Ney, R

===

no lnx an

Inside the GOP plot to silence Texas voters

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (Not Pictured) speaks alongside U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) (L), Attorney General Ken Paxton (2nd R), Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick (R) hold a joint press conference February 18, 2015 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)

Thom Hartmann August 12, 2024

Last week I documented how in Georgia both Governor and former Secretary of State Brian Kemp and current Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have been actively purging millions of Georgians, particularly Black voters, from voter rolls for years. How Kemp purged over 100,000 Georgia voters and then “beat” Stacy Abrams by about 50,000.

A similar scheme has been underway in Ohio ever since Republicans took over that state, and also operates in most other Red states that have large Blue cities.

The purges that started in a big way under Republicans in Ohio gained both notoriety and lawsuits, one going all the way to the Supreme Court.

They did, however, produce a significant blowback: people got pissed off when they showed up to vote and were told that they’d been removed from the voting rolls by the Republican administration of their state.

READ: Why isn't the media reporting on Trump's increasing dementia?

So, Republicans in Texas have come up with a new twist that’s designed to avoid directly confronting and angering voters. You could call it “passive aggressive vote suppression.”

Instead of purging people off the rolls entirely, they’re putting voters they consider suspicious on what they call a “suspense” list.

As of last week, according to The Dallas Morning News, “Nearly 12% of Texas’ roughly 18 million voters are on the suspense list.”

If you’re running a state and want to hang onto your office, even if your policies are not popular and you’re so incompetent you can’t even keep the power on, the easiest way to stay in office — to “win” elections — is to pre-rig them by making sure some people’s ballots are simply never counted.

The Texas GOP has turned this into an art form; in a state where elections at the statewide level are often won by a single point or two, muting the votes of 12% of the state’s voters can give you a real edge. Here’s how it works:

Being on the suspense list means that when you show up to vote, you’ll be given a “provisional ballot.”

What’s a provisional ballot?

Former BBC and Guardian reporter Greg Palast calls them “placebo ballots,” and with good reason. You mark the ballot with your voting choices, hand it in, and walk away feeling like you actually voted. You tell exit pollsters and your friends that you voted. You believe that you voted, and that your vote will be counted.

But, because it’s a provisional ballot, it goes into a separate box and is not counted on election day. Many provisional ballots are never counted, in fact, because for a provisional ballot to be counted in most states (including Texas) the voter must, within 6 days of the election, present themselves at the Secretary of State’s office with ID and proof of citizenship and residence.

If you don’t take the day off work to do this, your ballot is not counted. And often people don’t even realize what’s happened to their vote.

Provisional “placebo” ballots came about in 2002 as a result of The Help America Vote Act that was signed into law that year by George W. Bush.

That legislation, written in large part by former Representative Bob Ney, R-Ohio, contains a provision requiring people who show up to vote — even if they’ve been purged from the voting lists — to be given something new called a “provisional ballot.”

“The main reason we did that,” the former congressman told me, “was because, particularly across the Deep South, people were simply being turned away at the polls. In most cases it was because they were Black, but in many cases it was also being done in districts where the opposition party controlled most of the election apparatus, typically Republicans turning away people in Democratic districts.

“We wanted to make sure,” he added, “that every eligible voter had both a chance to vote and some level of certainty that his or her vote would be counted after they went to all the trouble of voting.”

The parable about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is worthy of citing here. The HAVA law was passed on a bipartisan basis, after the hanging-chad disaster in Florida in the 2000 election.

But the giant loophole it created for GOP vote suppressors was based in the simple reality that provisional ballots are often not counted.

Rules vary from state to state, but usually if voters are given a provisional ballot, they must then, within a few days of the election, present themselves in person at a state or county office to prove that they are who they say they are and that they were legally registered to vote and were purged incorrectly.

The HAVA law requires that voters getting provisional ballots be told that they can “cure” their ballots, but in actual practice in Republican-controlled states this is almost never the case. (Although, even when it is, the percentage of people who’d be willing or able to take time off work to jump through all these hoops is tiny.)

Independent investigative reporter Greg Palast, found this to be very much the case (and worse) when he accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 92-year-old cousin, Christine Jordan, to the polls in Georgia, and poll workers repeatedly refused to give her even a provisional ballot until Palast intervened.

After voting for half a century in the same place, she’d been purged from the rolls by Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp in the run-up to his contest with Stacey Abrams. Eventually, after multiple tries with Palast threatening lawsuits and making a scene on camera at the polling place, Jordan got a provisional ballot, although it almost certainly was never counted.

In Texas, to have the provisional ballot of a person on the suspense list counted, the state’s website explains:

“[I]n order to have the provisional ballot counted, the voter will be required to visit the voter registrar’s office within six calendar days of the date of the election to either present one of the acceptable forms of photo ID OR submit one of the temporary affidavits (e.g., religious objection or natural disaster) in the presence of the county voter registrar OR submit the required paperwork and sign the required statement to qualify for a permanent disability exemption in the presence of the county voter registrar, in order for the provisional ballot to count.” (emphasis added)

Fully twelve percent of Texas’ voters are now on the suspense list, although — as far as I can tell with a pretty thorough web search — the state doesn’t disclose who they all are, where they live, how they previously voted, or even how they got on the list.

In America, five Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled repeatedly that you have a right to own a gun and carry it pretty much wherever you want. If a state government wants to take your gun away, because the Supreme Court has defined gun ownership as a “right” rather than a privilege, they must go to court and prove their case before a judge.

On the other hand, the Republicans on the Supreme Court have repeatedly ruled, none of us have a “right” to vote. Even though the 1993 National Voter Registration Act(sometimes called the Motor Voter Act) explicitly says, repeatedly, that “voting is a right” in America, Republicans on the Supreme Court have blocked our access to that right.

In 2001, in the case where five Republicans on the Court stopped the Florida recount and handed the election to its loser, George W. Bush, Chief Justice Rehnquist was explicit, writing for the majority, “The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States…”

They must go to court to take away your gun, but Republicans can — and routinely do — take away our votes without even informing us.

And then they make you take a day off work and drive a hundred miles to the Secretary of State’s office to prove that you’re still who you’d already proved you were when you first registered, before you’d been bounced onto the suspense list.

That’s just wrong. And America is the only country in the developed world other than Hungary where this is the case. The rest of the democratic world looks at us like we’re some kind of freaks.

First poor white men (1790s), then African Americans and other minorities (1860s), and finally women (1920) fought, went to jail, and even died for the right to vote for more than two centuries.

And yet still there is no universal right for American citizens to vote, which is why Texas, Georgia, Florida, and other Red states can play these games with our votes.

In her Philadelphia speech yesterday, Vice President Harris referenced this bizarre situation, saying that when she’s president the first bill she wants to sign is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which will make the right to vote explicit in a way Republicans on the Supreme Court can’t ignore.

It’s about damn time.

That's not to mention the convicted felon, the business leader who was the main financier of Bob Ney's defense fund before the former Heath congressman went to federal prison, or the cowboy-hat-wearing industrialist who supports a mysterious out-of-state entity now delinquent in paying a record $5.2 million election fine in Ohio.

They are among an esoteric baker's dozen of individuals and families who have led the way in bankrolling Ohio political campaigns during the past decade. Together, those 13 deep-pocketed donors poured more than $25 million into state races since 2000.

Despite limits placed on campaign contributions in the mid-1990s, Ohioans just witnessed the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in state history. In fact, every statewide nonjudicial race this year broke spending records, some of which had stood for 20 years.

When he signed legislation capping donations to candidates, parties and political-action committees in May 1995, Gov. George V. Voinovich said, "I'm confident there'll be a substantial reduction in the amount of money spent on campaigns." Others readily agreed.

Instead, the price tag for statewide campaigns in the past decade leaped almost 73 percent from the total for the 1990s, most of which had no limits on political contributions, according to a Dispatchcomputer analysis of more than 4.3 million state campaign-finance records involving more than $1.7 billion in transactions.

(For purposes of this comparison, an 11-year period, 1990-2000, was used for the "1990s" so that three statewide election years were included, the same as in the 10-year period 2001-10. The Dispatchresearch did not take into account money from outside groups that have poured millions of independent expenditures into state campaigns, and it does not include the multiple millions more provide to federal campaigns from Ohio.)

Voinovich, who is retiring after 12 years in the U.S. Senate following his two terms as governor, confirmed this year the suspicions of many critics that such extravagantly funded campaigns have created an atmosphere in which big donors receive special access to elected officials.

"Truthfully, it has an impact on you," he said. "Somebody who has a big fundraiser in Ohio and says they want to come in to see you, and, you know, you see those individuals. There's no question that they've got an advantage as a result of doing it."

Outgoing Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, whose office enforces Ohio campaign-finance laws, said, "No matter how well-intentioned a candidate is, if they're taking large amounts from donors who are not giving for ideological purposes, there will be tacitly that pressure that they need to give access to those donors, if not actively work to please them."

The quest for cash was virtually unending in this year's record-breaking race for governor. Together, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and successful GOP challenger John Kasich staged 276 fundraisers in the 300 days leading up to this year's Nov. 2 election, their campaign-finance filings show.

Strickland held 166 campaign fundraisers in the first 10 months of 2010, generating more than $5.2million. That's an average of more than one fundraiser every other day, seven days a week, in locations across Ohio and from Los Angeles to New York.

"It's not a pleasant task, but it's a necessary task if you are serious about winning an election," Strickland said. "You can put your name on a ballot, not raise money, and you're not to going to win."

In the same period, Kasich had 110 fundraisers - more than one every three days - generating nearly $4.2 million.

"Until the media agree to begin working for free and start giving away free advertising, there will always be a need for campaigns to raise money," Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said.

Strickland garnered more than $450,000 on Oct. 17 when President Barack Obama hosted a fundraiser at the Renaissance Hotel in Columbus. While Kasich's money events were fewer in number, they were more lucrative because of a series of "headliners."

An appearance by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in Cincinnati brought in about $680,000; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Columbus, $630,000; talk-show host Sean Hannity in Cleveland, $600,000; and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in Columbus, $453,000.

"They know that fundraising in terms of their job as a candidate is their primary responsibility, because no one raises money like a candidate," said Brian K. Hicks, chief of staff for Gov. Bob Taft. "They have to be focused on it virtually every minute of every day."

The Taft campaign still holds the Ohio record by far for a single fundraiser, generating almost $2million in May 2002 at a Columbus Hyatt Regency event featuring President George W. Bush. That was more than his challenger, Democrat Tim Hagan, raised during his entire campaign.

But what motivates people to fork over large amounts of cash to a political candidate?

David Brennan and William Lager operate scores of charter schools whose funding - not to mention their very existence - depends on the legislature and governor. The Wayne Boich family, primary bankrollers of Ney's defense fund, operates coal mines that are subject to government regulation on several levels.

==

matt T:

   Once Congress was conquered, Abramoff, Norquist, et al., apparently discovered a means for turning it into a pure engine for profit. The game they may have discovered worked like this: One lobbyist (Abramoff, say) represents one group of interests - for example, the Malaysian government. Then, a lobbyist friend of Abramoff's (say, Norquist) represents an antagonist to Abramoff's client, in this case, let's say dissident leader Anwar Ibrahim. Ibrahim asks Norquist to press his case against the Malaysian state in Washington; Norquist complies and uses his contacts to raise a stink on the Hill. Abramoff's client, unnerved, turns to Abramoff to make the problem go away. Abramoff dutifully goes to the same friends Norquist applied to in the first place, and the problem does indeed go away. In the end, everyone is happy and both lobbyists have performed and gotten paid. Abramoff apparently pulled this kind of double-dealing scheme more than once, as he and Ralph Reed appear to have run a similar con on the Coushatta and Tigua Indian tribes, who were on opposite sides of a gaming dispute.

    An idiot might call a scheme like this clever. But that's only true if you don't consider what really happened here: Dozens of people conspiring to reduce the U.S. Congress to the level of a Belarussian rubber stamp for the sake of . . . what? A few million dollars in lobbying fees? And not even a few million dollars apiece but a few million dollars split several ways. Shit, even Paris Hilton can make a million dollars in this country without blowing up 200 years of democracy. How smart can these guys be?

    Everyone sold themselves on the cheap. They apparently got Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), and many others in the House, to lie back and open their legs all the way for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions. In the Third World, corrupt politicians at least get something for selling out the people - boats, mansions, villas in the south of France. If you offered the lowest, most drunken ex-mobster in the Russian Duma $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 in soft money for his vote, he would laugh in your face; he might even be insulted enough to shoot you. But Jack Abramoff apparently got any number of congressmen to play ball for the same kind of money.

    They paid journalists to change their opinions; as it turns out, the right to free speech is worth about $2,000 a column to America's journalists like Doug Bandow of Copley News Service. And now it comes out that Diebold, the notorious voting-machine company, paid some $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, with the apparent aim of keeping legislation requiring paper trails in the voting process from getting into the Help America Vote Act. Conveniently, Abramoff pal Bob Ney, one of the HAVA architects, blocked every attempt to put paper trails into law, even after the controversial electoral debacles of 2000 and 2004.

diebold no work in humid heat 214

nonpart Fla ion sancho told KH about bad machines; white leon cty would not allow vote 2x/spoil; blackest fla cty had highest spoil rate 217; bad mach cost 5x more and make 20x more errors than optical reader in CO; abramoff lobby for diebold; ney in jail chair gov't ops comm for selling favors to JA in connection w/ HAVA; 1.5B$ subsidy to buy diebold 218

Hultin systematic lost votes; votes lost when mem chip removed, just looks like undervote or spoil

talk radio?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bob_Ney

In 1995 Ney co-sponsored the Ney/Kasich amendment to the welfare reform bill. The Ney/Kasich amendment "require[d] able bodied food stamp recipients between ages 18 and 51 to work 20 hours a week for their benefits." (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/19/96) The Ney/Kasich amendment was the only amendment added to the welfare reform bill.

In 1997 Ney fought off a proposed 50% cut in the Black Lung Clinic program included in President Bill Clinton's spending budget. Ney successfully increased the program's budget from $4 million to $5 million. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/21/97)

Congress 2001-2004

In 2001, Ney was one of three Republicans to vote against the USA Patriot Act. He joined Butch Otter of Idaho and Ron Paul of Texas in casting dissenting votes with 62 Democrats.

In 2003 Ney, along with Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC), led an effort to change the name of "french fries" in the House cafeteria to "freedom fries". The name change occurred when France came out as staunch opponent of a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Ney stated at the time, "This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France."[4]

Congress 2005-2006

Ney's last term in office was dominated by scandals that eventually led to his retirement and guilty plea on corruption charges. See the controversy section of this article for details.

abramoff, iran?

roll call

‘Recovering Republican’

For Ney, complete anonymity was not the goal. After leaving the Morgantown, W.Va., penitentiary, a place he calls the “Bush Housing Program,” Ney returned to Ohio. He now hosts a talk radio show in Newark, Ohio, largely focused on politics, but also touching on more spiritual things, such as meditation.

The self-described “Recovering Republican” — his voter card still lists him as a GOPer— says that he has found a new freedom in his quasi-public life, telling the inside stories of how Washington really works.

This wasn’t Ney’s first trip back inside the Beltway. He’s even been to the Members’ dining room.

“I don’t make it a regular habit,” said Ney, the former chairman of the House Administration Committee. But he continues to visit Washington semi-regularly for work and for high-profile events such as the president’s annual State of the Union address.

During those visits, Ney says he has “been treated better than I deserve” by lawmakers he used to serve with in Congress.

While Ney says he has no desire to return to public life, he does want to be involved in reforming the prison system.Ney was released from prison in August 2008 after serving 17 months of a 30-month sentence for conspiracy and making false statements in the corruption scandal centered on ex-lobbyist Abramoff.

Ney believes he could be part of an awareness and education campaign about how to fix the prison system. He said his time in the penitentiary gives him unique insight.

Ney added that he thinks elected officials need a broader experience to address a complicated system where drug addicts aren’t rehabilitated, just housed in jails before returning to a life of crime on the streets.

“I think Members of Congress and judges before they are elected should be required to do prison time,”

Ney said.

The Soon-to-be-Indicted Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio's Connection To Electoral Fraud

The Dots Connect Between Abramoff, Ohio 2004 Election Smokescreen and Ney's Former Staffer Revealed to be on Diebold's Payroll While Working for White House Law Firm

All the While as HAVA --- America's 'Election Reform' Bill --- is Used for Political Payoff in the Bargain...

Posted By Brad Friedman On 10th January 2006 @ 11:21 In Diebold/Premier, Election 2004, Ohio, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, ACVR | Comments Disabled

^[1]There's been a great deal of speculation over the last several days, particularly in the light of Jack Abramoff's recent guilty pleas, concerning the connection of Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) to Election Fraud in Ohio, vis a vis his stewardship and authoring of theHelp America Vote Act (HAVA) back in 2001 and 2002. The heavy-handed tactics he has taken since, in order to keep the flawed act from being changed in any way over the years, along with going to great lengths to keep the nation's eyes off of massive electile dysfunction in Ohio and elsewhere since 2004, may finally get the attention it all properly deserves.

Both Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon have directly informed prosecutors of Ney's alleged wrong-doing in regard to money and gifts given to Ney, in apparent exchange for support on various legislation and even personal business deals. Ney, who chairs the important U.S. House Administration Committee, has been fingered, and now subpoenaed, for accepting illegal trips, gratuities and other apparent quid pro quo deals with Abramoff's former firms, partners, friends and groups who had paid both him and Scanlon as lobbyists.

His direct connection to the HAVA Election Reform bill passed in the wake of the 2000 Florida Election Debacle, and his various extraordinary efforts to specifically block amendments to the bill and to smokescreen attempted investigations into his home state's conduct during the 2004 Election Debacle, has been less widely reported. Until now.

While Common Cause quietly reported ^[2] in December of 2004 that Diebold --- the much-beleagured-of-late^[3] American Voting Machine company --- paid as much as $275,000 to Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig for lobbying work, The BRAD BLOG ^[4] has now found additional details that begin to shed new light on Ney's personal connections to Diebold lobbyists.

^[5]Such personal connections include those with Ney's former chief of staff turned lobbyist, David DiStefano, who has been working on behalf of Diebold, Inc. and at least one other Voting Machine Company as a registered lobbyist in the House going back to at least 2001. One of DiStefano's online bios ^[6] crows about his having "an insider's edge to hard-to-reach political officials." That "insider's edge" has proven to have been a very worthwhile investment for the Voting Machine Companies who'd purchased access into Ney's political office.

Congressional lobbying records ^[7] reveal that Diebold, Inc. has paid at least $180,000 to DiStefano and eventually his partner, Roy C. Coffee, to lobby for the "Help America Vote Act" and other "Election Reform Issues" in Congress since 2003. Another Electronic Voting Machine Company, AccuPoll, Inc., also paid DiStefano some $70,000 to lobby for HAVA on their behalf in 2002, although that relationship was apparently terminated once the legislation was passed by Congress.

In turn, Ney's former employee DiStefano and Coffee themselves have given nearly $20,000 to Bob Ney's campaigns dating back to 2002.

The connections of DiStefano and Coffee don't stop at Congress, however.Both lobbyists now work out of the new Washington office of the Texas-based law firm of Lock, Liddell & Sapp LLP --- the firm of George W. Bush's White House Counsel Harriet Miers. And Coffee, himself, had previously worked as a senior aide to then-Governor Bush back in Texas.

In addition to lobbying in favor of Electronic Voting, DiStefano and Coffee were also paid thousands to lobby Ney on behalf of an obscure firm by the name of FN Aviation, which later became known as FAZ Aviation. FN/FAZ Aviation, the *Columbus Dispatch* reported ^[8] last December, paid for Ney's 2003 trip to England. On that trip, Ney met at a casino with FN Aviation's director, Nigel Winfield, a three-time convicted felon, and Fouad al-Zayat, the Syrian-born head of FN Aviation. Zayat, as reported by NBC News ^[9], is known as "one of London's biggest gamblers."

As has also been reported by NBC and others, the apparently once-very lucky Ney reported winning some $34,000 a few months later at that same London casino, after an initial $100 bet "on two hands of a three-card game of chance," according to his spokesperson Brian Walsh. Ney, who coincidentally carried at least $30,000 in credit card debt in 2002, was fortunate to be able to report that the debt was paid off in full by the end of 2003.

The dots begin converging, however, in regard to both large campaign contributions and lobbying done by Ney's former chief of staff, DiStefano along with Coffee on behalf of both FN/FAZ Aviation and Diebold, Inc.

Ney was one of the original authors and lead co-sponsors of HAVA, and a fierce defender of both the act and the effort to keep further legislation from moving forward in Congress that would mandate Voter Verified Paper Ballots for electronic voting machines made by Diebold and other e-voting vendors.

In 2004, prior to the Presidential Election, Ney went so far as to send a "Dear Colleague" letter signed along with the other HAVA co-sponsors, to members of congress urging them not to amend the original legislation. He argued at the time that paper records on such machines would somehow disenfranchise disabled voters, who had been cleverly afforded a special provision in the bill which mandated at least one disabled-accessable device in every voting precinct in the country. That device, of course, would be a paperless touch-screen electronic voting machine, like the ones made by Diebold, which, legislators, vendors and lobbyists would later proffer, were required to meet provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Ney had also personally gone out of his way to keep Rep. Rush Holt's (D-NJ) "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" (HR 550), which would mandate paper records for all votes cast, from ever seeing the light of day in the House Administration Committee. That, despite Holt's bill having now nearly 160 bi-partisan co-sponsors. Ney has succeeded brilliantly at squashing Holt's bill, first proposed as HR 2239 back in 2003, as it continues to both gain co-sponsors and gather dust as the powerful Republican committee chair still refuses to allow it even to be brought up for hearings.

The American Prospect's Art Levine broke a superb exposé ^[10] last May concerning Ney's alleged payoffs from a number of the Indian tribes that now-disgraced, once-uber-lobbyist Abramoff was representing in exchange for promises to support their hope for new gambling legislation back in 2002.

"Just met with Ney!!! We're f'ing gold!!!! He's going to do Tigua," wrote Abramoff to Scanlon in an Email, after Ney reportedly promised to add the Tribe's hoped-for legislation to HAVA while the bill was still pending.

Ney then told the tribes --- who had been instructed by Abramoff and Scanlon to give tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign and to pay for a $100,000 trip to play golf at St. Andrews in Scotland --- that he was working with the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, Chris Dodd, to add gambling language in HAVA that would be favorable to the tribes.

In reality, Dodd had rejected the idea early on in no uncertain terms, as Levine reports, but that didn't keep Ney from spinning tales to the tribal groups. He told them on several occassions, at least once personally, that things were moving smartly forward as he kept accepting more cash and gifts from them along the way.

Finally, when the HAVA legislation was passed, and the promised language was nowhere to be found, Ney informed the tribes that Dodd had reneged on the deal at the last minute.

That was, of course, not true, since Dodd had rejected the plan months earlier.

But as the spotlight of corruption has finally begun to shine bright and clear in the Mainstream Media onto Ney, renewed interest in his support and authorship of HAVA itself --- along with the connections between that legislation, chicanery in Ohio's Election, Abramoff and several other GOP operative and lobbying firms' merry band of pay-for-players --- are helping to bubble up towards the surface a few previously overlooked, but very important, details that may finally now receive the attention they always deserved from the Mainstream Media...

The BRAD BLOG ^[4] has been reporting since early 2005 ^[12] about Ney's role in authoring and co-sponsoring HAVA along with his various attempts to keep it from being amended to require Voter Verified Paper Ballots with every vote cast. More so, we've been reporting on his very specific efforts to smoke-screen the mountain of evidence suggesting massive fraud in Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election by --- among other things --- holding hearings in his House Administration Committee meant quite clearly to deflect the focus from the rampant ElectoralFraud in the Buckeye State in 2004 towards the trumped-up imaginery epidemic ^[13] of Voter Fraud in that state and elsewhere around the country.

Ney's hearings, ostensibly publicized as "investigations" into the many Election Irregularities in Ohio, even went so far as to hear testimony from a self-described "voting rights" group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights(ACVR). The tax-exempt 501(c)3, self-proclaimed "non-partisan" group was the only such "voting rights" group to give testimony to the committee. However, as The BRAD BLOG discovered at the time ^[14], the brand-new organization was little more than a phony GOP front group. It had been co-founded by two top-level Bush/Cheney/RNC operatives, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne and Jim Dyke.

As we reported back then, the phony ACVR had been formed just days prior to their giving testimony to Ney's congressional committee. The hearings --- held in Columbus, OH --- were on March 21, 2005. Yet the first known record of ACVR's emergence in the world was on itsInternet domain registration ^[15] (AC4VR.com) which was created on March 17, 2005 --- just two business days prior to the hearings!

Hearne --- who had been National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. --- identified himself ^[16] in his testimony at the hearings only as "a longtime advocate of voting rights and an attorney experienced in election law." He then was allowed to go on to testify about unsubstantiated, and later completely discredited charges of voter fraud while others testified misleadingly about long voting lines in all of Ohio's counties, instead of just those precincts which leaned heavily Democratic. Many of those Left-leaning precincts turned out to have had, in several cases, fewer voting machines deployed in the November general election than they reportedly had in the primary races just several months earlier.

For his part, Hearne's partner Dyke had been the RNC's Communication Director up to that point. Dyke now works in the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney and apparently continues his affiliation with the "non-partisan" ACVR in the bargain.

The HAVA legislation, while it does not explicitly require states or counties to upgrade their voting equipment to electronic touch-screen systems made by Ohio's Diebold, Inc. and others --- even while the opportunistic Voting Machine Vendors and the lazy Mainstream Media have otherwise perpetuated that myth for several years --- it does mandate that every precinct have at least one voting device that is accessable to disabled voters so that they may be able to cast their ballots secretly and without assistance.

Hence, Ney and the other original authors and lead co-sponsors of HAVA --- Dodd (D-CT) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in the Senate and Steny Hoyer (D-MD) in the House --- have been playing up the "Disabled Voters Need Electronic Voting Machines!" card since its inception by hauling out various spokespeople from disabilities groups such as the National Federation for the Blind (NFB) and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). Representatives from those groups have testified at hearings and elsewhere to help make the case that their members simply must have computerized voting machines --- with no paper ballots --- or their civil rights will be denied.

What is rarely reported, when folks such as the AAPD's Jim Dickson inevitably show up at these hearings to testify, is that the NFB received a contribution of one million dollars from Diebold and Dickson's AAPD has received at least $26,000 from them as well, as reported by the *NY Times* ^[17] and others.

(NOTE: Those spokespeople from disabilities groups not on the Diebold payroll, who don't buy into the tortured notion that they must have paperless touch-screen voting machines in order to protect their civil-rights --- folks like David Dixon of Florida's Handicapped Adults of Volusia County (HAVOC) --- are rarely called to testify at such hearings as those trumped-up by Bob Ney and friends.)

In addition to the "Dear Colleague" letter that Ney wrote (signed by him and his co-sponsors of the HAVA legislation) in 2004, asking members of congress not to amend the act to require paper trails, Ney has made every effort to ensure that the myriad reports of massive voter disenfranchisment and electoral irregularities that occurred in Ohio remain little more than "conspiracy theory", as far as both the Mainstream Media and the majority of the American electorate perceive the matters. He, and others who have lobbied hard on behalf of Diebold have continued to misleadingly forward the idea that what occurred in 2004, and subsequently in 2005 --- where some 44 out of 88 counties in Ohio went electronic for the first time --- is no cause for alarm. It's all little more than the imaginery ruminations of Democratic-party John Kerry supporters, according to such folks. That, despite the fact that it has been the Green and Liberterian parties who have, by and large, waged the most aggressive attempt to have votes counted in Ohio, along with the extraordinarily well-documented reports of chicanery exposed nationally throughout various local media. More information in that regard will likely surface via the still-pending lawsuit on all of this brought by the League of Women Voters in Ohio.

Add that to the "staggeringly impossible" results ^[18] of the 2005 Election results there which were stunning, to say the least, and the shamefully under-reported story of the non-partisan Governmental Accountability Office's (GAO) damning report on HAVA and its gross failures ^[19] released last September. All told, it would seem that Ney and the Voting Machine Companyies like Diebold have had every reason to squash whatever reporting they could on these matters, and so far, they've gotten the job largely done. At least in the mainstream outlets.

^[20]And finally then, it has recently been revealed ^[21] that Diebold itself was also paying Abramoff's firm Greenberg Traurig directly for work in June of 2004 which has yet to be fully detailed or explained in any way.

A payment stub [PDF] ^[22] and pre-check-register [PDF] ^[23] revealing a $12,500 payment for the month, made from Diebold to Greenberg Traurig was discovered in a dumpster at Diebold's McKinney, TX facility in July of that year by electronic voting watchdog group BlackBoxVoting.org ^[24].

Perhaps that payment was part of the $275,000 we mentioned previously, as reportedly paid to Diebold. Though we've yet to find a reference to the work by Abramoff's old lobbying firm on behalf of Diebold listed in the Congressional lobbying database. So exactly what those payments were meant for, and where they ultimately ended up, remains unclear, at least to us, at this time.

It seems that the Tigua Indian tribe, which paid $32,000 to Ney and his political action committee on Abramoff and Scanlon's directive, and the two other tribes who paid $100,000 to send them all golfing in St. Andrews ultimately received little if anything for their investment.

Diebold, Inc. on the other hand, seems to have received quite a bit in return for their investment. At least in light of the continued lack of media scrutiny and congressional oversight their electronic touch-screen voting machines --- now proven ^[25] on several occassions to be fully hackable and wholly unsecure ^[26] --- have received from legislators like Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio. The same Bob Ney who has worked so hard on their behalf --- not the voters' --- to ensure that all of those poor disabled folks would have at least one voting machine of the type manufactured by Diebold Inc., in every single precinct, in every single county, in every single state in the country in 2006. It's mandated by law, after all, by Bob Ney's Help America Vote Act of 2002. In this case, it seems, they got what they paid for.

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URL to article: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2262

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[1] Image: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

[2] Common Cause quietly reported: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:NKx0JlDTOeQJ:www.commoncause.org/atf/cf/%257

BFB3C17E2-CDD1-4DF6-92BE-BD4429893665%257D/HAVA%25203.pdf+common+cause+diebold+greenberg+traurig&hl=en

[3] much-beleagured-of-late: http://www.BradBlog.com/Diebold.htm

[4] The BRAD BLOG: http://www.BradBlog.com

[5] Image: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

[6] online bios: http://www.strategichealthcare.net/Bio/David_DiStefano.htm

[7] Congressional lobbying records: http://sopr.senate.gov/cgi-win/m_opr_viewer.exe?DoFn=3&CLI=DIEBOLD&CLI

QUAL==

[8] Columbus Dispatch reported: http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/12/09/20051209-A8-00.

html&chck=t

[9] as reported by NBC News: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7833922/

[10] superb exposé: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleI

d=9658

[11] The BRAD BLOG: http://www.BradBlog.com

[12] reporting since early 2005: http://www.BradBlog.com/ACVR

[13] imaginery epidemic: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050823/the_hype_over_voter_fraud.php

[14] The BRAD BLOG discovered at the time: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001276.htm

[15] Internet domain registration: http://samspade.org/t/lookat?a=www.ac4vr.com

[16] identified himself: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001281.htm

[17] as reported by the NY Times: http://www.wheresthepaper.org/NYT06_11DisabilityLobbyAndVoting.htm

[18] "staggeringly impossible" results: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002015.htm

[19] Governmental Accountability Office's (GAO) damning report on HAVA and its gross failures:http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001940.htm

[20] Image: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002261.htm

[21] been revealed: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/2197/15714.html

[22] payment stub [PDF]: http://www.bbvdocs.org/moneytrail/greenberg.pdf

[23] pre-check-register [PDF]: http://www.bbvdocs.org/diebold/pre-check-register.pdf

[24] BlackBoxVoting.org: http://www.BlackBoxVoting.org

[25] proven: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002156.htm

[26] wholly unsecure: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001838.htm

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==

book rev

Robert Ney, an Ohio republican lawmaker, was elected to the US House of Representatives in their 1994 sweep. He resigned in October, 2006 after pleading guilty to charges of "Falsification of a document and honest services fraud." (The latter category was declared unconstitutional by a unanimous vote of the US Supreme Court in 2010.) He and Jack Abramoff were the two main people who were prosecuted. He was sentenced to thirty months in a federal prison, served slightly more than eleven months followed by six months in a halfway house. SIDESWIPED is the story of his career, its collapse, and what's happened since.

While still in college, he became active with the campaign for Governor Jim Rhodes. It lead to a job in a state bureau one month before he graduated. A year later, he quit that job, went to Iran, remaining until the political situation there became unstable six months later. He observed that the Iranian students who studied in the US "became a hot spot of dissent against the Shah" and suggests encouraging foreign students to come here to learn about democracy. Six weeks after his return, he started thinking that he should get a job. A friend suggested contacting someone in Governor Rhode's office. He did, landed another job, and remained in politics for most of the rest of his career, continuing the tradition of it's not what you know, it's who you know.

When he was approached to run for Congress, he was told about the pension program and benefits. Newt Gingrich told him he needed his support to get the Contract for America passed and change how Washington worked. Once he became a Congressman, he rose to the number twelve position in the House.

Nye is proud of a lot of the things he accomplished while a Congressman. His major problems, it seems, were being too naive and nice and drinking. He writes about the events that led to his conviction, naming names. He strongly feels he was railroaded to protect people in the White House and with higher ranking in Congress. Some of those, like Tom DeLay, got into legal trouble later.

His main accusations are against John Boehner who he wrote double crossed him and lied to him and Alice S. Fisher who was trying to become Assistant Attorney General under Alberto Gonzales. She got the job a couple weeks after he negotiated his plea. According to Ney, they tried to manufacture evidence and attempted to make his detention worse than was necessary or required.