public records law & mike hilgers

Dear Friends,

I have no faith in our one-legged legislative branch of government. Many members pay no attention to their oath. Others are clueless about the issues. Still others are downright tools of darkness, who cut deals with the devil. Many don’t read their own bills, let alone the bills of other members. They just accept what lobbyists, special interests and their peers tell them. Too often, the order of the day is lawfare, i.e., making war upon our rights rather than the securing them, as was the whole reason for instituting government.

Never mind the fact that our boneheaded unicameral gives too much weight to our “liberal” 1st and 2nd districts and not enough to our conservative, common-sense 3rd district.

Also never mind the fact that they meet too often. The Texas Legislature only meets in odd-numbered years.

I also have no faith in our other branches to serve as the checks and balances they were meant to serve. Nor in lower magistrates (including county election officials) to as checks and balances.

In this issue, I’d like to address the mess our Legislature has made of Public Records law, particularly as it relates to our elections.

My aim is to argue that what is going on with our ballots and our inability to access them, is not only a violation of our Constitution, but a violation of the spirit of Public Records law.

The big question at the end will be, Will Mike Hilgers, our new AG in charge of enforcing Public Records law, stay true to his oath and rock the boat, or will he continue to allow Evnen and our Legislature to run roughshod over our God-given rights?

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let’s begin with a little q&a
Question: What is our most important Public Record?
Answer: Our most important Public Record is the content of our ballot box, i.e., our ballots, from which all political power derives, or at least is supposed to derive.

Question: What is the Salvation of the State?
Answer: According to our founding fathers, The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness in the Citizen. (They believed so much and so strongly in this truism that they engraved it in stone over the front entrance to our Capitol Building.)

Question: Where is Watchfulness in the Citizen of utmost importance?
Answer: It follows from the above that Watchfulness in the Citizen is of utmost importance in the conducting of our elections.

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what happens when our government deprives us of our all-important watchfulness?
What do we do when the State suddenly usurps Citizen Watchfulness in our elections and contracts it out to a private, black box vote-counting corporation that counts votes (OUR votes) behind closed doors away from the watchful, prying eyes of We Citizens??

What do we do when government officials fail to do what “Governments are instituted among Men” to do (see here and above), namely to secure our rights, chief among which is our right to give and withhold consent through an honest, transparent and verifiable ballot box??

What do we do when government prevents Citizens from watching and participating in the counting of their/our votes, and We can’t find a civil way of regaining that ability??

What do we do when we reach that place?

I’ll tell you what we ultimately do. We ultimately exercise our right to alter or to abolish that government.

In the meantime, we make lots of noise, at all levels, by print and by word.

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our ballots
We all know we don’t have access to OUR ballots. (We paid for them. They belong to us. Elections belong to We the People.) The question is, How did we get here?

How did we get to the place where our fundamental right to self-government has been subverted by depriving us of our right to access our ballots?

How did our “government” steal that right?

No doubt they had a lot of help from the electronic voting machine lobby, but what we want to know is, who is the enemy WITHIN that stole our right to access our all-important ballots so that we could verify the all-important “results” of our elections?

WHO, within government, signed off on legislative language that prevents us from being able to look at our collective ballots and hand count them??

WHO?

Let’s first identify the language. Then identify who put it there.

The revised statute that contains the language the prevents us from accessing our ballots is found in 32-1032. See quote and screen print below. This statute is one of a couple of statutes that election officials always throw at me (often with hostility) when I press them with “FOIA” requests for election information. The phrase highlighted in blue (and underlined in the screen print) was inserted in 2015 (click on the blue phrase and go to pg 30, line 10). Underlined language in a bill is new language that is being proposed.

“The election commissioner or county clerk shall not allow any other election materials to be inspected, including ballots and provisional ballot envelopes, except when an election is contested or the materials become necessary to be used in evidence in the courts.”

Okay. Now for the question of WHO? Who was responsible for putting that new language in there???

Several people were.

But it starts with the “big three.” Click here and go to the top of pg 27, line 5.

Wayne Bena is speaking—as the then Sarpy County election commissioner.

The “big three” refers to the county election officials of our three biggest counties. Bena is referring to himself, Dave Shively (Lancaster) and Dave Phipps (Douglas), all of which were appointed by the governor (which, by the way, puts way too much power in the hands of the governor and needs to be changed).

Commissioner Dave Phipps was fired later in 2015 and then died a few years after that at the age of 44.

None of the three commissioners were sparkling examples of integrity.

According to Bena, these three decided We Citizens no longer deserved access to our ballots—after well over a century of counting our own ballots—and conjured up the new language taking away our right to access them.

Here’s Bena beginning his testimony:

As you know, Bena has since been promoted (by former Secretary Gale) to run the Election Division for the SoS office. He’s a hireling who really works for ES&S.

The testimony you just read (pg 27) by Bena was given before the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, February 05, 2015.

RINO John Murante was Chair of the Committee then (he’s now our State Treasurer, twice over). Murante introduced/carried LB578, which included the new language proposed by the “big three.”

LB578 was later merged into LB575, which Murante also introduced. It was passed by the Legislature, and signed into “law” by Ricketts.

But can a “law” that is unconstitutional really be law??

The answer is NO. But Murante wasn’t thinking about that. He was looking at his career and at election officials who could get him elected to his next job (treasurer). Murante decided to be a tool and cater to election officials who wanted an easier job, rather than to do his constitution job of looking out for the rights of We the Citizens who want honest, transparent and verifiable elections.

Are we awake yet?

Enter Mike Hilgers, enforcer of Public Records law.

First take a look at the first page of his new official government website here.

Now take a look at his Public Records law page here.

On this page, we find the spirit and purpose of Public Records law:

Reading further:

So far so good. But look what immediately follows:

Let’s pause and take stock of that language, as it applies to our ballots.

How can something that was handled by We the People for well over a century suddenly become off-limits to us by some mindless act, some mindless added verbiage of the Legislature??

It can’t.

Nebraska State Constitution, Article 1-22:

…no hindrance or impediment to the right of VOTERS to exercise the elective franchise!!

There’s more to the elective franchise than simply VOTING. There’s COUNTING the votes (duh), with integrity.

The Legislature, and our SoS, are in violation of our Constitution when they deprive We the People of our right to exercise the FULL elective franchise. Our ballots belong to us the electorate, the voters, not to the State. The State only manages the preservation of our ballots when we are done with them.

The Legislature is ALSO in violation of Article 3-18:

The Legislature shall not pass local or special laws in any of the following cases, that is to say:
…
Regulating County and Township offices. [doesn’t that include county election offices]
…
The opening and conducting of any election, or designating the place of voting.

Before I finish, let me pull one more quote from Mike’s Public Records law page, under section C:

Evnen unconstitutionally contracted his election duties (and the duties of our county election officials) out to a private, corporate entity. That contract CAN NOT allow Evnen or ES&S to conceal the tabulation of our ballots from us.

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so here we are—back at the big question for mike hilgers
Will he honor his oath to our God-given and Constitutionally protected right to “exercise the elective franchise”???

Will he rock the boat and enforce our right in transparent, verifiable elections? Or will he cave to his ambitions for higher office and maintain the corrupt status quo?

Elections are the voice of We the People. Our votes were meant to be counted by We Citizens, precinct by precinct, with different people counting and watching in each precinct, in contrast to just one person “counting” our votes secretly across the whole state by means of secret software.

conclusion
I have no faith in our Legislature. I do, however, have faith in God. God can change hearts and He can move mountains. Let’s pray for wisdom and guidance on how He wants us to handle this situation.

Running around like chickens with our heads cut off, or running around in fear, isn’t going to solve the entrenched corruption we face.

Beyond that, keep your eyes on Jesus and look for the higher calling.

Your faithful friend and servant,

Robert J. Borer