Op-Ed
Columnist
Those Pesky Voters
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 12, 2006
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&tsType=try&ocid=81&incamp=ts:chall_article_trial&ocids=82|81&headline=Those%2bPesky%2bVoters&
Mr. Kennedy's article echoed and expanded upon an article in Harper's ("None Dare Call It Stolen," by Mark Crispin Miller) that ran last summer. Both articles documented ugly, aggressive and frequently unconscionable efforts by G.O.P. stalwarts to disenfranchise Democrats in Ohio, especially those in urban and heavily black areas.
The point man for these efforts was the Ohio secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican who was both the chief election official in the state and co-chairman of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio — just as Katherine Harris was the chief election official and co-chairwoman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida in 2000.
No one has been able to prove that the election in Ohio was hijacked. But whenever it is closely scrutinized, the range of problems and dirty tricks that come to light is shocking. What's not shocking, of course, is that every glitch and every foul-up in Ohio, every arbitrary new rule and regulation, somehow favored Mr. Bush.
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The right to vote is supposed to mean something in the United States. The idea of going to war overseas in the name of the democratic process while making a mockery of that process here at home is just too ludicrous. . 
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