I usually don't agree with most things said by David Broder. However, his column today made me take notice--- Washington Post:
When the Columbus Dispatch's respected poll recently reported that Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was trailing Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland by 20 points in the race for governor of Ohio, there was dismay but no shock among his fellow Republicans. Those I interviewed during a recent visit here said they had seen it coming for a long time.
But it is a political earthquake...
...And yet, when the Dispatch poll came out, the best that Blackwell could say was that his own internal surveys showed him trailing by only 11 points -- as if that were a consolation...
....I had dinner one night with a group of Ohio Republicans, all with many years of experience in state politics and none directly engaged in this year's gubernatorial race. One of them said, "I'm afraid this could be another 1982," a year when recession pushed unemployment to 15 percent and cost the Republicans the governorship. Another said, "I'd settle right now for another 1982. I'm afraid it will be another 1974," the year of the Watergate election, when Democrats swept everything in sight....
Despite what Broder thinks, Ohio voters still have to deal with the Diebold voting machines. From The Plain Dealer
Nearly 10 percent of Cuyahoga County's official ballots in the May 2 primary were "destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised," according to experts who studied the county's new electronic voting system....
