NV GOP to release caucus results via Twitter, Google

This is pretty cool:

First in the West and now first on Twitter.

The Nevada GOP will release results of its presidential caucus next Saturday on Twitter — a first for the social network and presidential politics — under a deal announced Friday.

Google also will use the state party website to show a map of Nevada-wide results, precinct by precinct, as they're reported throughout the day — just as the company did for the Iowa caucus Jan. 3.

Twitter is such a natural platform for this sort of thing that I bet we'll see more of it in the future. Forcing state parties to develop their own websites to handle a massive influx of visitors, only to be stale the next morning, makes little sense. Instead, why not leverage a platform with over 300 million users that has already figured out how to distribute bits and bytes to hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously?

Not to mention it'll help promote the state party in an election year that'll see hard-fought presidential and senate contests.

Insider trading bill moves forward in Senate

The Hill reports:

The Senate will meet at 2 p.m. for speeches, and then at 4:30 p.m. to start work on the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which aims to prevent members of Congress from making trades based on non-public information.

Senate consideration of the bill, S. 2038, comes as House Republicans are still deliberating on how to proceed with legislation that limits members' equity trading. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) last month proposed a bill requiring members to set up blind trusts for their holdings.

The issue gained prominence following a 60 Minutes report that alleged members of Congress benefited financially from non-public information.

Where Obama stands on 'Sunlight before Signing'

Cato @ Liberty reports on where President Obama stands on his "Sunlight before Signing" promise. As a candidate, Obama had promised that bills would be given five days of public comment before being signed.

Of the 90 bills that became law in [2011], 55 got the Sunlight Before Signing treatment. That’s a 61.1% average, good enough to earn a middle-school student a D. ...

Year three was stronger than the previous two, so President Obama’s overall Sunlight Before Signing record moves to 52.4%. That’s poor execution on a transparency promise that energized audiences on the 2008 campaign trail.

In 2009, his record was a dismal 4.8 percent, which he improved to 72.3 percent in 2010.

Lying about public records

Reason's Jacob Sullum writes how recent Department of Justice memos belie President Obama's commitment to open government:

When he took office, Barack Obama promised “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” As part of that commitment, he pledged fidelity to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which he called “the most prominent expression of a profound national commitment to ensuring an open Government.”

It is hard to reconcile these lofty memos with the Justice Department’s proposed regulation instructing federal agencies to falsely deny the existence of records sought under FOIA. But at least the Obama administration, which withdrew the regulation in November following a flood of criticism, is open about its desire to mislead us.

At issue is how federal agencies are to respond to FOIA requests when "confirming the existence of records would tip off the target of a criminal investigation, compromise a confidential informant, or reveal classified information."

Past practice was to neither confirm or deny the existence of the records. But the Department of Justice proposed telling agencies to respond as if the records didn't exist at all.

With this rule change, record requesters would be at a disadvantage "since requesters cannot demand a justification for withholding records they do not know exist, [and] agencies would not have to convince a court that the information they believe qualifies for a FOIA exemption actually does."

Even though Attorney General Holder backed off the proposed rule change soon after it became public, it makes you wonder if this practice isn't already going on.

NVPERS to challenge judge's ruling on open records

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

The board governing the Public Employees Retirement System of Nevada voted unanimously Wednesday to challenge a ruling that the names and benefit amounts of about 47,000 retired public employees are a matter of public record.

The Reno Gazette-Journal had filed a lawsuit against the retirement system, which denied the newspaper's request for the information.

Carson City District Judge James Russell supported the newspaper, concluding that the purpose of the Nevada Public Records Act is to "ensure accountability of the government to members of the public by facilitating public access to vital information about government activities."

Secretary of State launches searchable campaign disclosure database

Searching through campaign finance documents got a lot easier last Wednesday, following the launch of “Aurora”, the Secretary of State's new searchable database of campaign contributions and financial disclosure reports of public officers.

The site was built after passage of Assembly Bill 452 which mandated electronic filing of campaign reports starting January 1st, 2012. Previously, reports were filled out by hand and mailed to the Secretary of State's office where they were scanned and put online but were unsearchable and hard to locate.

The new system allows users to search by "individual" (i.e., candidate), "group", "contribution" — donor or recipient — and "expenditures" made by campaigns. In addition, you can have the results exported to Excel, CSV, or PDF.

One drawback is reports filed before January 1st of this year are still only available in the unsearchable PDFs of the previous system. They're easier to find than they were but still unsearchable.

Despite that, this new system is a vast improvement over the old system. And as more reports are filed electronically and more data is added to the system, “Aurora” will only improve.

House launches transparency portal

The Sunlight Foundation reports:

Making good on part of the House of Representative's commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk's office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more. Information will ultimately be published online in real time and archived for perpetuity.

The site doesn't have a whole lot of content at the moment, but as the year goes on, I'm sure that'll change.