NOV 21, 2004




  Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell is the subject of three
actions regarding the Ohio vote that you haven’t seen on television
yet. Each (the Cobb/Badnarik Recount bid, the Alliance for Democracy
legal challenge, and the Ohio Democratic Party suit over provisional
ballots) has an undertone suggesting time is of the essence, and that
he is wasting it.  The local Democrats haven’t been commenting on
their low-flying suit – more about that later. They’re just smiling
quietly to themselves.



It is
noteworthy that the announcement of a legal challenge made it into
weekend editions of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Columbus Dispatch,
the Associated Press wires, and other publications. The Columbus paper
even mentioned something curious. “Earlier this week, the Ohio
Democratic party announced it would join a lawsuit arguing that the
state lacks clear rules for evaluating provisional ballots, a move the
party said will keep its options open if problems with the ballots
surface.”



This
makes a little more sense out of a confusing item that appeared in an
obscure weekly paper in Westchester County, New York, last Wednesday,
in which a reporter named Adam Stone wrote “A top-ranking official with
Democratic Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign told North County
News last week that although unlikely, there is a recount effort being
waged that could unseat Republican President George Bush.” Stone quotes
Kerry spokesman David Wade as saying: “We have 17,000 lawyers working
on this, and the grassroots accountability couldn’t be any higher – no
(irregularity) will go unchecked. Period.” Gives a little context to
Senator Kerry’s opaque mass e-mail and on-line video statement from
Friday afternoon.



The Ohio
newspaper coverage suggests that even the mainstream media is beginning
to sit up and take notice that, whatever its merits, the investigation
into the voting irregularities of November 2nd has moved from the
Reynolds Wrap Hat stage into legal and governmental action.  I’ve
gotten 37,000 emails in the last two weeks (now running at better than
25:1 in favor), and the two most repeated comments by those critical of
the coverage have been references to the ratings of Fox News Channel,
and the phrase “the election is over, (expletive deleted), live with
it.” I hesitate to generalize, but this does suggest a certain
unwillingness of critics to engage in political discourses that don’t
have no swear words in ‘em.



Meantime,
The Oakland Tribune not only devoted seventeen paragraphs Friday to the
UC Berkeley study on the voting curiosities in Florida, but actually
expended considerable energy towards what we used to call ‘advancing
the story’: “The UC Berkeley report has not been peer reviewed, but a
reputable MIT political scientist succeeded in replicating the analysis
Thursday at the request of the Oakland Tribune and The Associated
Press. He said an investigation is warranted.”

(click here to read the entire story)