Via: Election Law Blog, this AP story:  "Blackwell delegates state work as election approaches"

Blackwell has allowed assistant secretary of state Monty Lobb to sign all of the directives and advisories to county elections boards since March. Lobb also has broken six tie votes among county elections boards, The Columbus Dispatch reported for a story published Sunday.

Carlo LoParo, a spokesman for the Republican nominee for governor, said Blackwell decided to hand off those duties during the campaign under an Ohio law that states, "The general duties of the assistant secretary shall be such as the secretary of state assigns him."

Frankly, Kenny keeping his hands out of the cookie jar may be a good thing.  The obvious conflict of interests involved with the State's highest election official also being a candidate for the State's highest office leaves us with either nobody in charge, or putting the inmates in charge of the asylum.

Christopher McNeil, an adjunct professor at Capital University Law School and an expert on administrative law, said the public has a right to expect that the elected secretary of state is making the important decisions unless the power has been given to someone else in writing.

"I don't believe our constitution or the statute anticipates allowing the secretary of state to dodge his responsibilities," he said.

State law requires the secretary of state to break tie votes from county elections boards.

The Secretary's defense that there were no complaints when other candidates ran for office while holding another just doesn't cut it.  No Ohio Secretary of State has ever been under such suspicion for election tampering as Ken Blackwell.  

If he wanted to claim clean hands, that his situation is no different than Sherrod Brown or Bob Taft when they ran for office while serving as Secretary of State, he should have spearheaded an exhaustive, high profile investigation into every single complaint that came out of the '04 election.

He had ample opportunity to clear his name and remove the taint left over from before.  He could have fixed the problems and restored our faith in the system itself.  Instead, he was instrumental in defeating the grassroots effort to reform Ohio's election laws.

The fact that he did nothing to restore integrity to the voting process, and that many of the complaints that arose in '04 pointed directly to his own policies, speaks volumes.  He is the poster child for smarmy electioneering and deserves to wear that label.

There's nothing unfair about pointing out the obvious -- Ohio has been, and continues to be poorly served by Ken Blackwell.

This isn't about delegating his current duties to avoid the appearance of impropriety.  This is about him never living up to his sworn duties in the first place.