The comedy continues in Ohio today, where the ACLU and Jesse Jackson continue their efforts to manufacture a voting controversy in order to claim victimization for the next four years. Hanging chads have returned to the American electorate as recount teams try to divine voter intent from incompetence, while a federal judge tells Jackson to read the law before filing a complaint:

In a scene reminiscent of Florida circa 2000, two teams of Republican and Democratic election workers held punch-card ballots up to the light Wednesday and whispered back and forth as they tried to divine the voters' intent from a few hanging chads. ...

The scene is being repeated statewide this week in a recount in the state that put Bush over the top in the election last month.

We should have learned the lesson four years ago: any process in which ballots get reviewed for "voter intent" is inherently subjective and should be rejected. Either a voter successfully casts a ballot or not at all. The threshold should be that a ballot can get counted properly by the machine designed for that purpose. Anything else lends itself to partisan mischief.

On a brighter note, a federal judge tossed out another complaint by Jesse Jackson because of his own demonstrated incompetence at understanding electoral law:

The Ohio Supreme Court's chief justice on Thursday threw out a challenge to the state's presidential election results. ...

Chief Justice Thomas Moyer ruled that the request improperly challenged two separate election results. Ohio law only allows one race to be challenged in a single complaint, he said.

The challenge was backed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cliff Arnebeck, a Columbus attorney for the Massachusetts-based Alliance for Democracy, who accused Bush's campaign of "high-tech vote stealing."

I find Jackson incredibly boring and inconsequential; fumbles like this provide the only remarkable aspect to his public works. His racebaiting and paranoid delusions make for interesting copy, but as long as Democrats continue to follow his destructive strategies, they will continue to lose ground among rational voters. How hard can it be to do the legal research necessary to file a valid complaint?

Not only did they screw up the form of the suit, the substance also fails to meet the laugh test. Jackson wants the court to throw out the election results because of an exit poll -- later shown to be preliminary -- predicted that John Kerry would get 52% of the vote. In other words, Jackson wants to give more legal weight to the few hundred people approached on their way out of polling booths than the actual votes cast in the election. While the ruling today leaves open the possibility of the complaint being refiled, it deserves more to be buried in a landfill.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Ohio -- One Step Forward, One Step Back:

» Another Blogography! from cerdipity
Shiver me timbers! href="http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003328.php">Captain Ed runs a tight ship over at Captain's Quarters. His blog was chosen winner of the Best Conservative Blog, with the help of Whisky, of course! Lately, he's bee... [Read More]

Tracked on December 16, 2004 7:02 PM

» Meet the new chads, same as the old chads from Darn Floor
Remember how Democrats wanted to "divine voter intent" from "dimpled chads" in Florida? Well here we go again. Since the provisional ballots alone won't put Kerry over, they'll try to include ballots with no Presidential vote as well. Only by this will... [Read More]

Tracked on December 17, 2004 8:35 AM