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Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press has issued the single biggest lie of any mainstream corporate media outlet since Kenneth Blackwell orchestrated the theft of the 2004 presidential election. She refers to Ken Blackwell as the “honorary co-hair” of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign in Ohio. Blackwell was a very active and involved co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign. This is like referring to Hitler as the honorary Fuhrer of the Third Reich. And, he prided himself in being a very partisan activists, bragging that it was his idea to put the gay-bashing Issue One on the November 2004 ballot claiming that led to Bush’s victory. To now pretend that he held some honorary inactive role is false and disingenuous.

The Dispatch reported today that “…Blackwell has lost his appeal of a court decision, ordering him to pay $64,613 dollars in attorney’s fees related to a lawsuit filed during the 2004 presidential election.” Voting rights groups sued Blackwell, in part, for waiting too long to issue a directive on provisional voting in Ohio. Blackwell ruled late that votes in Ohio would not be counted if people were registered in the right county but at the wrong precinct, which sometimes means the wrong table at the same polling place. This disenfranchised thousands of urban Ohio Kerry voters. Meanwhile, rural Republican counties like Miami admit they refused to enforce Blackwell’s directive and even used the term “merged” voter to allow voters registered in other counties, but now residing in Miami County, to vote.

As part of Blackwell’s “Big Lie” campaign, he was a mere “honorary co-chair” for Bush and the lackey he’s training to replace him, Greg Hartmann, has a similar ludicrous talking point. Hartmann told the Cincinnati Enquirer today that Ohio’s election system is “the best in the country.” What Blackwell and Hartmann understand is that if you’re the laughing stock of the democratic world, you simply repeat the same mantra to the corporate media asserting the opposite. If you’re the most biased repressive state in the Union when it comes to voting rights and your elections are the most notoriously corrupt, you simply claim you’re number one. Then raise millions of dollars from rich Republican donors to run propaganda ads selling the Big Lie.