Iowa Voters

A key roadblock in front of the paper ballot campaign has broken. The House committee that has jurisdiction over our bill, HR 550, will get a new chairman.

The old chairman was Ohio Representative Bob Ney, a close ally of indicted Majority Leader Tom DeLay. With top Republican operative Jack Abramoff about to turn state’s witness, the Republicans are shaking up their leadership. Since Ney was also close to Abramoff and may be indicted next, he is a poor choice to head the committee that administers the House. So Republicans forced him to step down.

Ney co-sponored the Help America Vote Act, which began the stampede to paperless voting and touchscreen machines, a boon to Ohio-based Diebold. When we raised the alarm over such black box voting, Ney plugged his ears. When HR 550 was assigned to his committee, he said, “Let my HAVA baby alone.” (paraphrasing.) Even though 159 other Representatives became co-sponsors of HR 550, Ney would not hold hearings on the bill.

Now he is gone. The road is clear. Start your engines.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 at 2:37 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.