Ney says he has nothing to fear from investigation of lobbyists

Isn't this one of the Repigs who said the election investigation in Ohio is worthless?

Washington

-- Bob Ney understands why investigators are looking into his ties to a pair of lobbyists accused of swindling $66 million from American Indian tribes, but he says he has done nothing wrong.

"I understand it doesn't look good," the Republican congressman from St. Clairsville said this week, in his first interview since his name surfaced in the Capitol Hill scandal. "But I have nothing to fear, because we have done things in the correct way."

The controversy centers on Washington lobbyists Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon and their dealings with tribes and their attempts to get Ney to write legislation for their clients. The lobbyists told the tribes to give the Ohio congressman tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions, according to testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Ney said he has been questioned by the committee about his dealings with Abramoff and Scanlon, but its investigators told him he wasn't a target of the probe.

more...

http://www.cleveland.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news/1102674826293811.xml

Here is a letter from Howard Dean to Chairman of the Committee on House Administration Robert Ney regarding a paper trail, which was accompanied by a petition signed by over 120,000 American citizens:

To the Honorable Robert Ney and the Congress of the United States:

We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results. Some states are planning to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught – and no recount will be possible.

And the head of the largest e-voting machine company – who is a major contributor to George Bush and has promised to deliver Ohio to him – asks that we just trust him.

Today we call on you to require any electronic voting machine used in this election to produce a paper trail – one that allows voters to verify their choices and officials to conduct recounts.
Signed,
S/Howard Dean

http://www.house.gov/cha/deanlettertext.htm

Here is Chairman of the Committee on House Administration Robert Ney's (a republican) response to this letter from Howard Dean regarding our petition for a paper trail:

Dear Governor Dean,

I am in receipt of your letter dated June 22, 2004 and the accompanying petition you indicate has been signed by 127,469 persons. I note your website continues to solicit signatures for the petition (along with contributions to your organization).

Left-wing groups like yours and America Coming Together 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. In calling for nationwide deployment of a voting system that has never been used successfully in a single election in this country, you are doing a great disservice to the voting public you purport to defend.

The arguments of “paper trail” proponents like yourself can be boiled down to one central assertion, i.e., that paper ballots are the only way to ensure an accurate election. You should recall that the ballots cast in Florida in November 2000 were cast on paper. Furthermore, every documented episode of election fraud in our nation’s history has been perpetrated through the manipulation of paper ballots.
snip------
The issues surrounding the security of electronic voting are currently being reviewed by the Election Assistance Commission, in conjunction with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. I am confident the experts at these organizations are fully capable of determining the extent to which problems may exist with these systems, and if they do exist, making recommendations about how to address them. That is the appropriate way to handle this issue, not by making uninformed and premature legislative decisions based on misinformation and hysteria.

http://www.house.gov/cha/neyresponsetext.htm

Ney is supposedly planning on co-leading investigations in Ohio NEXT YEAR.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x137408

This guy is NOT trustworthy and I get the funny feeling that he will hijack the proceedings (if they occur).

Also then tabled the bill (with 100+ co-sponsors) requiring a paper trail in his comittee.

-Hoot

Is his daughter named Winny?

Fuckwittage Monkeynuts.