Bob Ney - Election Theft 2004 Conspirator

Since I posted this article at my site on Jan 8, my site has been attacked - a semi-successful hack attack.

Bob Ney: Key Conspirator in the Theft of Election 2004?

By Cheryl Seal
http://cherylsealreports.com

In 2004, it was Ohio that put G.W. Bush in the White House with its electoral votes. As in Florida 2000, there was a dramatic discrepancy between exit poll results and final results. Exit polls and several newspaper polls in Ohio indicated a Kerry win. Voting machine irregularities were rampant - the voting machine industry being dominated, of course, by Diebold, whose owner was a rabid rightwing Christian Bush supporter. For example, at a single Ohio precinct, a voting machine logged 4,258 votes for Bush when there were only 638 people casting votes in the precinct! In precincts that were predominantly Democratic, all sorts of schemes and strategies were used to discourage vote-casting. For example, in Columbus Ohio, voters were forced to wait for hours because election officials refused to open additional booths - even though they were available.

As the whispers of election theft grew to shouts of outrage, guess who led the counter-charge? Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff's bestest buddy. Like Nixon proclaiming "I am not a crook!", Ney self-righteously proclaimed (in the face of a big fat mass of evidence) that there was NO EVIDENCE that election results had been rigged. By March, 2005, Ney's countercharge was becoming downright sleazy. Instead of addressing the issue of the documented cases of voter machine manipulation, Ney began to throw out racist accusations - claiming, for example, that some black voters who had turned out for Kerry were "bribed with crack," while activist gays were plotting to disrupt the election. For more details on the Ohio election theft, see the "Free Press."

Even more damning, consider Ney's behavior before the November, 2004 election. When Howard Dean's group Democracy for America proposed that electronic voting machines provide voters with a verifiable receipt, Ney's response strongly suggested panic. He fired off a bullying letter to Dean that ranted "Left-wing groups like yours ... that are exploiting this issue to inflame your supporters and raise money for yourselves are recklessly making claims that are unsupported by the facts...You should realize that if your demands to retrofit all electronic voting machines with printers before November 2004 were met, it would ensure an electoral meltdown that would make our last presidential election look orderly by comparison." But, as Laura Goss of Democracy for America pointed out, "If you can get a receipt when you buy groceries, you should also be able to get a receipt for one of the most important rights you have as a citizen - voting." Yet Ney made it seem somehow "un-American” to request a vote receipt!

In August, 2004, Ney was a keynote speaker at a conference that was billed as an "Election Center" event designed to "promote, preserve, and improve democracy. " But, reported David Corn in "The Nation," " the conference's welcoming reception on August 26 was underwritten by Diebold Election Systems. The next day, a scheduled "Dinner Cruise on the Potomac and Monuments by Night Tour" was cosponsored by Sequoia Voting Systems. And Election Systems and Software (ES&S) agreed to pick up the tab for the final day's "Graduation Luncheon and Awards Ceremony." "

Corn observes that "Each of these firms have had brushes with controversy. Sequoia had their machines rejected in the 1990s by New York City due to concerns about fraud. Earlier this year Diebold machines malfunctioned in California and disenfranchised thousands of voters. Election officials there accused Diebold officials of lying and misconduct, and Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned Diebold machines from four counties. Earlier, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, a fundraiser for George W. Bush, said in a letter that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver is electoral votes" to Bush."

Guess what Ney's speech at the conference was about? Blocking efforts to insist on paper trails from electronic voting machines!

. Why was Ney so terrified of having a paper trail attached to the results of Election 2004? Maybe for the same reason that he now wishes Jack Abramoff had never sent emails!

In any case, Ohio politics has become a cesspool of corruption, with Ney the star of the show. Check out just how long the list of GOP corruption scandals is for Ohio, compared with most other states..

Last, but not least, is Ney's bosom-buddy connection to Abramoff. Abramoff is no stranger to election results tampering. G.W. Bush's Florida recount committee paid Abramoff's firm Greenberg Taurig a whopping $314,000, at least, for "services" in the recount debacle - services that included dispersing "foot soldiers" to polling headquarters. John Byrne of "Raw Story" writes " Some members of the firm mention their roles in the recount in their biographies to this day. In a release last year, Greenberg dubbed themselves “the international law firm that successfully represented President George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election litigation.” Four of Abramoff’s colleagues—all of whom have left Greenberg in the wake of investigations surrounding Abramoff’s activities—were foot soldiers in the Florida recount. Two of them bragged of their recount work on their official online Greenberg biographies, which have since been removed. Shawn Vasell noted that he was a “team leader” in Broward and Duval counties in his bio; Duane Gibson was photographed in the acclaimed “Brooks Brothers riot” of Republican operatives outside the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters; Todd Boulanger boasted of being on the Broward and Duval recount team in his profile. Also on the ground was former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy. "

Of course, Bush, Ney, Abramoff, and the rest of the cast of federal criminals have consistently been aided and abetted by that slobbering, groveling, crotch-sniffing pack of mindless White House hounds known as the American press. Harpers reported, "The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election—except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after November 2, in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: “Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,” chuckled the Baltimore Sun on November 5. “Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud Is Dismissed,” proclaimed the Boston Globe on November 10. “Latest Conspiracy Theory—Kerry Won—Hits the Ether,” the Washington Post chortled on November 11. The New York Times weighed in with “Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried”—making mock not only of the “post-election theorizing” but of cyberspace itself, the fons et origo of all such loony tunes, according to the Times. Such was the news that most Americans received.”

Alas, we are still receiving the same quality news even now, as evidence of deep, deep, deep corruption within our government mounts and the hapless hounds of the press continue to drool, tongues hanging eagerly out, over their masters in the White House. For example, Byrne points out that "a 5,278-word profile in [a May, 2005] New York Times Magazine failed to name Abramoff’s former employer [Greenberg-Taurig] once.”

Meanwhile, Americans have died, and continue to DIE (Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, lack of access to healthcare, etc.) as a direct consequence of what very likely is an illegal presidency while the media either looks the other way or simpers apologetically.