Blackwell decided to favor propriety over patronage by putting a halt to deployment of Diebold electronic voting machines in three counties in the wake of mounting allegations that the unabashedly pro-Bush president of the Dayton company would do what he could to assist the state's republican party and was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president"

So, Ken can be pressured, as he should be, if only because his republican instincts cloud his integrity unless reminded of his duty.  Meet his conscience.

Self-designated election watch-dog, Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones (D-Cleveland), has already put Blackwell on notice that the shenanigans he has already been up to will be thoroughly scrutinized -- as it should be.  Not, as the republicans allege, that the democrats are preparing to send this election to the courts, but because Blackwell's recent rulings which have had the net result of disenfranchising many new registrants already, and the potential for continued problems are entirely of Ken's making. 

Interestingly, it is Republican Ken Blackwell, not the Democrats, who is vowing to continue to fight against federally mandated provisional ballots in the appeals courts after he was overruled by the Federal Courts here in Toledo which ruled that voters who turn up at the voting place can still vote as long as they are registered somewhere in the county.  He's just begging for more trouble and should let this sleeping dog lie.

Unlike Florida, Ohio in November is nasty.  Remember Gordon Lightfoot's ode to the Edmund Fitzgerald and the Gales of November?  We don't stage riots at boards of elections like they do in West Palm, we don't march on the slushy streets until St. Patrick's Day, and we have about 48,000 or so homegrown lawyers, most living in the Northern and urban areas, who do all their fighting where it's warm and cozy, inside, before a judge.  Where did you really think this was going to end up?