Why the fight in Ohio Matters

Now that the coalition of Democrats, Greens, and Progressives in Ohio have given up on their election challenge since the certification of the Ohio votes and the US Congress' completion of the electoral college process. This has led to several comments from those sane Republican talking heads. Watch as Hanity and Colmes, O'Reily (when he is not talking about himself), and crazy Coulter keep incessantly bragging about how easily they won the election and how this election is a realignment of politics which marks an age of real God given values.

Yeah, values like deceit -- lies for going to war, where are the weapons of mass destruction again Mr. President? You remember them, that is why we want to war in Iraq before you started talking about being the handmaiden of democracy to the middle east. And values like greed -- tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans while the average American is facing high state taxes, increasing school taxes and fees for their children, and perhaps the value that most affects Americans today, the classic good ol' military Republican value: slaughter -- death and disfigurement for far too many American service women and men even though they lack the basic equipment, intelligence, and are facing confusing orders (to torture or to not torture, that is the question).

But speaking of the value of deceit, the debate over unfair election rules in several states and unfair election day shenanigans matter for now and into the future. It matters because the republicans did cheat. Let me make this absolutely clear, dear reader... THE REPUBLICANS IN THE STATE OF OHIO CHEATED AND DELIVERED THE ELECTION TO BUSH!!

The debate over the unequal distribution of voting machines in Ohio is not a matter of crazy logic or a review of a ledger. The screaming nut-wing on Fox "news" and in talk radio and other nether regions where the light of rational enlightenment thought has been repeatedly attacked state over and over that there could not have been election fraud. But they are wrong.

The claims of fraud are accurate. They are accurate for a simple reason: the people behind the distribution of these machines, paper provisional ballots, and poll workers were republicans who were part of the Bush "re" election campaign. These were not the people running the polls. Ohio law requires an equal number of republican and democrats running the precinct (of course, this is based on previous voting and self identification as a republican or democrat which could never be wrong).

But as Ohio's top election figure, Kenneth Blackwell, a republican who worked on Bush's campaign in Ohio, supervised the direct distribution of voting machines throughout the state of Ohio. But... but but but, the republicans scream: "There were democrats and republicans in every precinct in Ohio. Nothing bad happen here unless the democrats colluded!" Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

The democrats were not in charge of distribution of the voting machines themselves, republicans were. I am sure that republicans would not send fewer voting machines to largely democratic precincts in the state because that would lead to long lines and possibly discourage democrats from voting (and that could make a big difference in a close election). And since Mr. Blackwell assures us that he distributed the machines fairly, we should believe him, right? Because telling the truth and acting truthfully is a self-professed republican value. Of course, Mr. Blackwell accepted money himself illegally, but its ok because he is going to give it back.

Yeah, everything is going to be ok. Yeah, right.