On October 15 in partnership with USA Today The Ohio State University (OSU) sponsored the third in a series of panels by the Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Political Reform. The Center intends to hold a series of town hall style meetings to build the appearance of national consensus around policy recommendations they intend to offer Congress and the President in 2014. The event took place on the same day that the Center and USA Today released a joint poll claiming that most Americans support the Center's conclusions. The event featured two panels, each with a moderator who asked questions, and took written and vetted questions from the audience and the internet. Questioners were required to list their affiliation along with their name on the tiny question sheets. Unscripted questions from the press and audience were not permitted during the panels. Broadcast teams from C-SPAN and a Los Angles based media outlet that declined to identify itself covered the event. The Lantern, the OSU student paper with advertising and business departments operated by USA TODAY, also ran a story on the event. Although only one panelist, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, considered voter fraud to be a real problem, the Lantern article said “Panelists used the town hall platform to talk to Ohioans in attendance about problems plaguing the swing state specifically, including voter ID fraud and voter access.” During the 2012 election, Husted's office was involved in several controversies over its attempts to shut down early voting, thus denying access to the polls to voters in non-Republican, majority African American districts. Out of the over 160 cases of voter fraud that his office investigated during the last election, fewer than one in eight were referred to law enforcement for actual prosecution. None of the seemingly pre-selected questions were addressed directly to Secretary Husted or addressed the disconnect between reality and the actions of his office. The Bipartisan Center featured former elected officials and former public servants who were mostly Republicans, though there seemed to be consensus across party lines among the panelists on a few issues. Despite 13 years of lavishly funded pilot programs to assist on the issue that began with Booz Allen Hamilton as the main contractor, the panelists agreed that military voters were the key disenfranchised demographic. Despite widespread glitches in Ohio's voter registration system that denied the vote to many inner city voters during the last election, the panelists did not address the issue of disenfranchisement at home in any concrete way. The proffered solution to allow more military people to vote was online registration, a process that is vulnerable to fraud and could be manipulated remotely. Major energy companies and banking interests, including foreign banks such as Credit Suisse, form the core of the corporate funding for this conversation on American unity. Major defense and intelligence contractors also pitched in to help build this bipartisan consensus on what voting rights Americans will be permitted. In addition to major weapons manufacturers such as Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin, Palantir Technologies was also listed as a funder of the event. Palantir is a major software contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA). In 2010, Palantir Technologies, along with Berico and HBGary, were exposed as planning a campaign of espionage, social media defamation and direct hacking against supporters of Wikileaks and activists opposing certain actions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After exposure, Palantir withdrew from this direct attack on the free speech and civil rights of ordinary American citizens due to public outcry and a Congressional investigation of their use of government funded software for a non-governmental profit making enterprise. Congress did not investigate these companies conspiring to spy on and defame American citizens and journalists for exercising their rights to free speech and freedom of the press. Palantir retained their government contracts after NSA head General Keith Alexander testified as to their product’s usefulness in carrying out the NSA's missions, which are now known to include violating the constitutional right to privacy of every single American. Palantir is not the only connection the Bipartisan Center has to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Center's 2011 tax return (the most recent available year) listed the Jones Group International as one of its top five paid contractors at $240,000. The Jones Group was founded by former Commandant of the Marine Corp General James L. Jones. According to the company's website, General Jones has a long-standing relationship with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that began while he was working for NATO as supreme commander on energy security issues. This relationship apparently continued while he was National Security Advisor to the Obama White House, apparently participating in the deliberations that lead to each individual secret extra-judicial execution, commonly known as a drone strike. Between his tenure as NATO commander and National Security Advisor, Jones became the CEO of the Chamber's Institute for 21st Century Energy. Jones is not the only one advocating for the rights of big oil and other energy concerns at the Bipartisan Center. The program for the panel lists Exxon-Mobile, Chevron, Shell, Energy Holdings Company Inc., Conoco Phillips, America's National Gas Alliance and arch polluter British Petroleum as corporate partners in their Leadership Council. The nuclear energy and weapons industry is represented there by the generous sponsorship of General Electric and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Both panels seemed to be focused on what they called “redistricting reform” as part of election reform. Almost all speakers said that the composition of electoral districts lead to extremists from both parties being elected and undermining bipartisanship and national unity, presumably around centrist interests favorable to big finance and big oil. Aside from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is elected at large by the whole state, not a single extreme left Democrat office holder was identified by name.