Political Scandal Plagues Ohio

POLITICAL SCANDAL PLAGUES OHIO -- (House of Representatives - July 21, 2005)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as those listening might recall, the 2004 Presidential election was decided in Ohio, my home State, and the margin in the Presidential race was razor thin. But if you have been paying attention to Ohio newspapers of late, you know that there is a broad and widening major political scandal in Ohio that relates to the last election. People who have paid attention to Ohio or live in Ohio can read about it on the Web site of our local newspaper; the toledoblade.com is the site.

But what this concerns is that the highest elected officials in Ohio, starting with the Governor of Ohio, the Attorney General of Ohio, the auditor of Ohio, the Secretary of State of Ohio, were all in receipt of campaign contributions from an individual who is now charged with diverting millions of dollars from the State of Ohio's Workers' Compensation trust fund for personal use and for political use. There is a grand jury that has been empaneled in Ohio now involving the northern and southern districts of Ohio, looking at the diversion of some of these dollars to the Bush campaign. It is a broad and widening scandal, as I have said.

Then, today, the Secretary of State of Ohio is mentioned in articles that were published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer and by the Columbus Dispatch in our capital city, and I will just read a couple of the lines: The Board of Elections of our capital city, and that, of course, is Columbus, Ohio, the Franklin County Board docked its executive director a month's pay for accepting $10,000 in his office last year from a consultant from the voting machine company Diebold, with which we have had so many fights over the last 2 years, trying to get verified, auditable paper trails in those voting machines.

Now, it appears that that company, through its consultant, actually walked into the office of the director of the Board of Elections and wrote a check for $10,000, which the director of the board was a little reluctant to accept, but said, well, why don't you write it out to the local political party, the Republican Party of Columbus Ohio, Franklin County, which was done.

Well, now, this has been all discovered, and the investigation of what has transpired with the Secretary of State's office and Diebold and this County Board of Elections is being investigated.

One of our State senators from Ohio, Senator Teresa Fedor, has sent a letter to the Office of the United States Attorney in northern Ohio requesting a formal investigation of Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell regarding possible violations of Federal law, including, but not limited to, the Hobbs Act, regarding improper dealings between the Secretary of State's office and Diebold Election Systems, or their agents.

She goes on, and I will place the full letter in the RECORD, to ask the Inspector General to look at a series of conflict of interest questions here and the gravity of pay-to-play allegations, to determine whether Mr. Blackwell, the Secretary of State, violated Federal law by accepting campaign contributions in exchange for official acts. Because, Mr. Speaker, if you look at what has been happening in Ohio, there has absolutely been a preference for the Diebold machines; there have been delays, there have been all kinds of efforts made to advantage one company over other companies.

I want to place some of these news articles in the RECORD tonight. Also, there is a huge court case pending between a company called ESS, which is another company that has voting machines, and Diebold Corporation. That is in the courts. Our Secretary of State is saying, oh, you have to pick these machines, you have to pick the Diebold machines; they are the only machines that we have certified without giving other machines an equal chance.

What is interesting about this is that Ohio has received $136,552,794 over the last 2 years to purchase these machines, so there is Federal taxpayer dollars involved, and another $44,616,967 for training of election officials. None of those training dollars have been spent, but $136 million has gone out for hardware in a very narrow process where one company has been so very advantaged.

So I just wanted to draw people's attention to what is going on in the State of Ohio, to the ongoing court case, to the false deadlines set by our Secretary of State, now by the investigation that has been requested by our very high-ranking senators of the U.S. Attorney in Ohio, and I commend listeners to the toledoblade.com Web site to the developing political scandal in the State of Ohio.

http://thomas.loc.gov