Dems in Ohio Find Fraud in the Mirror

Democrats still can't let go of their puerile self-pity over losing Ohio in last year's presidential election, and the presidency along with it (again):

But the state's vote still is a sore point for the party on the losing side, which released the results of a poll it commissioned that said Ohio voters had to deal with long lines, poorly trained election officials, illegal identification requirements and evidence that voting was discouraged.

Actually, there was no such evidence, as Secretary of State (and next Governor of Ohio) Kenneth Blackwell asserted in response:

Blackwell's office in Ohio disputed the claim of voter suppression and said the report contained a number of errors. "The facts do not support their conclusions," said Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office.

LoParo said census data showed that African American turnout reached record levels last year, increasing by 84,000 from 2000.

He said that the number of provisional ballots issued in 2004 was proportionally about the same as in 2000 and cited an Electionline.org analysis that found Ohio had counted a higher percentage of provisional ballots (78%) than either Pennsylvania (49%) or Florida (36%).

The pollster himself echoed Blackwell's comments:

"Where the partisan bias came from, where it went, we really have no basis for making any assertion about that and I don't believe the report makes any statements about that," said Cornell University professor of government Walter Mebane Jr.

The Donks were forced to backpedal from their conclusion-jumping in relatively short order, and they weren't happy about it:

However, the survey was based on questions to only 1,201 Ohioans said to be randomly selected, and the Democrats were unable to come up with evidence of vote fraud by Republicans, leaving them bitter.

"This is bad for America," DNC chairman Howard Dean said. "We need to repair and restructure the way we conduct elections in America."

Donna Brazile, chair of the Democrats' Voting Rights Institute, said, "The data clearly indicates that the system failed far too many Ohio voters," although 1,200 voters surveyed out of millions is hardly a representative sample.

Hey, guys, I live in the state of Washington. Contrary to popular belief, we've now written the book on bleeped-up elections.

But then, here the "system's failure" was engineered to the benefit of the Democrats. And the same thing went on in Ohio, only there, thank God, to no avail:

In a stinging reply to the report, [RNC Chairman Ken] Mehlman agreed that there were numerous election abuses that took place in Ohio last year, but said they were perpetrated by Democrats or their political allies. In one instance, he said, "Democrat allies attempted to disenfranchise Ohio voters by submitting registration cards for Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Michael Jordan."

In March, a group of Ohio election law attorneys conducted a review of the state's election for the House Committee on Administration. It found, among other things, that "thousands of false and fraudulent voter-registration cards had been discovered and became the subject of numerous investigations by boards of elections, actions by local law enforcement and many media reports."

"Overwhelmingly," this report said, "these problems were reportedly traced primarily" to four Democratic political allies who supported Mr. Kerry: ACORN, America Coming Together, the AFL-CIO and the NAACP National Voter Fund.

It's one of my own political axioms: Democrats define the legitimacy of any election by whether or not they win it. And there's nothing they won't do to win, and no charge they won't puke on the GOP when they lose.

All to be expected from a party whose very name is an oxymoron to the crowd it purportedly describes.