Excepts taken from Online Journal and Findlaw
Mainstream Ohio Republican leaders now fear their party--and the state--are about to be highjacked by the Rod Parsley/Ken Blackwell fundamentalist machine unleashed by Bush and Rove in the upcoming Governor's race.
Extremist right-wing screachers, such as Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church, Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes, Ohio gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell and followers of Jerry Falwell, have taken center pulpit in an escalated war over what really happened when George W. Bush was allegedly re-elected in November, 2004, and who will occupy the Buckeye Statehouse in 2006.
In the 2004 Presidential debacle in Ohio there were many dubious successful efforts to curtail the Democratic vote and sway the election towards George W Bush.
Such as:
William Anthony, the Democratic Chair of the Franklin Country Board of Elections, revealed that on November 2,2004, a number of voting machines were transferred from inner city precincts to Parsley's suburban church. Thousands of African-Americans were deprived of their vote due to the fact that their precincts lacked sufficient balloting hardware. But voters at Parsley's extreme right-wing precinct had no such waits.
And also:
In keeping with Blackwell's faith-based tally of the Ohio vote, the New Hope precinct broke new ground. In the now infamous "loaves and fishes" parable precinct Gahanna 1B, after 638 citizens cast ballots there, the precinct's divinely inspired voting machines registered 4,258 votes for George W. Bush.
They eat their own first before going after the Democrats.
Running against Ken Blackwell in the Republican primary is the current Attorney General Jim Petro, long known as Ohio's Republican "enforcer". The Columbus Dispatch reported that Blackwell supporters were referring to Petro as "pro-homo". OUCH!!!...now thats before they go after the Democrat....Congressman Ted Strickland in the general election.
What makes Ken Blackwell so dirty to even the Republicans and all of Ohioian's concerned with the ethics problems the State faces is his connection to the now infamous Tom Noe and the Coingate Scandal. When the Republicans in control gave Noe $50 million of the State of Ohio's Workmans Compensation funds to invest in rare coins and other collectibles such as baseball cards. The same Tom Noe who generously donated to Republican candidates. He and his second wife, Bernadette Noe, have personally given more than $200,000 to candidates, party organizations, and political action committees over the past fifteen years. Among the beneficiaries were the two State GOP officeholders who are now candidates for Ohio Governor in 2006: Attorney General Jim Petro, and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.
And just Before the 2004 Presidential election, the Sandusky County Democratic Party brought a suit seeking to require Secretary of State Blackwell to count provisional ballots even if cast in the wrong precinct. Republican candidates - including President Bush - were widely perceived as likely to benefit from Blackwell's stringent vote-counting rule. Noe intervened to support Blackwell's position. Ultimately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit agreed with Blackwell and Noe. Given Bush's 119,000 vote margin of victory, the decision probably netted the President a few thousand votes - though the election's outcome would have been the same, regardless. But the two, Noe and Blackwell pulled the strings together.
Ohio Republican's have a real reason to worry about being high-jacked. This summer they will witness Jerry Falwell, Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes, Sean Hannity, Rod Parsley and a host of Christian neo-con fascist rolling around the State to get their man and fellow crook Ken Blackwell into the Governors mansion.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Candidate (now leading in a head to head match up with Blackwell) Ted Strickland will need to watch his back. Ted, a Methodist minister himself in the past, can handle himself quite well in any normal political fight....this one is going to get really dirty.
I hear Karl Rove has rented a townhouse in Columbus to run the election from there.