Maybe a major OOPS [link]

The Democrat candidate for Governor of Ohio may be in trouble. It seems that he may not be properly registered to vote in Ohio. If he is not a properly registered voter, then he may be ineligible to run for office.

The controversy was sparked by a complaint filed last week with the elections board by an East Liverpool woman whose son, Larry Long Jr., is a volunteer worker for the Blackwell campaign.

The complaint questioned whether Strickland lives where he is registered to vote — in an apartment above his field office in Lisbon. Strickland listed the field office as his principal residence for purposes of voting after he was elected as the area’s new congressman in 2002.

Records show that in 2003 Strickland and his wife purchased a condominium in Columbus and on the paperwork listed it as their principal residence.

Strickland has to be a registered voter to run for office, and being disqualified as such by the elections board could mean, at least in theory, he no longer could be a candidate for governor.

The New York Times published and editorial yesterday condemning the Ohio Secretary of State's office for attempting to enforce Ohio's election laws:

Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.

The full editorial can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17tues1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I guess technicalities only count if they work against a Republican candidate. One need only look at the efforts in Florida where Dems are suing to keep election officials from posting signs informing voters that votes cast for disgraced Congressman Mark Foley will count for a different candidate. And the Dems successfully sued to keep Tom DeLay's name on the ballot in Texas.

I have seen other candidates knocked out of Ohio races because of errors. In the last 20 years there have been two uncontested races for mayor of Columbus because of errors with nominating petitions.

Compliance with the technical requirements of the law is not optional. If the Dems made a mistake...too bad.