'Well, I Tell You What, It Helps in Ohio That We've Got Democrats in Charge of the Machines'

Thus spake The Messiah September 3 in Ohio. Ah, yes, it sure does help having partisan hacks at the controls, doesn't it?

For all the get out the vote efforts Democrats encourage every year, they sure go out of their way to suppress the votes of Republicans every chance they get.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans.

But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon as Brunner was elected in 2006, she tried to remove several Republican county elections officials, including Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett. They accused her of "storm trooper tactics" to silence critics.

Then Brunner spread an alarm that Ohio's electronic voting machines were vulnerable to tampering - a favorite claim of the paranoid left. Elections officials who participated in Brunner's study called her conclusions over-hyped "leaps in logic" and said, "The report itself could be viewed as an attack on the elections system ... (that) planted seeds in the mind of the public to mistrust those who oversee elections."

Brunner also demanded an overhaul of voting methods just before the March primaries, causing meltdowns in some precincts.

And now she's hassling Republicans who want to vote for John McCain.

Two Hamilton County voters have sued, accusing her of "the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters."

The John McCain campaign sent out more than 1 million applications for absentee ballots to Republicans. Each had a line at the top next to a box: "I am a qualified elector."

Brunner sent a memo telling county election officials to reject those applications for absentee ballots if the box was not checked. "Failure to check the box leaves both the applicant and the board of elections without verification that the applicant is a 'qualified elector'," she wrote.

But that's contrary to state law and Brunner doesn't have the authority, according to the lawsuit and an opinion from Hamilton County's Republican Prosecutor Joe Deters.

H/T Dan Riehl.

Six weeks to election day and they're already playing games.

Expect zero coverage from the allegedly mainstream media on this. After all, it's not Democrats pretending they filled out a ballot wrong.

Expect this nonsense from the Democrats nationwide. But our zealous investigative media will ignore these efforts and instead will focus on some bogus outrage from some morons who probably aren't registered to vote.

Instapundit links. Thanks!