In 2004, Kenneth Blackwell, a stockholder of Diebold Elections Systems, served as the Secretary of State for Ohio, and it was no surprise that in the same year, many thousands of Ohioans were willfully disenfranchised by the machinery of government. In 2006, Jennifer Brunner succeeded him in office - and it is a boon to Ohio that she did.
Jennifer Brunner
Brunner is a lawyer of great skill, and she actually began her own practice focusing on election laws before going into public office. She has made it clear that the election of 2004 is a black mark on Ohio, and she is doing everything she can to ensure that we do not have the same problem this time around. A quote, from Mrs. Brunner:
"In terms of Ohio and what happened in the 2004 presidential election, there has been a crisis in confidence in our election system in Ohio, both nationally and in our state. One of the quickest ways to repair that is to make sure that we have adequate numbers of poll workers. ... We suggested this as one tool that the boards of elections would have available to them for recruiting poll workers. We would be looking to do this similar to how we recruit jurors, only jurors are recruited for two weeks of service whereas we'd only be asking for three days. It would also allow us to offer split shifts to poll workers. In Ohio the polling places are open for thirteen hours, so essentially a poll worker works at least fourteen hours; with the average age of our poll workers at 72, that's a tough day for anyone, no matter what their age is. ... It's an option, and we can even include a trigger, so that a county has to be deficient by a certain percentage of poll workers to even be able to use this."
George W. Bush won the state of Ohio in 2004, with only 118,000 votes over his opponent, and this was with all of the dirty tricks that Blackwell and Diebold could muster.
Mrs. Brunner is committed to making sure that every vote is counted and every vote is cast - no more Diebold sleepovers, she says, and no more urban voting machines mysteriously lounging in warehouses while minorities wait in 8-10 hour lines. She has said that all polling places must have paper ballots on hand, in case of problems with the machines, or in cases of voter preference. Brunner is only one reason that 2008 is not a repeat of the last election, however.
Register/vote
In the same year that Ohio voted Brunner into office, its legislature also passed a law entitling the citizens of the state to register and then immediately vote in a week-long window between 9/30 and 10/6. As stated previously, Bush won the state of Ohio with only 118,000 votes over his opponent. In Ohio, well over 400,000 students are enrolled in the state's many colleges, and those voters predictably swing toward Obama. The register/vote window could easily put him over the top.
Hilariously, the same party that perpetrated despicable electoral fraud 4 years ago is threatening to sue, because this new rule disproportionately favors Democratic-leaning areas, heavy in populations that typically do not get out to vote. I suppose if you're a Republican, actively disenfranchising people is far less offensive than encouraging non-voters to get out and exercise their right.
Ground Game
Barack Obama has been catching flack in the press for not matching McCain's spending on advertising in certain key states (though he has been all over the air in Ohio), but the truth is he is outspending McCain overall - but he is investing in the ground game. The same is true here - there are forty Obama for America campaign offices in the state, including five more that were just opened last week. These people are very well organized, highly motivated, and very numerous. In addition to the mere presence on the ground, the campaign has spent millions on advertising, and virtually every heavy-hitting anti-McCain ad is in circulation here almost every day.
I am a realist, but I think we have reason to believe that Obama and Ohio have more in common in 2008 than the first letter of their names.