from Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission [PDF] by pointing to factors in the state --- its dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, as well as its sparse population and history of low campaign expenditures --- which, he claimed, make the state "especially vulnerable to...corporate control to the detriment of democracy".

Even one of the dissenters in the MT decision, Justice James C. Nelson, while making clear that he believes the SCOTUS decision likely takes legal precedent over their own state law, offered a blistering critique to the very underpinnings of Citizens United --- a case we previously predicted "will live in infamy" --- by taking direct aim at the absurd concept of "corporate personhood" in his dissenting opinion...

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I've been busy doing a lot of media and a lot of digging today. So until I can get free to follow up here on some Iowa Caucus issues, here's my latest appearance on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, from last night...

[UPDATED 1/4/12, 10:30am]

The music has stopped, and the long game of musical chairs --- otherwise known as the 2011 Republican Iowa Caucuses --- has finally ended. Mostly.

Twitterer Steve King may have put it best when he said on Tuesday as the results we're coming in: "By tomorrow morning Santorum will be on the lips of every American." And it's true. If you don't believe him, just Google it.

With 100% of the results now reported, Mitt Romney is said to have defeated Rick Santorum, a late comer, but one who finally surged from behind, by just 8 votes. 8 votes.

With his "victory," however, Romney seems to have failed to even reach his own 2008 Iowa numbers. Then, when he came in second, he had 30,021 votes. Last night --- a full four years and who-knows-how-many millions of dollars later --- Romney's total was almost identical, at 30,015. He fell by a total of 6 votes from four years ago. 6 votes.

While we've been told --- largely by Fox "News" and the Republican candidates --- how invigorated the Republican electorate is and how they're chomping at the bit to defeat President Barack Obama, the turnout on Tuesday night doesn't seem to suggest as much. Turnout was approximately 122,000 voters --- just about 3,000 more than in 2008. The lackluster turnout and the lack of a decisive winner resulted in commentary on Fox last night which resembled a funeral procession, as opposed to their usually (overly) upbeat coverage.

In the meantime, Santorum reportedly "spent only $120,000 on direct mail and advertising in Iowa versus over $4.5 million by outside groups backing Romney alone." Former RNC Deputy Research Director Matt Moon reports that, when SuperPAC money is included, Romney will have paid $140 per Iowa caucus vote, while Santorum got a steal at just $21 a pop. Without SuperPAC money included, reports Moon, Romney paid $49/vote in Iowa, Santorum spent just $0.73. Some businessman that Romney is.

But once again, with the reported results as close as they are, we're reminded again that every single vote counts. Or at least it should. While every vote was cast on a hand-marked paper ballot at the GOP Iowa Caucuses (with Republicans requiring no Photo ID to vote), and those ballots supposedly counted publicly by hand at each caucus site where results were supposedly announced then and there before being phoned into Republican HQ, Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org reports that at least one large caucus in Des Moines was unwilling to release their results to CNN before phoning them in to the GOP.

As we were watching reported results on Yahoo's news site very late last night, the number of "reported" suddenly went backwards from 99.86% "REPORTING" back to 99.45%. It doesn't look like numbers changed all that much in the bargain at the time. Santorum was still on top, but only by a handful of votes. Shortly afterwards the reported percentage became 100%, and Romney was announced the "winning" by just 8 votes.

[NOTE: Harris will be my guest on my KPFK/Pacifica Radio show today at 3:30p PT to discuss these matters, and concerns about next week's "First-in-the-Nation" primary in NH. If you're not in the Southern California area, you can listen live online right here. - BF]

We're trying to learn more about the issues mentioned above, and a few other related concerns about the late-night announcement of final results at this wee hour of the morning. And its worth a reminder here that, as ever, problems at the "polls" (or caucuses in this case) or concerns about reported elections results don't always emerge until days, weeks or sometimes even months later.

But for now, no matter who is ultimately determined to be the winner of the 2012 Iowa Republican Caucuses, Santorum's "victory" in the Hawkeye State is no small thing. Just ask President Huckabee.

Last week, the Rachel Maddow Show picked up on a story we'd first reported here, concerning the hypocrisy of Newt Gingrich's massive "voter fraud" in the state of Virginia, as compared to what the GOP and Fox "News" and even Gingrich himself had been decrying as massive "voter fraud" when it was carried out by ACORN. When Gingrich did the same thing --- but far worse --- he called it "just a mistake."

Last night, as her top story, Maddow picked up on our coverage of the indescribable hypocrisy of the Iowa GOP, which sets it's very own rules for the Iowa Caucuses tonight and, in doing so, chose to not require Photo ID restrictions on voters for either voting or registering to vote at the caucus on the same night.

As we originally noted last week, while the GOP has long claimed disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions are necessary to stop rampant "voter fraud" during elections in which Democrats will be participating, apparently they have no such concerns about their own elections. Even when they are allowed to set all of the rules for them. Or, more accurately, they don't wish to disenfranchise their very own voters, while they do hope to disenfranchise Democratic-leaning voters in normal elections. It's also worth highlighting that they have fought against allowing same day registration and voting in regular elections as well, while having no problem with it here in the Iowa GOP caucuses.

Maddow was as amused by it all as we were. Here's her coverage from last night. Also, read on for details on one point of information that her guest, Doug Heye, former RNC Communications Director and current Sr. Advisor to the Iowa GOP, seems to have gotten blatantly wrong during his interview with Maddow...at least according to our confirmed reporting...

Heye claims in the video above that while no Photo ID is required for voting at the IA caucuses, it will be required for folks who wish to first register and then vote at the caucus sites tonight. His assertions is a direct contradiction of both information posted by the Iowa GOP itself on its own caucus website, as well as info on the website of Iowa's Republican Sec. of State Matt Schultz. Moreover, it also contradicts the information that his office confirmed to me when I called them last week before reporting my original story...

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Over the past week or so, while the rest of the media has been covering the "horse race" non-stop, The BRAD BLOG has, as is our wont, been keeping a close eye, as usual, on the otherwise ignored "track conditions" which can make as much of a difference in the results as anything else.

We've been reporting on a number of key points about the way the voting and counting will be carried out in tonight's Iowa Caucuses (beginning at 7p CT), all of which are worthy of quick summary here today, as all of the rules for the Republican Caucuses in the Hawekeye State --- who can vote and how those votes will be counted --- are not set by the state, but by the Republican Party itself.

The Iowa GOP has, therefore, determined that...

• No Photo ID is necessary for any voter in the Republican Iowa caucuses.
• No Photo ID is necessary to register as a Republican at the caucus site, even if you're not already a registered voter. You may then cast your vote at the caucus on the same day you've registered (without a Photo ID).
• All caucus votes will be cast on hand-marked paper ballots.
• All of those paper ballots will be counted, by hand, in public, with the results announced at each of the 1,774 caucus sites before the results are called in to a central GOP headquarters (where the results will subsequently be compiled and announced to the public and media.)

If it seems that all of the items mentioned above are ones that Republicans --- even Republicans in the Iowa statehouse and the Iowa Secretary of State's office within the past year --- have fought virulently against allowing, for years, for elections in which Democrats will be participating, you would be correct. Nonetheless, when the GOP is able to set any rules they like for their own elections --- including tonight's all-important "First-in-the-Nation" Iowa caucuses --- those are the rules that they've selected. Go figure.

So with that very good, if breathtakingly hypocritical, news out of the way, here are five quick points, from Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org, on how folks on the ground tonight can fight to try and ensure and/or oversee the accuracy of caucus results...