I nominate Bob Ney, former chairman of the House Administration Committee, to the GOP Election Day Hall of Shame, for his outstanding performance as a drunken bum on the take who knowingly and willfully subverted the authority granted to him under the Constitution to undermine voter confidence in the electoral system for political gain. 

Chairman Ney's hearing on voter fraud held at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus in March 2005 is prima facie evidence of absolute corruption in the Republican Party. In the preceding months, Republican operatives had spent millions of dollars to manufacture and fund bogus voter fraud claims with the express intent of creating public support for  restrictive voter registration laws.       

The American Center For Voting Rights, formed by Republican operatives in February 2005, was the only "voters rights group" to testify at the hearing. The ACVR's 28-page report on voter fraud submitted to the Department of Justice provides a framework of how the GOP orchestrated its efforts to suppress the Democratic votes.

One of the exhibits attached to the ACVR is an unintentionally hilarious recounting of what happened when a University of Virginia law student and a Republican operative set out on Election Day to document "voter fraud" they were certain was being committed by the Teamsters in Philadelphia. After they annoyed the shit out of the Teamsters all day, the dynamic duo got the thrill of their lives when Teamsters in big SUVs chased them out of town. Even the cop who filled out the police report thought the whole thing was silly.     

I bet more than one shyster at the RNC busted a gut laughing when disgraced congressman from Louisiana, Robert L. Livingston, was named chairman of the Free Enterprise Coalition, i.e. the F.E.C. Get the joke?

Based on a single incident, the Free Enterprise Coalition sponsored a RICO civil lawsuit filed by two Ohio citizens in December 2004 against ACORN, the NAACP and the AFL-CIO, claiming that ACORN was bribing people with crack cocaine to register to vote. The ACVR, of course, cited the lawsuit as irrefutable evidence of voter fraud in its report. 

Three months later, the RICO suit was dropped and the GOP never mentioned it again.

So on Election Day, remember Bob Ney, the Republican from Ohio who used public funds to  corrupt the electoral process. The guy's a shoo-in for the Hall of Shame.