Plunderbund

This came across the wire yesterday:
A Franklin County Common Pleas judge dismissed a lawsuit today that was aimed at blocking the Ohio secretary of state’s order requiring counties to offer paper ballots in the March 4 primary.
Judge Eric Brown ruled that the Union County commissioners, who filed the lawsuit, lack the legal authority to challenge […]

PBS provides evidence of the GOP fixing the election here in Ohio. Of course, this will be ignored because of “media bias”.
Was there a White House plot to illegally suppress votes in 2004? Is there a similar plan for the upcoming elections? This week NOW examines documents and evidence that points to a Republican […]

When I finally got close to the front of the line at my polling place in 2004, a pollworker told me to cover my T-shirt. It had the words “Vote Explosion” on it.

Seeing as I had nothing to cover it with and had just spent 3 hours in line, I politely pointed out that there was no partisanship expressed by the shirt. Vote Explosion was just a loose group of friends registering folks to vote at rock shows. She replied that they were trying to avoid even the slightest possible implication of impropriety.

OK, fair enough. Polling places are supposed to be inner sanctums of nonpartisanhip. Neither voters nor pollworkers may wear political shirts, stickers, or buttons within a 100 foot radius. Although the words “Vote Explosion” aren’t explicitly partisan, neither are the words “Eagle Forum” or “MoveOn.” I think it was a wise move to err on the side of overzealousness, and simply prohibit T-shirts bearing all of the above.

The guy behind me in line loaned me his sweatshirt, and I was able to step forth to express my partisanship in the privacy of the voting booth. As an ongoing tribute of thanks to sweatshirt guy, ever since that day I’ve stowed an extra large, plain T-shirt in my purse whenever I go to vote - just in case a fellow voter is asked to cover up.

Until I read Monday’s Columbus Dispatch, it had never occurred to me that I might someday want to offer my spare shirt to a pollworker.

Programming note really. I had a coffee meeting set up with Kelley Winzlaff, candidate for the Ohio House out of District 2, but we had a mix up in timing and weren’t able to get together. We’ve rescheduled and I look forward to chatting.
Hoping to get some audio maybe or video […]

So, the Ohio GOP (and the right-wing blogosphere) is apoplectic over SoS Brunner’s plan to encourage HS graduates to register to vote, and specifically, the counties targeted for the pilot test run of the program. The gist of the complaint is that of the 5 pilot counties (Knox, Lucas, Montgomery, Scioto, and Trumbull), only […]

Email from Earl Britt tonight announcing the launch of johnforcongress.com. Paperwork filing and fundraising apparatus online is being set up. The site is sparse as newly launched ones usually are. Look for more coming out of the 16th soon. I look for John to run a really good race. Good […]

I heard rumblings of this earlier today and Jerid over at BSB confirms it with an exclusive phone interview with John. This is good stuff. John appears to be very solid and will make a formidable candidate. Jerid links to a post by Tim Tagaris just after the November election and it’s […]

(ht Jill) Bill “No Money From Nobody” O’neill might have a new slogan when he runs for Congress against Steve LaTourette. More like “Mo’ Money From Mo’ Bodies!” He’s taken off the judicial shackles by resigning from his Court of Appeals seat in order to raise money to defeat LaTourette.
“I’m running […]

(ht Schecter and friends) Peter Brown, Asst. Director at the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute has a piece today about the dark cloud over Ohio for the GOP:
In fact, polls of Ohio voters are finding them less inclined to support GOP candidates, less likely to consider themselves Republican than in the recent past, and giving […]

Duncan Hunter is running “issue ads” in NH to introduce himself to the voters there. This is obviously against federal campaign finance laws- and people will complain- but if recent elections are any indication of the consequences- then the complaining will lead nowhere.
We saw this type of crap in Ohio last year with Ken […]

Brian Rothenberg has an update on The Legend of Joy Padgett: Bankruptcy Court.
Remember the curious case of Joy Padgett’s Bankruptcy Abuse from last Fall. Or for those of you in eastern and central Ohio, the memorable Joy Padgett for Congress commercial where she is standing like Julie Andrews — sound-of-music like — on the family […]

Gerrymandering has turned blue-state Ohio into a strongly red state:
While Democrats won nearly 53 percent of the congressional votes statewide, only about 39 percent of Ohioans will be represented next year by Democrats in Congress.
That’s the biggest so-called “wrong winner” disparity in the country from the 2006 midterm elections, says the nonpartisan FairVote.org.
Despite Democrats winning […]

With Tester officially winning MT, the entire Senate hangs on the result of ‘Macaca’ Allen v. Webb in VA.
And while Webb is in front by the slimmest of margins, he is in front. I’m confident that he’ll end up victorious, which delivers a 1 seat (51-49) edge to the Democrats in the Senate.
Maybe now […]

I’m still sorting thru the mess this morning, but here is what we know:
It looks like OH18 will be the [i]only[/i] House seat to flip in Ohio, despite the nearly 30 seat landslide nationwide. Chabot won reelection in OH01, Mean Jean looks pretty likely to hold on in OH02, and it looks like Pryce […]

Right: Ohio voters, fed up with GOP corruption, swept up in state-wide races. Strickland, Brown, Brunner, Cordray, with Dann looking likely. Votes still to be counted with Sykes in a tight race. Nationwide, the House looks almost certain to flip, and the Senate will be very very close. The flip […]