At a panel discussion on voter ID at the Fels Institute for Government, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Carol Aichele noted the state had awarded a contract to develop a voter ID community outreach and voter education plan. She did not identify the vendor.

So I did a search. Much to my shock and disbelief, the $250,000 contract was awarded to the Bravo Group, which was founded by a former executive director of the state Republican Party and a Mitt Romney fundraiser.

The contract was awarded under an expedited procurement process.

I immediately started tweeting about this blatant conflict of interest.

Daniel Denvir of Philadelphia City Paper jumped on the story.

I also blogged about this in-your-face voter suppression by voter ID scheme.

The story was picked up by other journalists.

Blackwell managed to keep a straight face when he said: "Protecting the integrity of the ballot box is essential to our democracy."

During the 2008 election cycle, Our Vote Live, the nation’s largest database of real-time incident reports, logged more than 86,000 of the 200,000 calls made to 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Pennsylvania had the fifth highest total number of calls to the Election Protection hotline.

On Election Day 2008, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh reported the greatest number of problems.

The flattening of newsrooms means there are fewer traditional journalists to call to help get the word out about what’s happening at the polls. At the same time, there are new sources of Election Day incident reports, including citizen journalists, neighborhood newspapers and social media.

A team quickly formed to address the problem. In addition to the writer, Yo! Philly Votes team members are Nia Ngina Meeks, Raveen Beemsingh and Derrick Duncan.

The solution: A one-stop site that will aggregate and visualize real-time Election Day incident reports. Journalists, bloggers, Election Boards, election officials, elected officials, ward leaders, poll workers, poll monitors, voting rights advocates, lawyers, community leaders and ordinary citizens will be able to search for incidents by polling place, zip code or ward.

In addition to aggregating incident reports, users can sign up for alerts about incidents at specific polling places or neighborhoods. 

Yo! Philly Votes is generating interest from influencers and thought leaders.

Last Friday, I attended the premiere of “Changing the Game,” the story of Darrell Barnes, an African American male who beat the odds and went from the mean streets of North Philadelphia to the even meaner Wall Street.

Director Rel Dowdell, a Philly native, also beat the odds. It took him seven years to bring his film to the big screen.

I want to give a shout-out to a standup brother, Thomas L. Webster, the film’s executive producer. Thom told Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall: “Rel shows up in my office, asking me to produce his film. I told him no, thank you, I don’t know anything about the entertainment business. I stay in my lane.”

We owe Thom a debt of gratitude for not staying in his lane. Check out the trailer.

Go see the film and change the game. A strong Opening Weekend means the film will be shown in more theaters nationwide. It also will make it easier for black films with an uplifting message to find distribution.

On April 5, 2012, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which allows startups and small businesses to raise seed and growth capital from ordinary Americans using "funding portals" registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

During the signing ceremony, Obama said, “For start-ups and small businesses, this bill is a potential game changer. Right now, you can only turn to a limited group of investors -- including banks and wealthy individuals -- to get funding… Because of this bill, start-ups and small business will now have access to a big, new pool of potential investors -- namely, the American people. For the first time, ordinary Americans will be able to go online and invest in entrepreneurs that they believe in.”

The seed for the JOBS Act was planted by Sherwood (Woodie) Neiss In August 2010.

The ACLU has created an infographic that visualizes the assault on voting rights across the country.

During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Geraldo Rivera said: “I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies. I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”

Hey, Geraldo, let me tell you what I think: STFU. The hoodie is not responsible. A gun-toting vigilante is responsible for killing an unarmed youngster who was walking while black.

Geraldo’s comments demonize and dehumanize young black males.

CNN contributor Roland Martin was among the first to call out Geraldo for his ignorance. 

Roland wrote: “It wasn’t Trayvon’s hoodie that led to his death; it was the skin color. It was what was going through Zimmerman’s mind when he saw the kid. We do a disservice to ourselves when we try to explain away such nonsense.”

Miami Heat star Dwayne Wade told the Associated Press: “This situation hit home for me because last Christmas, all my oldest son wanted as a gift was hoodies. So when I heard about this a week ago, I thought of my sons. I’m speaking up because I feel it’s necessary that we get past the stereotype of young, black men and especially with our youth.”

Last weekend I participated in Hack the Change, a social impact hackathon that provided a space for developers, engineers, social entrepreneurs and NGOs to hack “the change you wish to see in the world.”

I am a longtime voting rights activist so I was particularly interested in problems related to democracy enhancement.

Ben Brockman, a former intern with the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the U.S. Department of State, shared the problem of protecting government actors in areas marred by election-related violence. There is also concern about the security of election observers organized by NGOs such as the Carter Center, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute.

In addition to keeping track of American citizens, there is the challenge of collecting data on what’s happening in the field before the election, on Election Day and post-election.

I have firsthand experience with the problem. During an election observation mission to Ethiopia, I was teamed with observers from Switzerland. We were two hours outside of Addis Ababa when the Swiss embassy ordered them to stay where they were because of banditry along the main road to Addis. I had a flight to catch so I commandeered their car and prayed nothing happened. 

As the driver pulled into the driveway of the Hilton Hotel, I noticed some Americans had already boarded the bus to the airport. The head of the delegation apologized and said they had no way to contact me.

I joined Joe Tricarico, Bennet Huber, Peter Sody and Sagi Shkedy to develop a solution to keep track of election monitors and collect incident reports in real-time. 

While we were hacking away, police in Missouri were showing some GOP caucus-goers the door.

I was reminded of Winston Churchill’s observation that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.”

On March 7, I viewed a much-hyped video of remarks Barack Obama made in 1991 when he was a student at Harvard Law School.

I thought that’s 1.17 minutes I’ll never get back.

Later that evening, I turned on Fox News to watch Sean Hannity who promised an “Exclusive: Unedited Obama race video unveiled.” Part of the “exclusive” was a video excerpt featuring my friend, Harvard Law Prof. Charles “Tree” Ogletree.

Tree is a sought-after speaker so on any given day, he could be anywhere lecturing on a wide range of issues. As he told the Boston Herald, “It’s much to do about nothing. It’s not the breaking story that some who want to criticize the president claim it is.”

I'm still trying to find the alleged media cover-up.

To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, politics is war by other means. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell famously said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

McConnell added that’s the goal of “every active Republican in the country.” So if it means alleging the cover-up of a video that’s been available on YouTube, the second largest search engine, since 2008, well, that’s politics.

While defeating President Obama is their goal, if they can destroy a Harvard Law professor who does more than talk, that would be the icing on the cake. Tree is one of the nation’s top trial lawyers and an indefatigable advocate for social justice.

Facts are stubborn things. One of the Big Lies spread by Glenn Beck (remember him?) is that “Ogletree also attended every single day of the trial of this woman. This woman is Angela Davis, OK? She was a Black Power activist.”

Now Tree is a smart as they come but he’s not that smart. You can’t skip classes at Stanford for a year and graduate Phi Beta Kappa.

According to Beck, Tree “edited the Black Panther newspaper. Here’s a copy of it, The Real News. OK? He was an editor.” Hey, Beck, get real. Then and now, “Real News” is a publication of the Stanford Black Student Union.

But facts don’t matter. The only thing that matters is defeating President Obama in November.

While it’s understandable Tree’s friends may not want to add fuel to the fire by responding to this nothingburger of a story, it's not going away. Hannity will scream about it (whatever it is) until Election Day.