Wolves Guarding The Hen House

Our great electoral system: The Ohio Secretary of State, in charge of fairly running his state's elections, writes a letter...

In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio’s chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush’s Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a “disaster” who would have reaped “terrible” and “horrible” results on both Ohio and the United States.

Further, Blackwell’s use of the word “deliver” finds striking resonance with another controversial fundraising letter sent by the CEO of voting machine manufacturer Diebold Walden O’Dell in the summer of 2003 when he said he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

Blackwell’s campaign office confirmed that they that sent the letter but offered no further comment.

“Without your enthusiasm, generous support and vote, I’m afraid the President would have lost,” Blackwell wrote, “And an unapologetic liberal Democrat named John Kerry would have won.”

“Thankfully,” he adds, “you and I stopped that disaster from happening.”

Blackwell also noted that he was “truly pleased” to announce President Bush the victor in Ohio even before all the votes had been counted. He adds that he declared the victor on his own personal belief.

“In the late hours of Election Night I was truly pleased to announce President Bush had won a critical and clinching victory here in Ohio, on the belief that it was statistically improbable for Senator Kerry to recover,” the Secretary penned.

Even in the wake of a House Judiciary Committee investigation by Democrats into voting irregularities in Ohio, Blackwell goes so far as to say that he was proud to prevent voting fraud. Myriad published reports have noted that Blackwell went out of his way to keep voters from voting–at one point insisting that voter registration cards be accepted only on paper of a certain weight.

“I have never shied away from giving the liberals fits,” he remarked in the letter. “And I’m sure that with all the voter fraud we prevented during this last election, they will be looking to get even with me in my next political campaign.”