well. technology innovation holding the limits. we've got this huge earth covered. president obama might have come out of the big winner last night but the voting system certainly isn't earning any awards and effective counting systems kept poll places open into the wee hours of the morning we'll talk about the american voting system and also about the role of third party candidates played in this election. and new information is coming out from the alleged wiki leaks alleged wiki leaks or bradley manning's camp today it looks like his team is doing some strategic maneuvering to try to ensure the best possible outcome for the private first class he tells our hazy but i will tell you what we do know and just a bit. and they are the men and women tasked with protecting and serving the public

but these days police forces across the nation are looking more like a military brigade so the question is who are they arming themselves against will search for some answers. it's wednesday november seventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r t. well the american people have spoken and voted for four more years of president obama in the white house but the election process was not a smooth one from coast to coast problems at the polls that ranged from inconvenient to chaotic and florida voters lined up for hours you're looking at video from the miami dade area where polls at the polls were lines were particularly long and the voting the voting outcome in florida is still. well not

known but that's not all in other states there's reports of confusion over voter id laws and election computers crashing for more of the problems voters ran into at the polls are the correspondent on the a caricature and r.t. producer manny rapala joins us now welcome to the both of you many i'm going to start with you because you just returned from covering the elections and. miami where things got pretty chaotic these were going a little crazy there at the end of the night in miami i remember at seven o'clock when the polls were closing in florida there were still people waiting in line and i was hearing that the lines were still an hour two hours away then around midnight i'm hearing people are still waiting on the lines and then when this went on well into the in into the wee hours of the morning people waiting in lines will be on the time that the election was actually called and a lot of this is due to to a number of problems part of it was these provisional ballots we're talking about ballots that were anywhere from eight to twelve pages long eleven constitutional

amendments to the to the florida constitution in these ballots and not only that but these are this was happening in some of the most highly contested counties the counties that we weren't sure were going to go to governor romney or president obama miami dade orange county palm beach county and at the end of the night we know president obama was called but who was left until all the voters that were still waiting in line that their votes for the president were going to count this year and still here we are the next day we still don't know what the outcome is in florida florida's always that state that's always kind of got a lot a got a lot of problems going on for for one reason or another we'll get back to you for more on that in just a moment while i want to get to ana stasia there in new york on a sufi how did things play out in new york in new jersey there was a lot of speculation as to how hurricane sandy would impact the election how did it play out liz well you know if there's one word that describes what happened to me.

new jersey throughout election day that word is definitely chaos because while some people were certainly enjoying the right to vote quite a few folks were out there really fighting to be able to cast that ballot and of course hurricane sandy had somewhat of an impact on that but as many just mentioned i mean enormous lines in other states and the same situation here there was definitely a lot of confusion on the ground because over five hundred polling stations were destroyed in the hurricane in new york and new jersey people had to relocate to vote in other places there was a lot of confusion surrounding that officials were trying to provide information online but certainly for over a million homes and businesses that are still without electricity in new york city without power how were they supposed to get this information in new jersey for example it was suggested that voters without power outages who are not able to make it to the polling stations vote via e-mail and fax and people can't do that without electricity certainly like many mentioned the provisional ballots of course caused a lot of confusion in new york there were

a few instances reported on social media where people said that the polling station workers didn't even know what to do with them they were giving them to the wrong people and certainly inside the polling stations once people got in there were some problems with scanners reported a lot of complaints about polling workers being confused about what they're doing law idea and this isn't of course not just voter i.d. i mean of course this is not just new york and new jersey the tri state area but other places like ohio swing states where people were asked for id when they weren't supposed to be asked for id and vice versa you know experimental machines being suggested in ohio the list is very very long we tried all day yesterday to keep up with all of the things being reported and there's just really been a lot of complaints coming from from americans throughout not just to try to state area but throughout the united states and unfortunately once that wind was and it was announced that's it shows over and nobody really talks about that anymore these voter id laws are being implemented in a lot. controversy and speculation that they're intended to suppress a star and

a group of voters that many what do you think to what extent do you think these laws have impacted this election being in florida i notice that you know florida was in those one of those states that was subject to these voter id laws but there were other methods of voter suppression the least alleged methods of voter suppression specifically in. the latest county in florida where anywhere from hundred stephen thousands of voters received phone calls on monday saying that they had up to wednesday to vote of course the electoral board there was saying that this was some sort of glitch in the system but that's not how the how is that even possible we wouldn't know the outcome. wednesday i mean exactly i mean it's sounds completely completely ludicrous to think that people would still have about a wednesday to go in and decide who should be president but that's just one example university of central florida in orlando up to fifty eight thousand students had to use provisional ballots and and there were issues with that as well because of the

new law regarding changing your address on your voter id and not matching if you're a student and you're not living at home in your address suddenly changes and you're now having to use a provisional ballot and there's the problem with these scanners this turns into a really big problem so i mean there was there's the recount was since an incidence of this throughout the state of florida and specifically in a number of counties the counties that i mentioned earlier palm beach county orange county and miami dade so i mean you could make the argument that this is voter suppression but if it's not issues you know sure looks like it i'm curious you know . in terms of we see these very long lines of voter turnout looks like it was pretty good wondering if you think people kind of at the it backfired people saying you know what because of this perceived suppression that i'm going to go out there and i am going to i'm going to cast my vote i think that's absolutely right i mean if you look at florida they were up to. nine million people have voted

this was record voter turnout in the state of florida and one thing that we can really mention is the effect the impact the kind of unprecedented impact of third party vote i mean it's very minimal but gary johnson governor gary johnson actually received over a million votes this year this is never happened before for the liberal libertarian party this and that is one out of one of that and not quite the five percent that he was asked you couldn't you could make the argument that the ninety nine percent is finally being represented by the one percent here the million that voted for gary johnson it's an interesting argument and i don't want to ask you manny in a state like florida where it is so close how could it impact the vote there the thing is i mean florida some of the best headlines that i've heard so far even from the mainstream is that you've got your blue states you've got your your red states and then you have florida florida people are still voting because there are still a lot of constitutional amendment so people get to vote on but in terms of voting

for president this year i feel like a lot of floridians just kind of feel like their votes didn't count this year. the necessity of what do you think. here we have gary johnson garnering one percent of the vote to what extent do you think third party has impacted this election well you know certainly the third party members themselves and the people supporting them were hoping that there would be a little bit more of a result really but of course as you guys just mentioned this is a very considerable number one million people is definitely something that has never been seen before but you know the problem with the third party system as with the other flaws that we've mentioned of course is that so many people especially in non swing states were feeling really disenchanted and they were saying what's the point there this is a president that's not going to be elected the person that i'm supporting because the system is so bipartisan and in. states like new york here the people who would

go out and supports the third party candidates were saying ok well i might as well just go for obama to choose the lesser of the two evils because i don't want romney to win i'm not really big of obama but my candidate is not going to win anyway with the way with the way the system is run right now and that's certainly a major concern is that people are saying a look we need to change it up we need to make sure that other parties that exist that are out there are at least made known to people in a much more public way than we have seen in this last election will certainly so you think i see in places like new york and new jersey and connecticut where you know it's pretty much unknown which way they are going to vote and because of that people are there's already. i hesitate in there to vote third party and i hesitate it is even greater in places like new york where. where it's a pretty safe state in terms of which way it's going to go definitely and there's a there's a major hesitation for those supporting the third parties but there's also hesitation

for those supporting obama because you know if they have complicated complications getting to the polling stations for example like we've seen yesterday where you know the lines and all the all the trouble in the confusion in terms of where exactly you're supposed to go to vote people say well ok even if i do support obama i don't really need to vote because my seat is going to elect him anyway so my vote is not going to side decide anything and critics of course are outraged because they say this is not the way a democracy should run because of. even one percent of people feel like they their voice doesn't really matter so they don't have to go to the polling stations that's a problem that means something's wrong that means the way the electoral college system is distributed throughout the country it's not quite satisfactory for people who want to make sure that their votes really count and i speaking of the third party debate third party candidates there is an interesting article and be independent voters. at work the kind of profiles are t.v. and commends r.t.

for hosting the third party debate i just want to read a quote from it bear with me here it is r t will we'll be getting third party candidates gary johnson and jill signs the beta potential audience of fifty million people american citizens might distress a russian based news channel but r.t. is giving them an opportunity to hear two candidates discuss issues that have been left out by the democratic and republican candidates this is more than what most of the american mainstream media is offering so it's kind of a compliment there are many what do you think i love it i love it i think as absolutely right on point and if you think about it if you were if you were watching the mainstream media last night i caught a bit of a miss and b. c. right after. the elections were called and who was a chris matthews that said you know if you vote for third party if you vote for one of these lunatics then you're an idiot that's part of the biggest problem facing facing the media right now that we were left in this country with

a media that's either for one candidate or for another instead of giving it equal platform to all the voices in this country we're giving a platform only to establishment candidates that are backed by by corporations the thing is that if you don't have a billion dollars to spend that's just kind of the the way it is now if you don't have a billion dollars to spend on your campaign then you don't stand a chance in becoming president of the united states and it shouldn't be that way it shouldn't be that way in if you if you claim that you have free and fair elections all right and well we were happy to give them a platform here in our town and host that debate and thanks to the both of you for weighing in on this that was our to correspondent on the stasi a cherokee not andy york and arcee producer manny raffaello producer for breaking the sets. well still ahead on our team new developments coming out from bradley manning that legal case be moving forward we'll start to the details in just a minute.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i mean the guy who cares an awful lot of money uses are. you know what kind of carousel i want to get with the featuring a liberal and the chris. consecutively voted.

for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industries that sell the facials that garbage because of breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that. is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

welcome back accused military whistleblower bradley manning was back in court today these hells are still unclear but reports from the site firedoglake assert that manning's legal team has entered a plea notice and wish the private what except general responsibility for transferring information to wiki leaks information suggests that he may plead guilty to lesser offenses he faced a slew of charges including aiding the enemy a capital offense for the latest on this case i was joined earlier by r t web producer andrew blake. as far as i know the three child motion hearings happening in fort meade just up the road are just wrapping up right now they're happening all morning pushback that were supposed to be last week but sandy kind of moved everything along and it's actually really bizarre timing because this week will mark nine hundred days that bradley manning has been in what appears to be indefinite detention at this point his court martial will formally begin supposedly in february and by the time it wraps up he'll probably be behind bars for

a thousand days at that point without actually finishing the trial but what we find out today is that actual trial when it does start up that court martial might be a lot simpler than what we thought if you go back and look at last february manning went into court and was asked to present a plea does he want to admit guilt to this is want to go to that and he deferred it hasn't entered anything until today his attorney civilian attorney david coombs is in the courtroom today and submitted a plea notice on behalf of mr manning and what that note is said this is going by what we have from firedoglake and also alexa o'brien a journalist who's working close on the matter was that coombs put in a plea notice on behalf of manning that said essentially we're willing to perhaps plea to this if you want to forget about that and now the reason this kind of a big deal is that manning is charged with roughly two dozen different counts right

now and if convicted on that one of them is aiding the enemy which is a capital that yes he could be executed for but will likely just get it so that they wouldn't do that yeah yes so he will just be put behind bars if convicted and they go for the maximum term but what we're looking at now is that manning may be willing to accept responsibility for taking these hundreds of thousands of classified or not so classified but sensitive military documents that he accessed wall in the army and supplying them to join us on his wiki leaks site and you know the government of. tests that manning took all these diplomatic cables the infamous collateral murder video and sent them to us on issue in turn said he believes they ended the iraq war and that was the driving force behind it a lot like the pentagon papers with the vietnam war couple generations back. but so right now manning apparently given today's hearing will say at least it's looking like this that he will not necessarily emit guilt but he will take responsibility

or admit to that the court has enough evidence to prove him guilty so he would just be pleading down to a lesser charge. like you my nothing here is final right now this is just what happened today and because this is a military court and it's a lot different then you know what happens to me when i do something stupid out on the street there is a lot of different hoops lots of crazy stuff going on so what it comes down to right now is the judge who is a military appointed judge she has to decide if she will accept this plea notice and then from there the government will decide if they want to continue with it so what does this mean in terms of a sentence for manning it really could mean anything right now because they don't have to really accept this plea notice they could go ahead and say no we don't think so you're going to be court martialed and we're going to prosecute you and you can be put in bars for the rest of your life but if you go back just two three weeks ago we had another accused whistleblower john kiriakou it was

a cia agent for years and years john correctly who was the one of the first six people charged under the espionage act by president obama his crime allegedly was going public with the use of waterboarding named he named a couple of names involved in the post nine eleven attacks is overseas he was expected to do forty five years in prison for going forward with that he pleaded down just a few weeks ago he's getting two and a half years right now so are we going to see the same thing like manning. that mean that would be wonderful i would take two and a half year is over. life in prison but it's really not going to have any answers until at least february at this point all right well looks like things are kind of moving along but again as you said nothing is final so that really good victory for bradley and it's not it's really a victory but it's a good for anyone watching that all right andrew appreciate you staying on top of it that was our few web producer andrew blake. from tasering eleven year olds to sending in the swat teams for even minor crimes the police seems to be losing sight

of their main responsibility that is to protect and serve violent confrontations caught on tape call into question the increasingly militaristic tactics used by police forces in the u.s. our kids are mongol endo takes a look at the latest troubling police trends which are increasing fears in all types of american neighborhoods. their sights and sounds on the streets of them in. this last the sound of an arizona swat team shooting seventy high powered rounds a twenty six year old marine an iraq war veteran of course a get into a routine marijuana raid but no drugs were found. get in his wife says he grabbed a pistol think of the deputies were home invaders feared for his children's lives that you don't always on your door you see this man it's dark you know they're in

wearing black you know the way they're coming in they don't even know the time to really think things through social justice advocate alex sanchez has seen increasingly militaristic tactics used during raids in his neighborhood because they feel threatened they kill you you know and we see it often enough and they go some punished i.r.a.q.'s or graduate marks one of the few times that a police officer has been tried for shooting and killing an innocent person but many were shocked at what they considered a very lenient sentence if oscar grant had gone down mr mesler. i don't think a reasonable person would suggest that oscar grant would get a one year sentence with serving in a county jail and then would walk away scot free and nothing happened he'd get the death sentence for years community activists have blasted be increasingly brutal

tactics an officer using a taser to chase down a fourteen year old girl seems to defy what we expect from police and this ninety one year old southern california and selling suicide kids around a dozen f.b.i. agents ordered her out of her house at gunpoint and took her sewing machine. activists are also concerned that many in law enforcement come from a military background they see. the public not as something maybe protected as an enemy that needs to be suppressed police departments in cities big and small are investing it armored vehicles and other gear used by our armed forces overseas so what we've seen is the paramilitary is a shadow of all police departments that came out of the urban on the rest of the urban rebellions of the nineteen sixty's our men were later issued black suits

a bulletproof the watts riots of one thousand nine hundred sixty five up by little reminder of the alienation being felt by poor irving it also sparked a new era of police oppression and intimidation. seen again during the mass it made a rally in los angeles in two thousand and seven and now spreading beyond urban centers. homeless and schizo phrenic kelly thomas was beaten into a coma by police in a relatively quiet orange county city he died days later i think everybody needs to be concerned about copping off like that and murderous. body cellphones in you tube are helping expose police brutality but police are fighting back that. i was confused on the way whoa what's going on here you know why am i being put in

jail for something i didn't do man's only crime was videotaping a police officer the video camera may indeed be the best weapon an american citizen has against the police force which is becoming increasingly militaristic in los angeles ramon the lindo party. for more on the military as a nation of the police force i spoke earlier with r t correspondent rym unger and though. probably one of the most glaring displays of evidence that people have seen over the last year is just the very intense crackdown on occupy wall street i can tell you that here in los angeles thousands of police officers with helmets but tons in what they call non-lethal weapons were really really brought out and intimidated the crowds and we saw this throughout the country we saw it in d.c. and new york so definitely as far as visually people got a firsthand account of the increasingly militaristic tactics that police use during

the occupy wall street protests but we want to look at the numbers we can use that in california as a really good example here in los angeles the los angeles police department the number of certain volved shootings increased by fifty percent last year and you know a lot of police departments they say that gang members or whoever it is that they're shooting at are becoming increasingly violent but more and more of these washed groups are saying that that just really isn't the case and we also have to remember here in southern california recently we saw a huge number of protesters because of the high number of officer involved shootings in anaheim just down the street from disneyland so as far as numbers goes the shootings do appear the incidents of police violence do appear to be increasing and of course videotape has helped to bring some of these incidents to light yeah right you said katie percent and that is the increase that's a significant increase there ramon how are people fighting back against what seems

to be an extremely violent trend and now police enforcement. that's right there's a few ways that people are fighting back one of the ways and here this is one of the several civil rights lawsuit which have been filed here in southern california some of these are aimed at the fullerton police department which is accused in the beach in the beating and killing of kelly thomas that homeless man and there have been federal lawsuits like this up and down california including and also in new york where police there are also accused of brutalizing unarmed youth which are of latin and of black descent and the other method that people are using is they're just taking to the streets now this issue of police brutality is becoming more mainstream we saw that in the case of oscar grant nothing may have been done had it not been for people taking to the streets same thing with the kelly thomas beating repeatedly people were taken to the streets pressure from kelly thomas' father and

just this whole video i mean it really stirred people's emotions and really put a lot of pressure on prosecutors to really go after these officers who were caught on video and around add to what extent do you think police are held accountable for their actions. it's very rare that they go to trial like i said in instances like the oscar grant shooting or in the being of kelly thomas this really didn't go to the courts until after a ton of public outcry and people are just taking to the streets but it's really difficult to take a police officer you know to court because many times it's tough to police the police from within a lot of police officers they're not going to want to have to go after one of their own and we see the same issue in prosecutor's office is the other issue is that a lot of times the mainstream media just buries these things under the rug they

don't ask questions the police department says that there was a gang member and that he was armed and in many cases where we're here where funny no weeks later that in many cases that these young men who are either shot or be in a by police are involved in gangs and are not carrying any weapons so there is a lot of. stronger necessity for the media to really question what law enforcement is reporting. really interesting thank you for weighing in on that and happy birthday to you let's ever that. was our to correspondent rhonda rowland joining us from our live angeles studio. and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered you can head on over to our you tube channel that is youtube dot com slash r t america you can also check out our web site that's r t dot com slash usa and to find out what i'm up to you.